March 29, 2011 Michelle Hoover author of "The Quickening"

(Photo by Sanjay Subbanna)


Michelle Hoover


Michelle Hoover teaches writing at Boston University and Grub Street.

She has published fiction in Confrontation, The Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, and Best New American Voices, among others. She has been a Bread Loaf Writer's Conference scholar, the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University, a MacDowell fellow, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and in 2005 the winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award for Fiction. The Quickening was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction's Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize and is a finalist for the 2010 Indies Choice Debut of the Year.

She was born in Ames, Iowa, the granddaughter of four longtime farming families.

March 1, 2011 Poet Ruth Kramer Baden author of "East of the Moon"

Review of EAST OF THE MOON by Ruth Kramer Baden, Ibbetson Street Press, 25 School Street, Somerville, MA 02143, 2010.
Book design by Steve Glines (ISCSPress.com)

Review By Barbara Bialick

The poetry collection, East of the Moon, is at once mythic, narrative, story telling and bursting with flavor beads of some great stand-alone poems. As she takes the reader through the lifecycles of a mature woman, age 70, we see the span of a full first collection, which has obviously been writing itself in the back of her mind for a long time. It may be a first book, but not a first-time writer. The work echoes with the awful meanings behind fairy tales, the things that the original tellers didn’t dare to say but to imply. It also seems influenced by William Blake’s voices of innocence and experience.

The cover design and inside black and white ink drawings add a lot to the fairy tale theme. But the royal blue cover and its own painting quoting “Schoen ve de le vune”—you are lovely like the moon.—makes its own stamp on the collection as it literally feels like nubuck leather boots, which mimic the boots of the Cossacks and others roaring through history, using and abusing women and everyone else.

Some examples from the book:

“She was the clever one,/Hansel had always been slow./She knew they could not go back/their stepmother would break them/their father would betray them…”(“Gretel Ever After”).“She told the prince, If I married you/I would become a frostbitter woman/who could not hear my children/sing or cry/…Touch me and I will kill you…He ran… /She made her lonely way over roots and rocks…(to where) a rosewood piano stood/Her hands spanned octaves./She played a Bach prelude.” (“The Sleeping Princess”)Compare this narrative style to poetry later into the life cycle—a grandmother’s poetry:In “Consider the Trees,” she writes sheer lyric poetry: “how I have grown like the cypress/crouched on a cliff/sentinel searching/the inhospitable sea/…all that grows/…must find a way to live.” Or “Rachel’s Birthday Poem”: “You sail into your second year/wobbling and yawing in front/I in your wake/You are the music language makes,/you are the golden heart of the plum.”


Ruth Kramer Baden has been a 1950s married mother, a creator of a local chapter of the National Organization of Women, a journalist, a consultant on children for Wellesley College, and at age 50, she graduated law school! (She practiced elder law). She’s currently working on her retirement dream of becoming a poet. Give her book a try.

Mike Ansara and January O'Neil of the Mass. Poetry Festival

My guest Tuesday Feb. 15, 2011 will be Mike Ansara founder of the Mass. Poetry Festival, and January O'Neil award-winning poet and board member of MPF.





MassPoetry.org is a new program to connect poets and poetry with larger audiences. The project grew out of roundtables with poets in every part of the state to explore that condition of poetry in Massachusetts. Those roundtables were a collaborative effort between MassPoetry.org, the Mass Cultural Council and MassHumanities.

The purpose of MassPoetry.org is to create resources to aid and support the Massachusetts poetry community, to reconnect poetry to more mainstream culture, to create new audiences for poetry and to organize the poetry community throughout the state. MassPoetry.org works to support poets and poetry in a number of ways:

•The Massachusetts Poetry Festival – a unique 2 day gathering of poets and poetry lovers from across the Commonwealth for readings, workshops, panels, concerts, a small press fair and more
•Taking poetry to people: we sponsor poets to work in schools, senior centers, prisons and communities.
•Assisting more readers to read and reconnect with poetry
•Working with teachers to assist them to work with poetry in the classroom
•Creating a central information center for poets and poetry readers and lovers to find reading series, workshops, MFA programs, and other resources
•Building a robust website to support all of these activities
•Linking together all the dispirit strands of the Massachusetts poetry community to promote more collaboration, respect and communication
MassPoetry.org also has a few core principles that inform and guide our work. First, we insist on supporting and giving voice to the full range of poetry across the Commonwealth. This means we work with and support poets of all different styles, schools and approaches, from academic poets at major universities to performance poets in clubs. We work with the full range of ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity, from poets writing exclusively in English to those writing in Creole, Portuguese, and Cambodian. It means we are committed to working with poets from the Berkshires to Cape Cod, from Newburyport to Fall River, in Worcester and the Merrimack Valley, in Chelsea as well as Cambridge. We are committed to expanding the audience for poetry in all those communities and not just in the universities and private prep schools.

Finally we are committed whenever and wherever possible to actually pay our poets for their creative time. Far, far too often poets are asked to donate their time and the results of hours and hours of hard creative work. We value poetry and we value poets. And so whenever possible we pay them for their work.

MassPoetry.org is proud of the start we have made. The Festival has been created and two successful Festivals have been held. We have started pilot programs in schools, in the community and with teachers. We have 59 partner organizations, schools, and institutions across the state. We have a broad, diverse and talented Advisory Board. But as much as we have been able to do, far more remains to be done.

Feb 1, 2011 5PM Kim Triedman, Marilene Phipps-Kettlewell, Patrick Sylvain: Poets For Haiti

Kim Triedman editor for the acclaimed anthology "Poets for Haiti," as well as contributing poets Patrick Sylvain and Marilene Phipps-Kettlewell will appear on "Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer."

Jan 25, 2011 W.E. Butts New Hampshire Poet Laureate

W.E.Butts


New Hampshire Poet Laureate 2009-2014
Welcome

W.E. Butts is the author of several poetry collections, including Sunday Evening at the Stardust Café, which was chosen as a finalist for the 2005 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry and selected winner of the 2006 Iowa Source Poetry Book Prize, and the chapbooks What to Say if the Birds Ask (Pudding House Publications, 2007) Sunday Factory (Finishing Line Press, 2006), White Bees (Oyster River Press, 2001), and A Season of Crows (Igneus Press, 2000). He has received two Pushcart Prize nominations and a Massachusetts Artists Foundation Award, and has taught in poetry workshops at the University of New Hampshire and has been a featured presenter at several community events and conferences. In 2007, he was a visiting writer at Cornell College, Iowa. He is a member of the faculty of the BFA in Writing Program at Goddard College, and is listed in two editions of Who's Who Among America's Teachers. His poems appear frequently in such magazines as Atlanta Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Cimarron Review, Mid-American Review, and Poetry East, and have been anthologized in The Anthology of Magazine Verse (Monitor Books), Under the Legislature of Stars: 62 New Hampshire Poets (Oyster River Press, 1999), Open Door: A Poet Lore Anthology, 1980 – 1996, (Writer’s Center Editions, 1996), Heartbeat of New England: Contemporary Nature Poetry (Tiger Moon Press, 2000), Leaves by Night, Flowers by Day (Iowa Source, 2006), and elsewhere.

Jan 11, 2011 Poet Mignon Ariel King

Mignon Ariel King is an urban womanist writer who was born in Boston’s City Hospital in 1964. An alumna of Simmons College and a former English instructor, she created MAPS-ONE (the Memoir and Poetry Sisterhood of New England) through which she edits the online journal MoJo! and its sister site Extra MoJo!; organizes A Century of Black Voices annual poetry readings to honor Black History Month; and plans future workshops and book contests. She has been reading at open mics since 1998. Her autobio- graphical trilogy (in three genres–memoir, poetry trilogy, novella) is based on a lifetime spent in Greater Boston.


Ms. King’s first published poetry collection is The Woods Have Words (Ibbetson Street Press, 2009). The third volume of her poetry trilogy, Words of Flight, is a series of dramatic monologues of New Englanders, dedicated to her late mother who grew up in New Hampshire. Currently revising and submitting the memoir and novella components of the trilogy, Ms. King is also writing a second novella, set in her childhood neighborhood in Roxbury, Massachuse

Nancy Rubin Stuart Dec 14, 2010 5PM

Nancy Rubin Stuart is a journalist and author who specializes in social trends, women’s history and biography. She began writing professionally as a contributor to New York Times under the byline of Nancy Rubin, first for the Westchester editions of that newspaper, then for several national sections. That work prompted her first book, The New Suburban Woman: Beyond Myth and Motherhood .

Subsequent books included The Mother Mirror: How a Generation of Women Is Changing Motherhood in America, the award-winning Isabella of Castile: The First Renaissance Queen , and the best-selling American Empress: The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post
In 2005 Harcourt published Nancy’s biography of the co-founder of American spiritualism, T’he Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox under the byline, Nancy Rubin Stuart.

Subsequent to a 2005 William Randolph Hearst Award from the American Antiquarian Society Beacon Press published Nancy’s The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation in 2008. Reissued in paperback in 2009, that book won the 2009 Historic Winslow House Book Award and was a 2010 finalist in USA Today Book News "Best Book" Awards.

Nancy serves on the board for the Women Writing Womens' Lives Seminar, City University of New York Graduate Center and is the Artistic Director of the Cape Cod Writers Center.

Nov. 9, 2010: My guest--novelist-- Chava Hudson "The Closing":

My guest will Chava Hudson





After working as a graphic designer, an art teacher, and then designing and producing her own line of outerwear for the boutique market, Chava Hudson became smitten with the Internet. In 1998, she studied web design and since then has created sites for the Universities and non-profits, but mostly designs websites and graphics for small businesses, artists and writers. She brings a unique solution to each project and to each client, discovering each client's needs and communicating their message visually.

As an artist, Chava produces limited edition prints which are currently in private and corporate collections and has taught graphic design digital painting at Endicott College in Beverly, MA. She's completed four novels, many short stories, and publishes Zingology.com an online literary zine.

In 2009 Chava began producing and hosting an award-winning, monthly local cable show for BevCam entitled Out and About, produced by Film North in Beverly, MA. The show features interesting musicians, writers, filmmakers, an occasional foray into cooking, and even a psychic reading by the offical witch of Salem, MA. Later that year, she started The North Shore Jazz Project with Henry Ferrini, one of the guests on the show.


The Closing

by Chava Hudson
Zingology Press
Copyright © 2010 by Chava Hudson
Softcover, 184 pages, no price listed
ISBN 1452865426

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

Chava Hudson has succeeded where other writers have failed: you know what murder is about at the beginning, yet the novel works, the people are believable and so you keep on reading.

Hudson’s story is about a real estate agent in a realty firm that does a bit more than sell realty. In fact, the way they drum up business will just kill you. But that’s all I’ll tell you, except that the novel is filled with irony, a touch of humor, but more important, leaves you with serious questions about moral values, mortality and what the future might bring to an ever aging population, a theme done many times, but here with a new twist.

Singles, Anne meets Steve and the romance begins. But Steve’s mother gets in the way, and not as you might imagine. Still, Anne, whose boyfriend has abandoned her, finds a new romance irresistible, even with the knowledge she keeps inside.

The story is fast paced, easy and fun to read and, perhaps, should be read by people with Victorian ideas of life and death and what is noble and what is not.

This is Ms. Hudson’s fourth book (she also writes poetry and edits the online journal zingology). It took her just over a year to write the closing, but the novel idea (yes I mean that both ways)came during a walk around town where she saw a for sale sign on a front yard. The realtor's name was Kevorkian, which got her thinking. Hudson had also just returned from Costa Rica where she spent two weeks at an artist colony and rode up to Monteverde with some friends she had made there. The result, a book worth reading.

Nov. 2, 2010 Writer Joan Leegant " Wherever You Go"

My guest will be novelist: Joan Leegant


Joan Leegant is the author of WHEREVER YOU GO, published July 2010, and AN HOUR IN PARADISE, for which she won the PEN/New England Book Award, the Wallant Award for Jewish Fiction, and was a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Formerly an attorney, she taught at Harvard University for eight years. Since 2007, she has lived half the year in Tel Aviv, where she is the visiting writer at Bar-Ilan University and lectures for the U.S. State Department. When not in Israel she lives in Newton, Massachusetts. For more about Joan Leegant and her work, visit: www.joanleegant.com.

Oct 12, 2010: Poet Cam Terwillger

Cam Terwilliger is a poet, fiction writer, and freelance journalist living in Somerville, Mass. A recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fiction Fellowship and a Somerville Arts Council Fellowship, Cam teaches fiction at Emerson College and Grub Street. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in West Branch, Post Road, The Mid-American Review, The Greensboro Review, The Sycamore Review and others. Cam’s been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has received an Academy of American Poets Prize. Additionally, he holds an MFA from Emerson College, and has served as a reader for The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, and as a judge for The Rhode Island Council on the Arts Fiction Fellowship.

Sept 21, 2010: Endicott College professor and Author of "The Woman Who Named God..." Charlotte Gordon Guest on Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer

Charlotte Gordon is a writer of poetry, non-fiction and fiction. She began her writing life as a poet and has published two books of poetry, When the Grateful Dead Came to St. Louis and Two Girls on a Raft. Her biography of the 17th century poet, Anne Bradstreet, Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America’s First Poet, (Little, Brown, 2005) won a New England Book Award for non-fiction.

Her latest book, The Woman Who Named God: Abraham’s Dilemma and the Birth of Three Faiths (Little Brown, 2009), retells the famous Biblical story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar.

Charlotte has been featured on NPR’s “Weekend Edition” with Scott Simon. Her poetry has won many prizes, including a Robert Penn Warren Award. She has been invited to read her work at various colleges, schools, and cultural institutions, including Radcliffe College, University of New Hampshire, Salem State College, University of Massachusetts and The Salem Atheneum. She has also given presentations to historical societies, churches, temples, and book clubs, from Georgia to Wyoming.

Charlotte received an undergraduate degree in English and American Literature from Harvard University and a PhD from Boston University. A post-doctoral fellow at Boston University, she taught Religion and Literature in the Department of Theology and from 1999-2002 was a lecturer in Elie Wiesel’s seminars, The Literature of Memory.

Since 1986, Charlotte has taught creative writing, history, literature, religion, and theater at both the college and secondary school level. From 1992-2002 she was the Director of the Writing Program at The Waring School in Beverly, MA. She currently teaches at Endicott College in Beverly, MA and conducts writing workshops for adults from her home in Gloucester, MA.

Sept. 14, 2010 5PM Judah LeBlang

Judah Leblang is a writer, teacher and storyteller based in Boston, MA. His written and audio pieces combine reflection, keen observation, and humor. Please visit the Writing page to read some of Judah's stories, or listen to audio clips of Judah reading them. There is also information on Judah's CD Finding My Place, and "Snapshots," as well as a schedule of workshops and readings you may wish to attend.

Tues Aug 3, 2010: Poet Populist of Cambridge, Mass--Jean--Dany Joachim

Jean-Dany Joachim was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He is the current Poet Populist of Cambridge Massachusetts. His writing found its voice in the never-ending, complex reality of his country. After moving to U.S.A nearly two decades ago, he left his work in the theatre and began writing in English, while at the same time exploring poetry in other languages. Jean-Dany has translated poetry from and into Spanish, French, Haitian Creole, and English. As the creator and producer of the City Night Reading Series, he brings together poets, writers, performers and lovers of literature for the celebration of the art of word in the Boston and NYC areas. He is the author of “Chen Plenn – Leta”, and his work has appeared in anthologies and numerous literary magazines. He works at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston MA

July 6, 2010 5PM Steve Luttrell Poet Laureate of Portland, Maine

My guest will be the editor of the Cafe Review and Poet Laureate of Portland, Maine Steve Luttrell.

Steve was born and continues to live in Portland, Maine. He is a graduate of Franklin Pierce College and is the author of ten books of poetry. His latest title, Twelve Moons, Twelve Poems, is currently available. Recently, Steve was named Poet Laureate of Portland, Maine, for a two-year term.

June 15, 2010; Poet Educator Len Solo

June 15, 2010: My guest will be educator and poet Len Solo. Len is the author of the new book:

"Making An Extraordinary School: The Work of Ordinary People"

Forewords by Jonathan Kozol & Roland S. Barth

"One of the country's outstanding schools"
-Redbook Magazine

"The Disney's Spotlight School of the Year, 2000"

"What a gift! Making an Extraordinary School offers an enlightened and enlightening alternative to what so many today must experience and endure in schools. It offers a powerful example of a better way."
-Roland S. Barth

"Len Solo's beautiful and tremendously useful story of the Graham & Parks School is one of those rare works on education that is a genuine joy to read"
-Jonathan Kozol

Len Solo has been an educator for most of his professional work life. He has been a public high school teacher of English, math, and social studies; founder of a small, private alternative school in Atlantic City (Atlantic County New School); founder and department chairperson of the Teacher Drop-Out Center at Stockton State College, Pomona, New Jersey; principal for twenty-seven years at Graham & Parks Alternative Public School in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and is currently an education consultant. He is also a painter, writer, and poet.

Len’s books include: Landscape of the Misty Eye, with Steve Weitzman; Rooted in Place; Making an Extraordinary School: The Work of Ordinary People; The Magic of Light; and has most recently contributed an essay in the anthology, Turning Points: 35 Visionaries in Education Tell Their Own Stories.

6/8/2010: Poet, Professor, Mariyln Jurich.

6/8/2010: My guest will be Poet, Professor, Marilyn Jurich.

BIO:

Marilyn Jurich
Associate Professor

English Department
Suffolk University




Recent Publications (Selected)
Defying The Eye Chart, A Collection of Poems Mayapple Press, 2007 (forthcoming).



“Poetry for Children,” essay in The Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, Oxford UP, 2006.



“The Mindless Body and the Bodiless Mind: Gyrations of Body, Mind, and Soul in Short Story Fantasies by Jewish Writers” in Fantastic Odysseys. Ed.Mary Pharr, Prager Press, 2003.



“Children Stranded Among The Dark Satanic Mills” in Journal of the Fantastic in The Arts, Vol. 13, No. 5, 2003.



“MindingThe Trickster” and “Twenty-two to Trick on the Tongue,” two poems in Trickster’s Way, an on-line journal published by Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, 2003.



“The Immutable,” “Lines Attributed to King Alfred the Great (849-899) from Recently Discovered Scrools. . . ,“ and “Quotients,” poems anthologized in Do Not Give Me Things Unbroken. Ed. Laura Hechtman Ayers, et. al,Writers Club Press, 2002.



“Seeing the Eye in the Darkness of Being. . .” (essay with poems and memoir) in Trickster’s Way, an on-line journal published by Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, 2002.



“Why the Sphinx,” “Threat,” “Reading the Eye Chart,” “Tachyonic Toss #1,” “The Seamstress of Flowers”: poems anthologized in Uncommonplaces. Eds. Kerman and Riggs, Mayapple Press, 2000.



Scheherazade’s Sisters: Trickster Heroines and Their Stories in World Literature, Greenwood Press, 1998.



“The Pseudo-Cosmographies of Stanislaw Lem” in Utopian Studies 9. No. 2, 1998.



“Solus Solo, The Monster Self: Solipsism in Peer Gynt, Grendel, Perfume” in PARA*DOXA: STUDIES IN WORLD LITERATURE GENRES, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1996.



Selected Publications, 1995-1969
“A Woman’s A Two-Faced” in Journal of Fantasy in the Arts, Spring Issue, 1995.



“Mithraic Aspects of Merlin in Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave” in Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Marshall Tymn, Ed., Greenwood Press, 1991.



“The Applauded Jigsaw, Patterns of Lives Contoured by Voices: The Literary Lives of James Playsted Wood” in The Voice of the Narrator in Children’s Literature: Insights from Writers and Critics. Eds. Otten and Schmidt, Greenwood Press, 1989.



“A Critical Exploration of the Aborigine in Australian Books for Children” in Webs and Wardrobes: Humanist and Religious World Views in Children’s Literature, Eds., Milner and Milner, University Press of America, 1987.



“Children;s Literature in the College Classroom,” College English, February, 1983.



Coordinating Editor, The Unforbidden Fruit: A Journal in Fantasy and Folklore, Suffolk University, 1977.



“What’s Left Out of Biography for Children” in The Great Excluded: Critical Essays in Children’s Literature, Vol l, No, 1, Yale UP, 1972.



A Department Store Has Everything! and Seeds from the Store, A Play and Poems for Children. Boston: Todd Press, 1969.



Courses Taught
Children’s Literature
Fantasy and Folklore
Modern English Poetry
Speculative Literature
Law and Literature
Verse Drama
Adolescent Literature
Writing for Children
Peace Studies

May 4 ,2010: Poets Jared Smith and Michael Mack 4:30 to 5:30 PM

After serving in the US Air Force as an aircraft crew chief, Michael Mack worked a variety of factory and labor jobs before returning to school and graduating from the Writing Program at MIT.

Mack has performed at the US Library of Congress, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, the Columbia Festival of the Arts, Philadelphia Fringe Festival, the Austin International Poetry Festival, and Off-Off-Broadway at the Times Square Arts Center.

His work has aired on NPR, and has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), America, the Beloit Poetry Journal, Cumberland Poetry Review, and is featured in Best Catholic Writing 2005.

Mack has also performed at scores of venues for consumers and providers of mental health services, including McLean Psychiatric Hospital, the national conference of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), and for faculty and students of the Harvard Medical School and Yale Medical School.

Awards include an Artist's Grant for new theater works from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, First Prize in the Writers Circle National Poetry Competition, and an Eloranta Fellowship, which funded a residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre for the Arts in Ireland.

Mack lives in the Boston area, supplementing his work as a poet and performer with assignments as a freelance writer.















Biographical Information: Jared R.W. Smith

Jared Smith is a prominent figure in contemporary poetry, technology research, and professional continuing education. Having earned his BA cum laude and his MA in English and American Literature from New York University, he spent many years in industry and research. Starting in 1976, he rose to Vice President of The Energy Bureau, Inc. in New York; relocated to Illinois, where he became Associate Director of both Education and Research for an international not-for-profit research laboratory (IGT); advised several White House Commissions on technology and policy under the Clinton Administration; and left industry in 2001, after serving as Special Appointee to Argonne National Laboratory.

He is the author of nine volumes of poetry: Looking Into the Machinery: The Selected Longer Poems of Jared Smith (1984-2008,) (Tamarack Editions, PA, 2010;) Grassroots (Wind Publications, KY, 2010;) The Graves Grow Bigger Between Generations (Higganum Hill Books, CT, 2008;) Where Images Become Imbued With Time (Puddin'head Press, IL, 2007;) Lake Michigan and Other Poems (Puddin'head Press, IL, 2005;) Walking the Perimeters of the Plate Glass Window Factory (Birch Brook Press, NY, 2001;) Keeping the Outlaw Alive (Erie Street Press, IL, 1988;) Dark Wing (Charred Norton Publishing, NY, 1984;) and Song of the Blood: An Epic (The Smith Press, 1983.) He has also released two CDs of his work: Seven Minutes Before the Bombs Drop (ArtVilla Records, TN, 2006;) and Controlled by Ghosts (Practical Music Studios, IL, 2007.)

Jared has had hundreds of publications in literary journals across the nation over the past 30 years, in addition to several foreign countries. He has published reviews of the works of such major contemporary poets as Ted Kooser, C.K. Williams, and W.S. Merwin, as well as several craft interviews, including one with Ted Kooser that was translated into Chinese for republication in Taiwan and Mainland China. Jared's work has also been adapted to stage in both New York and Chicago.

Jared Smith's poems, essays, and literary commentary have appeared in The New York Quarterly, Confrontation, Spoon River Quarterly, Kenyon Review, Bitter Oleander, Small Press Review, Greenfield Review, Vagabond, The Smith, Home Planet News, Bitterroot, Rhino, Ibbetson Street Press, Wilderness House Review, After Hours, Poet Lore, The Pedestal, Second Coming, The Partisan Review, Somerville News, Coe Review, U.T. Review, The Iconoclast, Trail & Timberline, and many others. He has also been on National Public Radio and Pacifica. He has given readings, workshops, and classes at colleges, schools, libraries, and coffee houses around the country.

While at NYU, Jared studied under poet/critic M.L. Rosenthal, Library of Congress Adviser Robert Hazel, and founder of The New York Quarterly William Packard. He has served as a member of the Screening Committee and on the Board of Directors of The New York Quarterly under founding Editor William Packard, as well as being a current member of its Advisory Board under Raymond Hammond; as coordinator of readings at two Greenwich Village coffee shops in the 70s; as a Guest Columnist for Poets magazine and Home Planet News under Editor Don Lev; as Guest Poetry Editor for two issues of The Pedestal under Editor John Amen; and as Poetry Editor of Trail & Timberline.

Jared Smith is a member of Colorado Poets Center, The Colorado Poets Association, The Academy of American Poets, Illinois State Poetry Society, and The Chicago Poets' Club, and past President of Poets & Patrons in Chicago. He is listed in Marquis Who's Who In America, among other reference works, and has been listed among the authors in Poets & Writers Directory since its inception.

Biographical Information: Jared R.W. Smith

Jared Smith is a prominent figure in contemporary poetry, technology research, and professional continuing education. Having earned his BA cum laude and his MA in English and American Literature from New York University, he spent many years in industry and research. Starting in 1976, he rose to Vice President of The Energy Bureau, Inc. in New York; relocated to Illinois, where he became Associate Director of both Education and Research for an international not-for-profit research laboratory (IGT); advised several White House Commissions on technology and policy under the Clinton Administration; and left industry in 2001, after serving as Special Appointee to Argonne National Laboratory.

He is the author of nine volumes of poetry: Looking Into the Machinery: The Selected Longer Poems of Jared Smith (1984-2008,) (Tamarack Editions, PA, 2010;) Grassroots (Wind Publications, KY, 2010;) The Graves Grow Bigger Between Generations (Higganum Hill Books, CT, 2008;) Where Images Become Imbued With Time (Puddin'head Press, IL, 2007;) Lake Michigan and Other Poems (Puddin'head Press, IL, 2005;) Walking the Perimeters of the Plate Glass Window Factory (Birch Brook Press, NY, 2001;) Keeping the Outlaw Alive (Erie Street Press, IL, 1988;) Dark Wing (Charred Norton Publishing, NY, 1984;) and Song of the Blood: An Epic (The Smith Press, 1983.) He has also released two CDs of his work: Seven Minutes Before the Bombs Drop (ArtVilla Records, TN, 2006;) and Controlled by Ghosts (Practical Music Studios, IL, 2007.)

Jared has had hundreds of publications in literary journals across the nation over the past 30 years, in addition to several foreign countries. He has published reviews of the works of such major contemporary poets as Ted Kooser, C.K. Williams, and W.S. Merwin, as well as several craft interviews, including one with Ted Kooser that was translated into Chinese for republication in Taiwan and Mainland China. Jared's work has also been adapted to stage in both New York and Chicago.

Jared Smith's poems, essays, and literary commentary have appeared in The New York Quarterly, Confrontation, Spoon River Quarterly, Kenyon Review, Bitter Oleander, Small Press Review, Greenfield Review, Vagabond, The Smith, Home Planet News, Bitterroot, Rhino, Ibbetson Street Press, Wilderness House Review, After Hours, Poet Lore, The Pedestal, Second Coming, The Partisan Review, Somerville News, Coe Review, U.T. Review, The Iconoclast, Trail & Timberline, and many others. He has also been on National Public Radio and Pacifica. He has given readings, workshops, and classes at colleges, schools, libraries, and coffee houses around the country.

While at NYU, Jared studied under poet/critic M.L. Rosenthal, Library of Congress Adviser Robert Hazel, and founder of The New York Quarterly William Packard. He has served as a member of the Screening Committee and on the Board of Directors of The New York Quarterly under founding Editor William Packard, as well as being a current member of its Advisory Board under Raymond Hammond; as coordinator of readings at two Greenwich Village coffee shops in the 70s; as a Guest Columnist for Poets magazine and Home Planet News under Editor Don Lev; as Guest Poetry Editor for two issues of The Pedestal under Editor John Amen; and as Poetry Editor of Trail & Timberline.

Jared Smith is a member of Colorado Poets Center, The Colorado Poets Association, The Academy of American Poets, Illinois State Poetry Society, and The Chicago Poets' Club, and past President of Poets & Patrons in Chicago. He is listed in Marquis Who's Who In America, among other reference works, and has been listed among the authors in Poets & Writers Directory since its inception.

April 13, 2010 Poet Jade Sylvan

Jade Sylvan is a writer and performer living in Boston. Her first full-length collection of poetry, The Spark Singer, was published in 2009 by Spuyten Duyvil Press. Her first novel, Backstage at The Caribou, was published in 2009 by Ray Ontko & Co. She has performed across the country, appearing as the featured performer at The Cantab Lounge (Boston), The Green Mill (Chicago), and The Nuyorican Poets Cafe (New York City), among others. She has also lectured and facilitated writing workshops, most recently at Indiana University and The University of Cincinnati. In 2010, she began working as an Editor and Mentor for Books of Hope, a nonprofit that seeks to empower urban youth through writing, book production, performance, and social entrepreneurship. She is currently at work on a second novel, an album of songs, and more poetry. You can find her at www.jadesylvan.com.

APRIL 6, 2010 Poet Kathleen Spivack

APRIL 6 2010 Poet Kathleen Spivack



Kathleen Spivack is the author of The Break-Up Variations; The Beds We Lie In (nominated for a Pulitzer Prize); The Honeymoon; Swimmer in the Spreading Dawn; The Jane Poems; Flying Inland; Robert Lowell, A Personal Memoir; and a novel, Unspeakable Things (the latter two are currently with an agent). Published in over 300 magazines and anthologies, her work has also been translated into French. She reads her work throughout Europe and the United States, and gives theater performances and master classes. In Boston, Kathleen Spivack directs the Advanced Writing Workshop, an intensive coaching program for advanced writers. She is a permanent Visiting Professor of Creative Writing/ American Literature at the University of Paris, Sorbonne.