CategoryReading Events

You can see a video of the reading here.

dONALD wHEELOCK

It took composer and college teacher Donald Wheelock forty years of writing formal poetry to reach the stage of submitting it for publication. Kelsay Books has just released his first full-length book of poems, It’s Hard Enough to Fly. Formal poetry, once relegated to second fiddle in a career of writing chamber, vocal and orchestral music, now demands equal time. Indeed, it has taken over his life. Within the past few years his poems have appeared or will appear in publications that welcome formal poetry: Able Muse, Think, Blue Unicorn, Ekphrasis, The Road Not Taken, Third Wednesday, Verse-Virtual, Lighten Up Online, and many other journals. His chapbook, In the Sea of Dreams, is available from Gallery of Readers Press, Northampton, MA. Wheelock is Professor Emeritus of Music at Smith College. He has received grants as a composer from The National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He lives with his wife Anne in an old house at the edge of a hayfield in Whately, Massachusetts.

DEBORAH wARREN

Deborah Warren’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, and The Yale Review. Her books: Ausonius (translation): The Moselle and Other Poems (2017, Routledge), The Size of Happiness (2003, Waywiser Press), Zero Meridian (2004, Ivan R. Dee) for which she was awarded the New Criterion Poetry Prize, Dream With Flowers and Bowl of Fruit (2008, Evansville), for which she was awarded the Richard Wilbur Award, Strange to Say: Etymology for Serious Entertainment, (Paul Dry, 2021), Connoisseurs of Worms, (Paul Dry, 2021). She’s also received the Robert Penn Warren Prize, the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, the Meringoff Award. Born in Boston and educated at Harvard, Ms. Warren has taught Latin and English, been a software engineer, a farmer, raised nine children. She lives with her husband in Massachusetts.

Click here for the Zoom link
The Zoom meeting opens at 3:45 pm on Sunday, April 24, 2022. — Nicole and Gail will each read for about 30 minutes.

Check Audio of Readings, 2022 – Present after the reading for a recording of the reading. It might take a little while after the reading before the audio is put up on the website.

Nicole M. Young-martin

Nicole M. Young-Martin is a performer, poet, playwright, director, event producer/curator, and nonprofit professional with over 20 years of experience combined in these areas. Nicole has worked across various disciplines, including theatre, poetry, and classical music. Originally from Detroit, Michigan, Nicole currently resides in Northern Connecticut and works in Western Massachusetts. For more information: https://www.nicolemyoung.com/about-nicole.

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gail thomas

Gail Thomas’ books are Odd Mercy, Waving Back, No Simple Wilderness, and Finding the Bear. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies including The Beloit Poetry Journal, Calyx, The North American Review, Italian Americana, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She received the Charlotte Mew Prize from Headmistress Press, the Massachusetts Center for the Book’s Must Read, and the Naugatuck River Review’s Narrative Poetry Prize. Thomas, a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and Ucross, is a working poet retired from Smith College.

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Click here for the Zoom link
The Zoom meeting opens at 3:45 pm on Sunday, March 27, 2022. — Julia and Robin will each read for about 30 minutes.

Click here for video of reading.

Julia mckenzie munemo

Julia McKenzie Munemo completed a bachelor’s degree at Bard College and a master’s in education at Harvard. She worked in educational publishing for almost two decades before earning an MFA in creative nonfiction from the Stonecoast Program at the University of Southern Maine. After the publication of her first book, The Book Keeper: A Memoir of Race, Love, and Legacy, in 2020, she appeared on several podcasts, including Dani Shapiro’s Family Secrets. She currently works as the Director of the Williams College Writing Center and teaches an undergraduate nonfiction workshop, “The Personal is Political,” during Williams’ Winter Study Program. She lives with her family in western Massachusetts.

robin barber

Robin Barber was born in Northampton in 1947. He returned to town in 1993 after adventures in Vermont, Indiana, and British Columbia, Canada. Robin leads writing workshops, and is the managing director of Gallery of Readers Press.

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The Zoom meeting opens at 3:45 pm on Sunday, February 20, 2022. — Jean, Libby, Rebecca, Adin, and Sharon will each read for about fifteen minutes.

Click here for video of the reading.

Libby Maxey

Libby Maxey is a senior editor at Literary Mama and the winner of the 2021 Pricemere Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Emrys, The Maynard and elsewhere, and her chapbook, Kairos (2019), won Finishing Line Press’s New Women’s Voices contest. Her nonliterary activities include singing classical repertoire and mothering sons

Jean Blakeman

Jean Blakeman is a poet and editor. She holds a BA from Cornell University and an MA from University of Pennsylvania. Her poems have appeared in Silkworm, Compass Roads, and 56 Days of August.  She is a board member of Perugia Press.  She also served on the board of The Center for New Americans and is on the advisory committee for its annual “30 Poems in November!” literary fundraiser.