Upcoming Readings Sept. 2011- April 2012

March 13, 2012


Jade Sylvan--Jade received her BA in 2006 from Indiana University’s renowned Department of Religious Studies. She is a poet, songwriter, and blogger who recently completed two independent tours of the country following the release of her first collection of poetry, The Spark Singer, by NYC’s Spuyten Duyvil Press in fall of 2009.

She has performed her work and facilitated writing workshops at some of the most respected spoken word venues and universities in the country, including The Boston Poetry Slam, The Berkeley Poetry Slam, The Green Mill (Chicago), The Nuyorican Poets Cafe (NYC), The Bowery Poetry Club (NYC), Brandeis University, University of Cincinnati, and Emerson College, among many others.

Jade’s first album of original songs, “Blood and Sand” was released to critical acclaim by Boston’s Red Car Records in April 2011.





Margaret Young--- Grew up in Oberlin, Ohio and went to Yale, then helped found a traveling theater company with fellow graduates. Went for a master's at U.C. Davis, poetry and nonfiction, bioregionalism and food. She has taught writing at Allegheny, Oberlin, community colleges in Pittsburgh and California, plus spent many years in arts education at the preschool through high school levels. Her first poetry collection Willow from the Willow was published in 2002 by Cleveland State University.

Young is a poet and a professor at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. Her latest book of poetry is Almond Town. She earned an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California, Davis, and co-founded the Open Door Theatre Company.



Lawrence Kessenich won the 2010 Strokestown International Poetry Prize. His poetry has been published in Atlanta Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Cream City Review, Ibbetson Street, and other magazines. His chapbook Strange News was published by Pudding House Publications in 2008. Other chapbooks were a semi-finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award and a finalist for the Spire Press Chapbook Contest. His current collection, Before Whose Glory, was a semi-finalist for the Off the Grid contest. His poem “Underground Jesus” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Kessenich also read one of his essays on NPR’s This I Believe in 2010 and it appears in the anthology This I Believe: On Love. His play Ronnie’s Charger was produced in Colorado in September 2011.






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April 10, 2012
Gloria Mindock---Gloria Mindock is editor and publisher of Cervena Barva Press and editor of the Istanbul Literary Review based in Turkey. She is the author of two chapbooks, Doppleganger (S. Press) and Oh Angel (U Soku Stampa) and three poetry collections, Blood Soaked Dresses (Ibbetson St. Press, 2007), Nothing Divine Here and Whiteness of Bone, forthcoming . Gloria has been published in numerous journals including UNU: Revista de Dultura and Citadela in Romania with translations by Flavia Cosma, Arabesques, Poesia, Phoebe, Poet Lore, Blackbox, River Styx, Bogg, Ibbetson St., and WHLR to name a few and numerous anthologies including Murmur of Voices by Cogito Publishing House in Romania. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was awarded a fellowship from the Somerville Arts Council. From 1984-1994, she edited the Boston Literary Review/BLuR and was co-founder of Theatre S & S. Press, Inc. Theatre S received grants from the Polaroid Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Globe Foundatioin, New England for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Somerville Arts Council. Gloria works as a Social Worker and freelances editing manuscripts and conduction workshops for writers. She moderates (part owner of one) two writing groups online based in the UK.

Ifeanyi Menkiti--Ifeanyi Menkiti was born in Onitsha, Nigeria and first came to the United States to attend Pomona College from which he received his undergraduate degree. Later he went on to Columbia University and New York University for further studies. He received his Ph.D in Philosophy from Harvard University. He has taught Philosophy at Wellesley College for more than 30 years, and is the owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, the oldest poetry book store in the United States.

David Rivard--David Rivard was born in 1953 in Fall River, Massachusetts, and is the author of five books of poetry: Otherwise Elsewhere, Sugartown, Bewitched Playground, Wise Poison, winner of the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets in 1996 and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and Torque, winner of the 1987 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. His poems and essays appear in the American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, Poetry London, and other magazines. In 2006, Rivard was awarded the Hardison Poetry Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library, in recognition of both his writing and teaching. Among his other awards are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Civitella Ranieri, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. A former Poetry Editor at the Harvard Review, Rivard lives in Cambridge, with his wife and daughter, and teaches in the University of New Hampshire MFA Program in Writing.