Book Launch: retrovirology & Resistance through Research--Mary E. Cronin in Conversation with John Bonanni

Join John Bonanni for a launch of his debut collection of poems, retrovirology, winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. John will read from his collection, and then join author Mary E. Cronin for a conversation about research, history, and the spaces where the kindlings of literary art ignite from our historical archives and ancestral honoring.

John Bonanni won the 2025 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry for his debut collection of poems, retrovirology (Pitt 2026), judged by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers. He is a Cape Cod based writer who serves as founding editor of the Cape Cod Review. His poems have appeared in Foglifter, Black Warrior Review, Southern Indiana Review, Washington Square Review, Prairie Schooner, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Gulf Coast, and his literary criticism has been featured in DIAGRAM, Denver Quarterly, The Rumpus, and Kenyon Review. His writing has been supported by the Mass Cultural Council, the Fine Arts Work Center, the NEA, and the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod.

Mary E. Cronin is a Cape Cod poet, author, and educator whose poetry has appeared in Radical Teacher, Rise Up Review, The American Journal of Nursing, The New York Times, and in anthologies If You Can Hear This: Poems in Protest of an American Inauguration and Swagger: A Celebration of the Butch Experience. Her books for young readers include Trucks, Boots, and Bells: Firehouse Poems (Holiday House, 2026) and Like a Mother Bear: How Jeanne Manford’s Words Changed the World for Queer Kids (Simon & Schuster, 2027). She can be reached at www.maryecronin.com.