Reduction in Force: Launch at The Sanctuary
Join us for a reading, conversation, and themed open mic.
Special guests: Vincent Toro, more to come
More info to come.
DMQ Virtual Salon
As part of its monthly series, the DMQ Review will feature me and some poems from Reduction in Force in their May virtual salon.
You can sign up for their monthly salon series at DMQreview.com.
Yeah You Write reading series
I will appear as a special guest to read from Reduction in Force.
More information here: https://yeahyouwriteevents.com/monday-april-13-2026/
Precision and Power: Writing Flash Fiction Workshop
Online WORKSHOP
Thursday, March 19 – Thursday, April 16, 2026
Each Thursday, 7:30pm EDT – see schedule
Led by Hugo dos Santos
Limited to 12 participants
Flash fiction proves that the smallest stories can hold the greatest weight. In this generative workshop, we’ll explore how compression, image and rhythm can give short prose extraordinary depth and resonance. Each week, we’ll read and discuss short works by contemporary writers to examine how voice, structure and omission shape meaning. Through guided prompts and in-class exercises, we’ll experiment with form and tone, generating new drafts that surprise us. We’ll also discuss strategies for revising short work and preparing it for publication. Open to writers of all levels who want to sharpen their prose and discover how to make a few hundred words feel infinite.
You can sign up here.
Open Circle at The Sanctuary
Come join me at Open Circle as I talk about fiction, publishing, and creating community through writing.
Reading at WILD AND PRECIOUS LIFE
SAVE THE DATE!
Join the WPLS on 2/18/26 to hear Hugo dos Santos, Teresa Dzieglewicz, & @caridadmoro.
Zoom room opens at 7:15pm (EST). Reading starts at 7:30pm (EST).
#wildandpreciouslifeseries #poetsofinstagram #poetsofig #poets #poetry
@bauhanpublishing @texasreviewpress @tamupress @tupelopress
Alfred Lewis Bilingual Reading Series XIII
PBBI-Fresno State, CA
ALFRED LEWIS BILINGUAL POETRY READING SERIES XIII
2026
Friday, February 6 – 12 AM (PDT), 1 PM (ET), 6 PM Lisbon, 5 PM Azores
ZOOM AND FACEBOOK LIVE
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84310503130
Leonor Sampaio da Silva (Azores)
Geni Mendes de Brito (Brasil, PI)
Hugo F. Dos Santos (NJ)
Lucio Carvalho (Brasil, RS)
Diniz Borges, Moderator
Workshop: Fiction 101 at Winter Prose and Poetry Getaway (Murphy Writing)
32nd Annual Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway
January 16-19, 2026, Atlantic City area, NJ. Advance your craft and energize your writing. Enjoy challenging and supportive workshops, insightful feedback and an encouraging community. Choose from workshops in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, memoir, songwriting and storytelling. Early registration discounts and scholarships available.
Poets & Storytellers Open (Feature)
Announcing our first session of Poets & Storytellers Open for 2026! On Friday, January 9th, we’ll be in Downtown Hopewell, NJ at the one and only Wull & Oak.
P&SO welcomes everyone to bring their ORIGINAL poetry or prose, polished or in progress, to this wonderful space. We love the poetry hits and the standards, but P&SO is a space for writers performing or working out their original pieces. The open mic signup list will be capped at 12 readers. Reminder, the list does fill up quickly, so be sure to arrive on time to secure a spot! Each performer will have up to 5 minutes to share their work. For those who would only like to watch the performances, you’re more than welcome to also join our audience. The event is free and open for all to enjoy, but we do welcome donations to help keep the event funded.
First up for our 2026 features is poet Hugo dos Santos (@hugofdossantos). Hugo is the author of Reduction in Force (Bauhan Publishing, 2026), winner of the May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize, and Then, there (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), a collection of Newark stories. He is the translator of Homecoming (Arquipelago Press, 2024) and A Child in Ruins (Writ Large Press, 2016), a staff pick at the Paris Review Daily. Born in Lisboa, Portugal, and raised in Newark, New Jersey, he writes toward questions of diaspora, belonging, and memory.
As usual for our poet features, we’ll have a Q&A session following the Hugo’s set.
Details for the evening:
6:50 PM - doors/open mic signup begins*
7:15 to 8:15 PM - open mic
8:30 to 9:00 PM - featured poet: Hugo dos Santos
Wull & Oak is located at:
10 E. Broad St. Hopewell, NJ
Light refreshments will be provided.
See you there!
Immigration and Identity: PSE&G Social Impact Series
Immigration and Identity
Oct 20 @ 7PM
Free on Zoom
The City of Newark is a longtime haven for immigrants, many of whom come from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Today a multitude of languages are spoken throughout the city, and ethnic markets, bakeries, restaurants, bars and social clubs line the streets of many wards.
Typical of immigrant communities, each generation faces tensions between assimilation and cultural preservation. Join our virtual conversation for a discussion of the immigrant experience and the impact of political, social and economic challenges on the development of cultural identities and how neighborhoods like the Ironbound in Newark are emblematic of these larger issues.
The PSEG Social Impact Film is Immigration – Love Me and Finding Home, an episode of the Our Time PBS series that focuses on the experiences of first generation immigrants.
How to participate:
Register here.
Watch Immigration – Love Me and Finding Home in advance at home.
Join us for a virtual panel discussion on Mon, Oct 20, at 7PM.
In partnership with Dodge Poetry, the program will open with poetry from Hugo dos Santos who was born in Portugal and grew up in the Ironbound. Dos Santos is also participating as a panelist.
Our panel will be moderated by Dr. Sherri-Ann Butterfield, Senior Vice President of Social Impact at NJPAC.
Other panelists include:
Adriana Morales García, a student at Middlesex College and the daughter of immigrants from Mexico
Ana Paula Rodrigues, born and raised in the Ironbound, is the author of Voices and Voyages: Portuguese Immigrants Share Stories of Turmoil and Triumph in Migrating to America
Ivonne Salazar, Chief of Staff at La Casa de Don Pedro, a social service provider and the largest Latinx-led organization in New Jersey
Paterson Poetry Festival
Event: Paterson Poetry Festival: Words Around the World
Date: Saturday, October 11th
Time: 12:00PM - 3:30PM
Location: The Great Falls Amphitheater, Paterson, NJ
Reading: Launch of Passaic at Newark Public Library
Passaic by PaulA Neves
Passaic is a collection of poems that reflect on the Passaic, an 80-mile long river coursing through prime New Jersey real estate in counties that run the gamut from affluence to working class. Apart from the river’s association with William Carlos Williams’ Patterson and other works, and its prominence in the greater Newark metro area, it is also one of the biggest environmental atrocities in the state—and the country. When I recently mentioned the river to an out-of-state acquaintance, his first response was, “Worst Superfund site in the country, ” which isn’t entirely accurate, but not far off the mark. Williams’ epic was published around the time the toxic assault on the Passaic was reaching its tipping point, and the pollution along its lower half was affecting middle and working class residents, which included immigrants and others from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds, many of whom worked in factories or lived in communities along or near its banks, the kinds of communities that have always made New Jersey strong and distinctive, despite our complicated histories. The actual and spiritual descendants of those mid 20th century inhabitants, and of the Lenape long before them who fished peacefully in its once pristine waters, continue to be affected by the Passaic’s destruction, its fitful, politically charged rehabilitation, and the current challenges of climate change and “economic development.” They and the river deserve many poems and songs. This collection offers up some of these, primarily from the perspective of immigrant and first generation Americans—as prayers, laments, even humorous musings—and acknowledges that there is so much more that needs to be remembered—the pains, losses, and joys that galvanize us to be mindful stewards of what we have been given, or what we have taken from those who came before us. Our future depends on it. Rivers, both literal and metaphorical, are deep legacies. The Passaic is a symbol of both New Jersey and America.
“The river that runs through paulA neves’ unforgettable debut collection is at once majestic and toxic, a lifeblood of family, factory work, and more than a few miracles of faith and transformation. Rooted in the Portuguese-American experience of Newark’s Ironbound district, an unlevel playing field of immigrant dreams and early deaths, Passaic is a powerful hymn to place and the people we share it with, if only briefly. Having read its last gorgeous line, I felt not so much like a better person, but a more human human.”
–Theresa Burns, author of Design and Two Train Town
In this beautifully crafted collection, a resurrected Passaic River returns color and flavor to the long-muted worlds adorning its banks. The places and names in these poems sing to us from long-forgotten memories. Amid all the change the Passaic has seen, this collection reminds us of all the ways “the words will write themselves again,” and expand beyond their immediate geography.
–Hugo Dos Santos, author of Then, There and translator of A Child in Ruins
Passaic illustrates affection for tenacious immigrant roots like no other with these heartfelt poems that greet us like “a rain of reminiscence and receipts,/ postcards sent from/ the other shore.” After reading this collection, I’m convinced the Passaic River has a water spirit and a poet laureate, and that’s paulA neves.
--Rigoberto González, author of To the Boy Who Was Night"
In these deeply human poems, the accents and grit of Newark and communities along the Passaic River come alive. We hear the unsentimental perspective of a first-generation American daughter who is “riding memory hard.” Teeming with myth, rich with fado, these poems are strong and yearning, authentic and profound. They speak to a restlessness that cannot be quenched—or drowned—by the promises of America. As an immigrant mother on her deathbed remarks, “I thought there’d be more.”
–Olga Livshin, author/translator of A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman
neves’ poems transcend the generic and move the Luso-American narrative into different spaces, not asking permission for her poems to think and bleed. They create a universe both doubling as reality and dreamscape. A place of created mythos that is ultimately country and home.
– Dimitri Reyes, author of Papi Pichón and Shadow Work for Poets
Dodge Poetry Festival
Reading from ironbound - a blog, as part of Dodge's Brick City Voices panel.
More information at Dodge Poetry's site or at their Facebook page.