Poet, Writer, Performer CD Collins April 26, 2016

 

C.D. Collins

Kentucky native CD Collins follows the storytelling traditions of the South, both as a solo artist and when accompanied by musicians.  Her short fiction collection Blue Land was published by Polyho Press, her poetry collection by Ibbetson Street Press. As one of the originators of the resurgence of spoken word with live music, her work has been archived in four compact discs: Kentucky Stories (winner Best Spoken-Word album Boston Poetry Awards) Subtracting Down, and Carousel Lounge. Her most recent disc, Clean Coal/Big Lie, is currently being released in a series of one-woman shows.  Afterheat is her first novel.

Collins has performed in a variety of venues including Berklee College of Music Performance Hall, Boston Public Library, Club Passim, Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art and the New York Public Library.   Collins’ fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines including StoryQuarterly, Phoebe, Salamander and The Pennsylvania Review.

Collins has received grants and awards from Massachusetts College of Art, Somerville Arts Council, the St. Botolph Club, The Kentucky Foundation for Women, the Cambridge Arts Council, and Women Waging Peace.

Collins holds a B.A. and an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Kentucky where she studied with author and activist Wendell Berry.

 She was recently a guest at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for a pilot conference to advance the development of innovative technologies that support the inclusion of people with disabilities.

 Her recent projects include:

A book of essays, titled Blue Folks of Troublesome to be released in a limited edition letter press format with original artwork as well as in multimedia tablet display.  This book is a project of MHM Fine Art Studios in Lowell, MA and Dutch artist and designer Markus Haala.

A collaboration of spoken-word and music with Russian-born Santon, a blind, autistic musical savant  and recent graduate of Berklee College of Music. With a grant from the Malden Cultural Council they are currently recording a compact disc titles Night Animals.

Praise for Blue Land:

“CD Collins has the voice of a natural-born storyteller.  Original and unforgettable.” Stephen McCauley, novelist

“Altogether brilliant collection...” Ray Olson, Booklist.

Praise for CD Collins

“Laurie Anderson meets William Faulkner.”

more info at www.cdcollins.com

Tuesday April 5, 2016 5PM Editor, Publisher, Writer, Newton Writing and Publishing Center Founder-- Robin Stratton

Robin Stratton

Robin Stratton has been a writing coach in the Boston area for over 20 years. She is the author of four novels, including one which was a National Indie Excellence Book Award finalist, two collections of poetry and short fiction, and a writing guide. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she’s been published in Word Riot, 63 Channels, Antithesis Common, Poor Richard’s Almanac(k), Blink-Ink, Pig in a Poke, Chick Flicks, Up the Staircase, Shoots and Vines, and many others. She is Acquisitions Editor for Big Table Publishing Company, Senior Editor of Boston Literary Magazine, and Director of the Newton Writing and Publishing Center.

March 29th 5PM Poet Sergio Inestrosa

Sergio Inestrosa received his PhD in Literature from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, Mexico in 1998. Sergio was a Jesuit student for 8 years in Central America, living in El Salvador, Panama and Nicaragua. While in El Salvador he studied with Ignacio Ellacuria, a well known Jesuit scholar who was killed in 1988 by the military. When Professor Inestrosa returned to Mexico, he studied to receive a Masters in Communication and became a professor and researcher in the Communication field. He has presented many research papers in Mexico, Latin America, USA and Asia, and has published 6 books in Mexico. In 1999 he taught Spanish at the Estrella Mountain College in Avondale, Arizona, and in 2000 he conducted Postdoctoral research at Harvard, focusing on the works of Octavio Paz. Since coming to Endicott, Professor Inestrosa has been teaching Spanish and Mexican Culture and has been busy organizing a Spanish Cine Club on campus. He has also developed the Spanish minor and designed many new courses, including Spanish for Professionals, Spanish Cinema, Spanish Translation, Spanish Composition, Latin American History and Culture, and a Latin American literature course. Professor Inestrosa loves to read, write, meet people, learn new languages, cook, and play soccer. He is married and has two children.
Sergio Inestrosa's area of expertise includes: US/Mexico relations. His recent collection of poetry is Los Bordes del Placer

March 15, 2016 Poet, Musician, artist Gilmore Tamny

 

Gilmore Tamny

Gilmore Tamny is an writer, poet, artist, and musician living in Somerville, MA. She's been working on the drawing series Lines, Dots, Circles for the last several years and utilizing both right and left hand has now amassed in in the neighborhood of 450 drawings. In the 90’s she was in the band The Yips which released three full length records. Weather Weapon, her current band, released Weather Weapon on bandcamp in March 2015. She received an MFA from Emerson College in 2002. She has a story in Madison Smartt Bell’s Narrative Design, essays in Not A Rose by Heide Hatry and The Dan Clowes Reader. Her poetry, artwork and short fiction has appeared in various literary magazines. Her novel My Days with Millicent is being serialized online at Ohioedit. She was Somerville's (MA) November 2014 Artist of the Month. She is a committed artiste, feminist, rawk fan, old master painting junkie and audio book listener.

March 1, 2016 5PM Poet, publisher of Salamander Magazine: Jennifer Barber

Jennifer Barber

Jennifer Barber grew up in the Boston area, where she loved gymnastics and modern dance, and graduated as an English major from Colby College in Maine. She studied Old and Middle English at Oxford University and Québécois poetry in Montreal on a Watson Fellowship. She received her M.F.A. in poetry from Columbia University. Having worked in textbook publishing for several years in New York and Boston, she now teaches literature and creative writing at Suffolk University as a scholar in residence. Her books are Works on Paper (The Word Works, 2016, winner of the 2015 Tenth Gate Prize); Given Away (Kore Press, 2012); and Rigging the Wind (Kore Press, 2003, winner of the 2002 Kore First Book Prize). Her poetry has appeared in Agni, the Georgia Review, the Gettysburg Review, Ibbetson Street, Orion, the New Yorker, Poetry, Poetry Daily, Post Road, and elsewhere. Her husband is the fiction writer and translator Peter Brown and she has two children, Jeff, age 27; and Zoe, age 17.

Feb 22, 2016 5PM Michael C. Keith author of "Bits, Specks, Crumbs, Flecks"

Michael C. Keith

 Michael C. Keith is the author of over 20 books (mostly on media topics) and many articles and short stories. In 2003 his memoir, The Next Better Place, was published by Algonquin Books and received high praise from critics. Keith teaches Communication at Boston College and is the recipient of numerous awards for his scholarship in radio studies. We will be talking about Keith's latest collection of short, short fiction " Bits, Specks, Crumbs and Flecks."

Feb 16, 2016 4PM Poet Bridgit Brown

 



Bridgit Brown is a native of Boston and a graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Emerson College. Bridgit has freelanced as a writer and her work has appeared in a number of publications, including the Boston Globe, Herald, Bay State Banner, Color Magazine, WGBH Arts, Huffington Post, and Ibbetson Street Magazine. She is a recipient of the Nadia Aisenberg Poetry Award from the Writers Room of Boston and a Fulbright Lecturing and Research Award. This spring, Bridgit will release her first book of poems, Singsongs, via Ibbetson Street Press. Singsongs, according to Bridgit, captures her life experiences in poetry and song.

Jan 19, 2016 Archivist/ Poet Paige Roberts 5PM

Paige Roberts  Poet and Archivist at Phillips Academy

Jan 12, 2012 Sydney Adams

Behind the scenes, high on the fifth floor of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library (OWHL), is a vast collection peppered with relics from Andover’s past. As students pass unwittingly in the lower levels of the stacks, Garver Room and the OWHL lobby, leadership of this invaluable collection, the Phillips Academy Archives, has changed hands.

On January 3, 2012 Dr. Paige Roberts succeeded Timothy Sprattler as the School Archivist.
Andover’s archives hold several pieces of the school’s history, with articles ranging from early land deeds and financial records to old fire buckets from the former campus fire station.

As the School Archivist, Roberts will be in charge of sorting, organizing and digitizing these mementos from Andover’s history.

Elizabeth Tully, Director of the OWHL, said, “Paige is poised to lead the Archive as we plan for an increasingly integrated digital future.”


Beyond her proficiency in organizing and preserving records, Roberts was selected because of her potential to “engage with the curriculum and prepare materials and activities to support original archival research by students.”

Roberts has also been named the Associate Director of the OWHL, a position which extends her duties to other portions of the library.

Roberts brings classroom experience to the position, having served as an instructor of American Studies at the University of Southern Maine (USM). At USM, Roberts helped provide references to scholars and design archiving spaces for institutions.

Throughout her professional years, Roberts has developed new archival techniques to increase the accessibility and vitality of the archived collections. While she was the director of the Beverly Historical Society, she developed “model archival collaborations” which allowed for the exchange of materials between schools and public libraries.

Roberts also served as the head of special collections at the State Library of Massachusetts in Boston, an archivist at Springfield College, Director of the Beverly Historical Society and will soon be the President of the New England Archivists.

To reduce the time it would take for Roberts to adjust to Andover and the OWHL, Sprattler spent his final months as School Archivist orchestrating an enormous renovation of the school’s archives. Just a week into her position, Roberts has been able to successfully navigate through the historical resources.

Roberts received a B.A. from Bates College in Political Science, a MLS from Simmons College concentrating in archives management, and a Ph.D. in American Studies from George Washington University with an emphasis in New England culture

Alexis Ivy Jan 12, 2016

 

Poet Alexis Ivy

Alexis Ivy is an educator of high-risk populations in her hometown, Boston.  Her most recent poems have appeared in Main Street Rag, Off The Coast, Spare Change News, Tar River Poetry, The Santa Fe Literary Review, Eclipse, Yellow Medicine Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, J Journal and upcoming in The Worcester Review.  Her first poetry collection, Romance with Small-Time Crooks was published in 2013 by BlazeVOX [books].  She is  finding a home for her next collection, Taking the Homeless Census which has been a runner-up for University of Wisconsin's Brittingham & Felix Pollack Prize.  

Dec 8, 2015 5PM Richard Fox

Richard Fox

Richard H. Fox was born and bred in Worcester MA. He attended Webster University, as much artist colony as college, in the early 1970’s. These diverse cultures shaped his world view and love of words. He is a former President of Poetry Oasis, Inc., a non-profit poetry association dedicated to education and promoting local poets, and was Managing Editor of its journal Diner. Richard’s poems have appeared in numerous journals including Above Place, Boston Literary Magazine, OVS, Poetry Quarterly, Midstream Magazine, and Worcester Review. He is the author of two poetry collections: Time Bomb (2013) and wandering in puzzle boxes (2015). A cancer survivor, many of Richard’s poems focus on cancer from the patient’s point of view drawing on hope, humor, and unforeseen gifts. He seconds Stanley Kunitz’ motion that people in Worcester are “provoked to poetry.”

 

Dec 1, 2015 5PM Poet, Writer, Editor Laurette Folk

Laurette Folk received a semifinalist nomination and “Noted Writer” award from the Boston Fiction Festival and has been published in upstreet, The Boston Globe Magazine, Literary Mama, Narrative Northeast, Italian Americana, Talking Writing, among others. Ms. Folk is a graduate of the Vermont College MFA in Writing program and teaches at North Shore Community College.

Poet Laurin Macios Nov 3 5PM

Laurin Macios

Laurin Macios directs Mass Poetry’s programs, including Student Day of Poetry, Poetry on the T, Common Threads, U35, and Professional Development, and manages the crew of dedicated volunteers and interns who help make Mass Poetry run smoothly. She holds an MFA from the University of New Hampshire, where she taught on fellowship for three years, and has a background in publishing. Her publications and other personal poetic happenings can be found at www.laurinbeckermacios.com.

Laurin Becker Macios was born in Miami, Florida and raised just short of everywhere (Florida, Germany, North Carolina, Colorado, and Holland). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing Poetry from the University of New Hampshire and is Program Director of Mass Poetry. She previously worked in publishing and taught writing courses at UNH. She lives in Boston with six plants and one wicked awesome husband.

Thomas Lyons--Owner of the New England Mobile Book Fair Tues Oct 13, 2015

Thomas Lyons ( Owner of the New England Mobile Book Fair)

Thomas Lyons, the former insurance executive bought New England Mobile Book Fair (NEMBF), the largest independent bookstore in New England. From the parking lot, the squat cinderblock building nestled in a commercial strip in Newton Highlands, looks unremarkable. But step inside to a bibliophile’s dream. Its 32,000 square feet (more warehouse than shop around the corner) is piled floor to ceiling with books. Classics. Best sellers. Remainders and picture books. NEMBF, which is neither mobile nor a fair, is so named because the first lot of books was bought from a woman who sold books out of her car at school book fairs. With the books came the name, and it stayed. More than half a century later, the store still offers discounts to schools and libraries, and the less than accurate name has long been just one of the store’s endearing peculiarities. Until recently, all of the books (yes, one million plus) were arranged by publisher rather than by genre, as is done in the vast majority of bookstores.

Poet Mary Buchinger Oct 6, 2015

  Poet Mary Buchinger

Mary Buchinger’s poems have appeared in numerous journals including AGNI, Booth, Cortland Review, DIAGRAM, Fifth Wednesday, Ibbetson Street, New Madrid, Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, Slice Magazine, The Massachusetts Review; her work also has been published internationally—in Canada, England, France, Germany, Sweden, and The Netherlands. She has read her work locally in Cambridge and Boston, as well as in Amsterdam and at the Library of Congress. Mary was the recipient of both the Daniel Varoujan Award, judged by Marge Piercy, and the Firman Houghton Award from the New England Poetry Club. Her collection, Roomful of Sparrows (2008), was a semi-finalist in the New Women’s Voices Series.

Mary Buchinger (Bodwell) holds a doctorate in Applied Linguistics from Boston University and is Associate Professor of English and Communication Studies at MCPHS University in Boston. More about where she has published poetry can be found in the Poets & Writers Directory:http://www.pw.org/content/mary_buchinger.

Sept 25, 2015 5PM Poet Christopher Reilley

Poet Christopher Reilley

Christopher Reilley is the current poet laureate of Dedham, MA and founder of the Dedham Poet Society and a contributing editor of Acoustic Ink. He is the author of Grief Tattoos, and the upcoming One Night Stanza from Big Table publishing, his work has appeared in a wide variety of places, like Frog Croon, Word Salad, and Chaos Writers, and in such anthologies as “Sanctuary,” “Silent Consciousness,” and “Hot Summer Nights.” He is also the host of the Dedham version of 100 Thousand Poets for Change event in late September.

Sept 15, 2015 Michael Gerhard Martin 5PM

Michael Gerhard Martin

Michael Gerhard Martin holds an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. He teaches first year rhetoric at Babson, and fiction for the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth. His work has appeared in the Ocean State Review, The Museum of Americana Lit Review, Bayou Magazine, The Rust Belt Chic Pittsburgh Anthology, and on Salon.com. He has been a finalist for the Dzanc Disquiet International Literary Festival short play contest, the Nelligan Prize, the Iowa Short Fiction Award & John Simmons Short Fiction Award, a Glimmer Train New Writers contest, and the Hudson Prize. He won the 2013 James Knudsen Prize for fiction from the University of New Orleans, and he is the author of the short story collection, Easiest If I Had A Gun.​

Aug 4, 2015 Poet, Actor, Playwright George MacDonald 5PM

George MacDonald   (Watch the show live at  http://scatvsomerville.org)

George MacDonald is an accomplished writer, actor and comedian. George has over 23 years sober and spreads his recovery message through the gift of comedy. George has performed with such stars as Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Dane Cook, and Dennis Miller, just to name a few. George is also a playwright, some of his works include: At The Funny Factory, Waiting for Whitey, and Whistling Past The Graveyard. George is a member of The Dramatist Guild of America, Actors Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild and The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

July 14 5PM Poet Afaa Michael Weaver

Afaa Michael Weaver

 

Afaa Michael Weaver

In 1951 in Baltimore, Maryland, Afaa Michael Weaver, formerly known as Michael S. Weaver, was born to working class parents. He attended public schools and graduated as a National Merit finalist at the age of sixteen. After two years at the University of Maryland, he entered the world of factory life alongside his father and uncles and remained a factory worker for fifteen years. These years were a literary apprenticeship during which he wrote and published poetry, short fiction, and freelance journalism. During that time he also started 7th Son Press and Blind Alleys, a literary journal.

His first book of poetry, Water Song, was published in 1985 as part of the Callaloo series. He received a NEA fellowship for poetry six months after signing the contract for the collection and left factory life to attend Brown University’s graduate writing program on a full university fellowship, where he completed an MA with a focus on theater and playwriting. Concurrently, he completed his BA in literature in English at Excelsior College.

Tess Onwueme, the Nigerian playwright, gave him the Ibo name “Afaa," meaning “oracle," while Dr. Perng Ching-hsi, of National Taiwan University has given him the Chinese name “Wei Yafeng," derived from “Wei” for flourishing or blossoming, and “Yafeng," the title of a section of poems from the Book of Songs, the oldest anthology of Chinese poetry.

Since Water Song, Weaver has published several more collections of poetry, including City of Eternal Spring (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014); The Government of Nature (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), for which he received the Kingsley Tufts Award; The Plum Flower Dance: Poems 1985 to 2005 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007); Multitudes (Sarabande Books, 2000); and The Ten Lights of God (Bucknell University Press, 2000). His full-length play Rosa was produced in 1993 at Venture Theater in Philadelphia. His short fiction appears Children of the Night: The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to the Present (Little, Brown, 1997), edited by Gloria Naylor, and Identity Lessons: Contemporary Writing About Learning to Be American (Penguin Books, 1999), edited by Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan .

Weaver has been a Pew fellow in poetry and taught in National Taiwan University and Taipei National University of the Arts in Taiwan as a Fulbright Scholar. He teaches at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, and Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, and lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Poet,Writer, Professor Kevin Carey author of the short story collection " Beach People" July 7 5PM

Kevin Carey

Kevin Carey teaches in the English Department at Salem State University. He writes poetry, fiction, drama, and the occasional personal essay. His work can be found in several literary journals:  The Apple Valley Review,  The Literary Review, The Comstock Review, and The Paterson Literary Review.




See new poem http://www.connotationpress.com/a-poetry-congeries-with-john-hoppenthaler/may-2015/2552-kevin-carey-poetry
See recent interview with Kevin: https://geosireads.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/interview-with-kevin-carey-author-of-the-beach-people/
His book of poetry, The One Fifteen to Penn Station, is available from CavanKerry Press, NJ. http://www.upne.com/1933880297.html and Amazon.com. A new book of poems, Jesus Was a Homeboy, is forthcoming (Fall 2016 - CK Press).
“Carey’s poems, firmly rooted in the American landscape of the city and its surrounding towns, bring these places and people alive for us in poetry that is specific, clear, and unflinching,” Maria Mazziotti Gillan
 A new chapbbok of fiction - The Beach People - from Red Bird Chapbooks. Now available at http://www.redbirdchapbooks.com/kevin-carey.html
"In Carey’s fiction we meet a band of fast food workers, bartenders, carny operators, a bookie, a nursing home resident and a retired Navy man, all of them intersecting at the boardwalk institutions of this urban beach. These are not the suntan lathered bathing beauties or the muscle men who fawn over them. These are not the families with children making sand castles at low tide. These “Beach People” live across the street, working day after day, trying to survive, in sometimes desperate ways, the insanity of the routine, wanting more but settling for less, and daring to dream too much."


New poems Chicago / Wishing Well http://www.chagrinriverreview.com/kevin-carey.html
Read Home for the Holidays (Best of the Net 2011) http://www.leahbrowning.net/Apple/Spring_2011/Kevin_Carey.html
Read a short story Lucky Day at Ragazine http://ragazine.cc/2013/06/kevin-careyfiction/

Reading of a poem Crazy Stuff at book launch. http://poetmom.blogspot.com/2012/05/kevin-carey-crazy-stuff.html
Watch a new short film collaboration (with his son) www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPQlWdyCf0
Watch a Revere Beach music video Kevin made in the 90's of the band West https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPaCHdW7BLw
His latest documentary project is a film about New Jersey poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan called All That Lies Between Us.
Watch Movie Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaFUVTEC9JU 

Nina Rubinstein Alonso Poet and publisher of Constellations magazine. June 30th 5PM

Nina  Rubinstein Alonso  (Left)  with poet Kathleen Spivack

Nina Rubinstein Alonso’s poetry appeared in Ploughshares, The New Yorker, Bagel Bards, Ibbetson Street, The New Boston Review, MomEgg, U. Mass. Review, etc. and her stories in Southern Women’s Review, won a Pushcart nominee, and Broadkill Review. David Godine Press published her book This Body. She works with Constellations a Journal of Poetry and Fiction (www.constellations-lit.com) and directs Fresh Pond Ballet in Cambridge (www.freshpondballet.com). 


Watch this show live at  http://www.scatvsomerville.org 

Buell Hollister author of Leeram in Fordlandia June 2 5PM

My guest will be Buell Hollister former president of the St. Botolph Club in Boston and author of Leeram in Fordlandia   watch it live at Poet to Poet

May 12, 2015 Sebastian Lockwood 5PM

SEEE IT LIVE at  http://scatvsomerville.org 

Sebastian Lockwood

Sebastian Lockwood is a Storyteller who specializes in the epics:  The Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer’s Odyssey,  CAESAR: the man from Venus,  Beowulf, and… Monkey: A Journey to the West.  These are the great tales of heroic struggle and self-discovery.  Lockwood is now narrating a series of audio books available at Audible.com and Amazon.com.  Working as a traveling bard, teacher and audio book narrator, Lockwood lives with his wife, singer and producer, Nanette Perrotte, by Crotched Mountain, NH.

U/Mass Boston MFA Poets Adam M. Graaf and Alyssa Mazzarella April 28 5PM

 

Adam M. Graaf is completing his MFA at the University of Massachusetts Boston where hecurrently teaches creative writing. He previously taught poetry at Bay State Correctional Center and tutored students enrolled in the Veterans Upward Bound program. Adam served nine years
in the Army Reserve, deploying once to Kuwait and Iraq in 2003/2004. He is an active member of Warrior Writers Boston where he co-facilitates writing workshops. Adam’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in War, Literature & the Arts, Breakwater Review, and CONSEQUENCE. In 2013, he received the New England Poetry Club’s The John Holmes
Award.


Alyssa Mazzarella is an MFA candidate in poetry and an instructor for Introduction to Creative

Writing at UMass Boston. In 2013 and 2014, she received an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Mary Doyle Curran Scholarship, and a Brian Rattigan Scholarship. She’s previously taught at Baystate Correctional Center and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and holds a BFA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College. Her poems have appeared in Freshwater and Common Ground Review.

Tuesday, April 21 5PM Wendell Smith

Poet, Journalist, Physician Wendell Smith

Wendell Smith’s poems have appeared in Constellations, Ibbetson Street, The Kansas Quarterly, View Northwestand elsewhere. He has meditated with a raj yoga, Sahaj Marg, for forty years. He thinks Ramon Guthrie and Maximum Security Ward should become to 20th century poetry what Melville and Moby Dick became to 19th century fiction. Smith was among the founder members of the Boston Phoenix.

April 7 Elizabeth Kirschner author of the memior Waking The Bones

( A new memoir from poet Elizabeth Kirschner  Waking The Bones)

Elizabeth Kirschner has published five volumes of poetry, most recently, MY LIFE AS A DOLL,  Autumn House Press, 2008, and SURRENDER TO LIGHT, Cherry Grove Editions, 2009. The former was nominated for the Lenore Marshall Prize, the Patterson Book Prize and named Kirschner as the Literary Arts Fellow in the state of Maine, 2010. Her memoir, WALKING THE BONES is forthcoming from The Piscataqua Press.

Kirschner has been writing and teaching multi-genres across four decades. She served as faculty in Fairfield University’s low-residence MFA in Creative Writing Program and has also taught at Boston College and Carnegie-Mellon University.

She has collaborated with with many classical composers and this work is featured on numerous CD’s, including The Dichterliebe in Four Seasons, Schumann/Kirschner.

She currently serves as a writing mentor and manuscript consultant and teaches various workshops in and around her community in Kittery Point, ME.

March 17 5PM Steve Glines Publisher, Editor and novelist--discusses his new novel "Poplar Hill"

Steve Glines

 Steve Glines is the founder of the Wilderness House Literary Review and Press  http://www.whlreview.com. He is also the designer for the Ibbetson Street Press   http://ibbetsonpress.com

view the interview live at 5PM  March 17   http://scatvsomerville.org



He has a new novel in the works  "Poplar Hill"


The synopsis: An eccentric old lady scoffs at death by holding a "living
wake." Everyone in the county attends. When she has a real heart attack,
we follow her as she descends into the hell of pre-war Nazi Germany.



Below is a link to the promotional video


http://tinyurl.com/k8p89np

Poet David Blair Feb 24, 2015 5PM

David Blair’s first book, Ascension Days (Del Sol Press, 2007), was chosen for the Del Sol Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in AGNI, Harvard Review, Ploughshares,Fence, Barnstorm, Slate,storySouth, and elsewhere. He is associate professor at the New England Institute of Art in Brookline, Massachusetts. 

Feb 3, 2015 Molly Lynn Watt 5PM

Molly Lynn Watt

`Molly Lynn Watt is an educator, researcher, writer and activist. She was born in Danbury, Connecticut.
In 1963 she worked for Highlander Education and Research Center co-directing The North-South Smokey Mountain Workcamp with her then husband, Robert Lincoln Gustafson, in Townsend, Tennessee. The camp was raided and all participants landed in the Maryville Jail while the camp facilities were mysteriously burned. She moved back to the Boston area and directed work camps in Roxbury, Mass, sponsored by the A.F.S.C. and eleven local organizations including Norfolk Community Center, Freedom House, Saint Mark's Social Center, the B.R.A. and others groups. The goal for the camps was education of participants through working with residents in addressing housing and education issues.
During the 1970s she was active in the Open Education Movement and co-founded one of the nation's first teacher centers located in Brookline, Mass. She supported teachers as writers about their own practice, co-founding with Sarah Hull, Claryce Evans and Margaret Stubbs, The Children's Thinking Network Newsletter, published for five years from 40 Reservoir St. in Cambridge, MA. She was an Associate of the Prospect School in Bennington, Vermont,
In the 1980s, as an activist for experiential, hands-on learning, she traveled extensively giving key note talks at educational conferences and hands-on workshop putting the learner in charge. She advocated using the Logo computer language as a mathematical "sandbox" and the Bankstrret Writer as a blank page inviting free writing to encourage learners creativity consistent with research on the writing process. (This was at a time when there was a parallel development in programmed lessons for educational uses of computers.) In 1986 she traveled with a delegation of six educators to the People's Education Press in Beijing, China to lead the Logo and Educational Computing Workshop for 40 top educators in China. Apple gave them a computer lab as a gift to the Press which was at that time publishing all the curriculum for the 180 million school children on tradition presses. She wrote a monthly column in Teaching and Computers magazine called "Ask Molly", contributed articles toothier magazines, wrote a Logo Curriculum, "Welcome to Logo" published by D.C. Heath and co-authored Teaching wit Logo" with her husband, Daniel Watt, published by Addison Wesley in 1986.
In the 1990s until her retirement at Educational Development, Inc. she led projects funded by the NSF to support teachers of Logo conducting research in their own classrooms, editing a of teacher research with Daniel Watt, New Paradigms in Classroom Research, published by ICC. She took Action Research on-line as part of the Department of Education funded NCIP (national network of special education educators sharing best practices in inclusion.). She founded and directed the Action Research Center at E.D.C. in Newton,MA.
She is a founding member of Cambridge Cohousing where she has lived since 1998 with her husband, Daniel Lynn Watt and 88 others from age 1 to 90, determined to work together to reduce their carbon footprint and make decisions by consensus.
In 2004 she with Daniel Lynn Watt edited, published and performed excerpts of letters his parents exchanged during the Spanish Civil War. His father George Watt was a volunteer in the Lincoln Battalion and his mother Ruth Watt was an organizer and supporter in New York City. George and Ruth: Songs and Letters of the Spanish Civil War.Molly Lynn Watt started hosting monthly poetry readings, The Fireside Series, in Cambridge, MA, became the editor for the BagelBards Anthology #1, #2, #3, #4. She served for several years as editor for poetry in the HILR Literary Review, and in 2007 Ibbetson Street Press published her f=volume of poetry, Shadow People.

Michael C. Keith: Media Historian, Memoirist, Fiction writer: Jan 20, 2015 5PM

Michael C. Keith

Michael is the author of over 20 books on electronic media, as well as a memoir and three books of fiction. In 2009, he coedited a found manuscript by legendary writer/director Norman Corwin. What he refers to as his “fringe” group series consists of a monograph that examines the use of broadcast media by Native Americans—Signals in the Air (Praeger, 1995), a book that explores the nature and role of counterculture radio in the sixties—Voices in the Purple Haze (Praeger, 1997), a book that probes the extreme right-wing’s exploitation of the airwaves—Waves of Rancor (M.E. Sharpe, 1999, with Robert Hilliard), a book that examines the role of gays and lesbians in broadcasting—Queer Airwaves (M.E. Sharpe, 2001, with Phylis Johnson), a book about broadcasting and the First Amendment—Dirty Discourse (Blackwell, 2003, with Robert Hilliard), and a volume that evaluates the loss of localism in American radio—The Quieted Voice (Southern Illinois University Press, 2005, with Robert Hilliard).


Keith is also the author of the most widely adopted text on American radio—The Radio Station, 8th edition (Focal Press, 2010), an oral history—Talking Radio (M.E. Sharpe, 2000), a study of nocturnal broadcasting –Sounds in the Dark (Iowa State University Press, 2001), and The Broadcast Century, 4th edition (Focal Press, 2005, with Robert Hilliard. His most recent books include Radio Cultures (Peter Lang, 2010) and Sounds of Change (University North Carolina Press, 2010, with Christopher Sterling). He is also the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, The Next Better Place (Algonquin Books, 2003), as well as numerous journal articles and two books of short stories––And Through the Trembling Air and Hoag's Object. He has been invited to lecture internationally.
Prior to joining Boston College, Keith served as Chair of Education at the Museum of Broadcast Communications. He is co-founder of the Broadcast Education Association’s Radio Division, was director of the communication program at Dean College, and served as an invited professor at George Washington University and Marquette University. He is the recipient of numerous awards, among them the International Radio Television Society’s Stanton Fellow Award, the Broadcast Education Association's Distinguished Scholar Award, and the University of Rhode Island’s Achievement Award in the Humanities.

He is the author of several short story collections including  The Collector of Tears, and If Things Were Made to Last Forever ( Big Table Publishing).

Jan 6. Guest: Novelist Margot Livesey

   

Margot Livesey

 
Margot Livesey grew up in a boys' private school in the Scottish Highlands where her father taught, and her mother, Eva, was the school nurse. After taking a B.A. in English and philosophy at the University of York in England she spent most of her twenties working in shops and restaurants and learning to write. Her first book, a collection of stories called Learning By Heart, was published by Penguin Canada in 1986. Since then Margot has published six novels: Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, Eva Moves the Furniture, Banishing Verona and The House on Fortune Street. Her seventh novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, will be published by HarperCollins in January 2012.
Margot has taught at Boston University, Bowdoin College, Brandeis University, Carnegie Mellon, Cleveland State, Emerson College, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Tufts University, the University of California at Irvine, the Warren Wilson College MFA program for writers, and Williams College. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the N.E.A., the Massachusetts Artists' Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts. Margot is currently a distinguished writer in residence at Emerson College. She lives with her husband, a painter, in Cambridge, MA, and goes back to London and Scotland whenever she can.
Alice Sebold says, "Every novel of Margot Livesey's is, for her readers, a joyous discovery. Her work radiates with compassion and intelligence and always, deliciously, mystery."

Dec 9, 2014 Interview with Christopher Busa, founder of Provincetown Arts magazine.

Christopher Busa

Christopher Busa, founder and editor of Provincetown Arts magazine, was born in New York City in 1946, the son of a painter who participated in the formative years of  Abstract Expressionism. Spending part of every year in Provincetown  since infancy, he slowly absorbed its mythology as a place where artists  and writers gather to work and live. After graduation from the University of Minnesota, he studied for a year in Paris at the Sorbonne, and then pursued a Ph.D. for ten years while teaching English at Rutgers University. His interviews and profiles of artists and writers have appeared in the Paris Review, Arts, Partisan Review, Garden Design, and other magazines. Two published pieces were reprinted in Interviews and Encounters with Stanley Kunitz, edited by Stanley Moss (Sheep Meadow Press). Another essay, “Being a Great Man Is a Thesis Invented by Others,” appeared in Such Desperate Joy: Imagining Jackson Pollock (Thunder’s Mouth Press). He has curated exhibitions and written catalog introductions for many artists. He co-edited and introduced the Erotic Works of D.H. Lawrence (Crown, 1989), the subject of his dissertation. He is the author of The Provincetown Artists Cookbook, with Written Sketches of the Artists Creating a Contemporary Portrait of the Town as an Art Colony (Abingdon, 1988).Over the past 20 years he has taped several hundred interviews and created files on over 1000 artists and writers in preparation for a comprehensive title about the century-long history of the art colony.  His WOMR FM 92.1 radio program, “ArtTalk,” airs three times a month over the past five years, introducing new and established artists, performers, and writers discussing their current project and what moves them to do it.He is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), based in Paris, and he is one of 16 members of the American New England Chapter, which selects two dozen “Best of” exhibitions annually in museums, commercial galleries, and university art galleries in painting, sculpture, and architecture. He is on the board of the Norman Mailer Society and on the editorial board of the Mailer Review,published by the Society and by the University of South Florida. He teaches one semester a year in the low-residency Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania.

Dec 2, 2104 Poet Pui Ying Wong

PUI YING WONG

   



Pui Ying Wong was born in Hong Kong. She is the author of a full length book of poetry Yellow Plum Season (New York Quarterly Books, 2010), two chapbooks: Mementos (Finishing Line Press, 2007), Sonnet for a New Country (Pudding House Press, 2008) and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, The Southampton Review, New York Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review,  Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong), Desde Hong Kong: poets in conversation with Octavio Paz, Chameleon Press (Hong Kong), The Brooklyner, Brooklyn Voice, Angle Poetry (U.K.), The Asian Pacific American Journal, Taos Journal of Poetry & Art, 2Bridges Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Ucity Review, Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Constellations, Crannog (Ireland), Gargoyle, 5 AM, decomP, A Narrow Fellow, The New Poet, Blood Lotus Journal, Slippery Elm, Blue Fifth Review, Chiron Review, Foundling Review,  Literary Bohemian, The Boiler Journal, , DMQ Review, , Gravel, Mojave River Review, Offcourse, Pirene’s Fountain, Red River Review, Cavalier Literary Couture, Reprint Poetry, Up the Staircase Quarterly among others.  Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Web and she was a finalist for the 2011 Sundress Best of the Net editions. She is also a book reviewer for Cervena Barba Press.  After living many years in Brooklyn, she moved to Cambridge, MA with her husband, the poet Tim Suermondt.

Poet Elizabeth McKim 5PM Nov 4, 2014

Poet Elizabeth McKim

See the show live at:  Poet to Poet with host Doug Holder



Elizabeth Gordon McKim has published five books of poetry, the latest being The Red Thread (Leapfrog Press). She is a teacher, performance poet, spoken word artist, and has been an adjunct professor for forty years in the department of Creative Arts in Learning at Lesley University. McKim is the poet laureate of the European Graduate School, and the Jazz Poet of Lynn where she lives, in a renovated shoe factory. She is included with four others in the new anthology, Wild Women of Lynn, published by Blaine Hebbel and The Ring of Bone Press.

Poet/Educator David DiSarro Oct 14, 2014 5PM

David R. DiSarro is currently an Assistant Professor of English and the Director of the Writing Center at Endicott College in Beverly, MA.  He received his Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Ball State University, his M.A. in Creative Writing from Southern Connecticut State University, where he was also a graduate research fellow, and his B.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Maine at Farmington. David's work has previously appeared in The Hawaii Pacific Review, Shot Glass Poetry Journal, Haiku Journal, The Ibbetson Street Magazine, The Orange Room Review, Breadcrumb Scabs, Third Wednesday, among others.

Oct 7, 2014 Poet/Vocalist/Musician Jennifer Matthews 5PM

SINGER/SONGWRITER JENNIFER MATTHEWS: An artist of the road, heart and life.

Jennifer Matthews  (Photo by Syed Zaman)

Poet/Vocalist/Musician   Jennifer Matthews is releasing a 7^th CD  "Tales of a Salty Sweetheart."  She has engineered this album herself and it was mixed by Phil Greene ( 25- time Grammy Award-winning engineer) who according to Matthews told her, “Tales of a Salty Sweetheart is one of my favorite records I have mixed in the last 10 years.” Matthews had a number of musician preform on this album including Russell Chudnofsky who played the Dobro slide guitar. The CD will be released by the label Thundamoon Records founded by her manager Rose Gardina, who also founded the Boston Girl Guide website and magazine.

Matthews, who is studying  at Salem State University for her degree in English, said when she writes lyrics she literally locks herself in a room. She smiled "I can’t be disturbed.” And like the poem finding the poet ,the song finds Matthews. Matthews says she is in touch with her “inner voice.” Her lyrics can be ethereal and transcendent and she counts Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan as spiritual masters who have influenced both her lyrics and music.

 

Matthews has been collaborating on poem song projects with poets Doug Holder and Dennis Daly, and will be taking on new projects as time allows.

For more information about upcoming events go to:Jennifer Matthews

Poet Krikor Der Hohannesian Sept 16, 2014 5PM

Krikor Der Hohannesian lives in Medford, MA. His poems have appeared in many literary journals including The South Carolina Review, Atlanta Review, Comstock Review, Peregrine and Connecticut Review. His first chapbook, “Ghosts and Whispers”, was published by Finishing Line Press (2010) and was nominated for the Pen New England and Mass Book Awards. A second chapbook, “Refuge in the Shadows”, has just been released (Cervena Barva Press). He can be contacted at krikorndh@verizon.net for anyone wishing to order copies ($10 including shipping and postage).


"In Krikor Der Hohannesian's poetry, we hear things we might not be able to hear otherwise. "A man is down" signals the wind and rain coming in from the east, and the poet listens. In another poem a wife is keening, a child is crying, and the poet listens, listens with all his imagination and his heart. We hear colonial whispers emanating from the Granary Burial Ground. We hear the particular beauty of the names of the winds in many languages, and in another poem we hear the equally specific sadness of parents grieving a lost child. We hear final words, and words that should have been said, and we hear in several of these poems the long, agonized memory traces of the Armenian genocide. In all there is a deeply empathic imagination at work, and these poems give the poet and the reader alike a place of refuge, a place in the shadows in which to hold onto what is so profoundly dear and filled with meaning." -Fred Marchant, Author of The Looking House