Nick Vagnoni was born and raised in Key West, Florida, and currently teaches writing at Florida International University in Miami.

A founding member of The Miami Poetry Collective, he has facilitated poetry workshops at New College of Florida, The Studios of Key West, and Books & Books in Coral Gables. In addition to teaching writing, he has also worked as a journalist, freelance writer, and restaurant critic.

Nick’s work has appeared in Mid-American Review, Alimentum, Saw Palm, New CollAge, La Fovea, Florida Book Review, Sliver of Stone, and others.

At 9 PM on Saturday, April 21, he’ll be the featured poet at a monthly reading series called CHAIku, which bring together writers and enthusiasts in Haikus rooted in Jewish identity, culture, community and experience.

The reading will be at Temple Israel (137 NE 19th St., Miami). Despite the event’s name and venue, Nick won’t just be reading Jewish haiku. “As some of you already know,” Nick says, “the main theme of a lot of my poetry is food.”

This reading is free.  It’s organized by Next@19th, a local organization that seeks to explore Jewish culture and identity in contemporary contexts. (You certainly don’t need to be Jewish to attend or enjoy the readings, however.)

For more information please call 305.542.7732 or visit the website at http://www.nextat19th.org.

In this picture, Nick (left) is creating a poem on the spot at a Poem Depot event. On the Miami Poetry Collective‘s website, Poem Depot is described as “a pop-up store that sells original poems. For a pre-arranged fee, members of the MPC write poems on manual typewriters based on topics, themes, or forms suggested by the consumers.”