Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet and theologian who lives in the north of Ireland. For the last five years he led the Corrylmeela Community,  Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organization. He has been interviewed on Krista Tippet’s On Being. As a gay Irish Catholic man, his poetry deals with questions of language, politics, conflict and faith in the contemporary world.

His books include: The Place Between, Daily Prayer from the Corrymeela Community, In the Shelter, Sorry for your Troubles, and others.  This reading is a rare California appearance for Pádraig.

Matthew Siegel is the author of Blood Work, winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Blood Work was also released on CB Editions in the U.K. where it was shortlisted for The Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection by the Forward Foundation. Siegel’s poems and essays have appeared in The Guardian, Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, Ninth Letter, The Rumpus, Salt Hill, Southern Humanities Review, Tusculum Review, Washington Square, and elsewhere. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, he holds a B.A. from Binghamton University and an M.F.A. from University of Houston. Siegel is a member of the general education faculty at San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Born in New York City and raised in nearby Rockland County, NY, he currently lives in San Francisco.