Li Zhuang w/ But Octopi Don't Sing

Midtown Reader invites you to hear Li Zhuang, recent graduate of FSU’s Creative Writing PhD program, to discuss her passionate book of poems, But Octopi Don’t Sing, with FSU Professor James Kimbrell.

ABOUT THE BOOK
Li Zhuang’s But Octopi Don’t Sing are poems of self-discovery and, at times, self-defense, but they are also poems of passion, understanding, and hard-won love. Rarely do we encounter a collection with as much energy combined with as much precision, with as much formal inventiveness combined with such vulnerability, as when she asks her titular, three-hearted octopus, “How many hearts do you need / to hold your endless grief?” Her voice is distinctive and her aim true. Zhuang’s But Octopi Don’t Sing is a remarkable debut and marks the arrival of an exciting new poet

——James Kimbrell Author of The Law of Truly Large Numbers: Poems

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Li Zhuang holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Florida State University. In 2019, Li graduated with an MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Indiana Review, Pleiades, The Common, Denver Quarterly, The Madison Review, etc. Li is a finalist for The Georgia Review’s 2025 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize and a runner up for Grist’s ProForma contest. Her poetry chapbook But Octopi Don’t Sing, published in March 2026, was selected as the runner-up for the Purple Ink Press’s Chapbook Contest by Chen Chen.

ABOUT JAMES KIMBRELL
James Kimbrell’s poems have appeared in anthologies including the Best American Poetry and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, his most recent collection is The Law of Truly Large Numbers (Pitt Poetry Series, 2025). He lives in Tallahassee and serves as distinguished research professor at Florida State University.