In Conversation: Nicole Callihan & Zoë Ryder White

Longtime poetry collaborators, Zoë Ryder White and Nicole Callihan will read from their collaborative works and discuss their process. The two began collaborating in 1999 and have two published chapbooks–A Study in Spring, winner of the Baltic Writing Residency Prize (2015) and Elsewhere, winner of the Sixth Finch Chapbook Prize (2020)–as well as many other works in progress.

About collaborating with Zoë, Nicole says, “There is no one I can write with like I write with Zoë. When we’re in the heat of a project, it’s absolutely electric, and I find myself checking my phone a thousand times a day to see if she’s written back. It’s like the highest form of conversation through verse and image, sound and confession, music and magic.”

Zoë [adds]… “Writing with Nicole is like a return to the primordial soup. A sort of willful stepping away from the conscious mind together, while at the same time (lightly!) holding the reins of the runaway world, in all its biology and industry. I think we share a similar sense of deep curiosity and delight in the word’s weirdness. Whether it’s a poem or a letter (with a real stamp!) or a text, When N. writes, I always want to write back.”

Winner of the 2023 Tenth Gate Prize and a 2023 Alma Award, Nicole Callihan has two recent poetry collections: chigger ridge (The Word Works 2024) and SLIP (Saturnalia 2025). Other books include This Strange Garment (Terrapin 2023) and the 2019 novella, The Couples, as well as the chapbooks The Deeply Flawed Human, Downtown, A Study in Spring, and ELSEWHERE (the latter two in collaboration with Zoë Ryder White). Nicole also co-edited the Braving the Body anthology published by Harbor Editions in March 2024. Find out more at www.nicolecallihan.com. 

Zoë Ryder White’s poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Iterant, Plume, and Threepenny Review, among others. Her most recent chapbook, Via Post, was a finalist for Tupelo Press’ Snowbound Chapbook award and won the Sixth Finch chapbook contest in 2022. Her chapbook, HYPERSPACE, was the editors’ choice pick for the Verse Tomaž Šalamun Prize in 2020 and is available from Factory Hollow Press. She co-authored A Study in Spring, with Nicole Callihan. Another collaboration with Nicole, Elsewhere, won the Sixth Finch chapbook competition in 2019. A former elementary school teacher, she edits books for educators about the craft of teaching.