Thanksgiving Literature with Writers in the Mountains at the Woodstock Public Library

WRITERS IN THE MOUNTAINS (WIM)

INVITES YOU TO

THANKSGIVING LITERATURE – A READING EVENT AND OPEN MIC

AT THE WOODSTOCK LIBRARY

NOVEMBER 18, 2016 AT 6:30 PM

SPONSORED BY THE POETRY BARN

Join us on Friday, November 18 at 6:30 PM, when ten members of Roxbury’s acclaimed Writers in the Mountains, a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide a nurturing environment for the practice, appreciation and sharing of creative writing, cook up a festive ten-course feast of flash readings guaranteed to satisfy your literary appetite! Presented by Poetry Barn.

An open mic will follow, so if you have a poem, essay, short story, or song you’d like to share, you’re warmly invited to choose a slot on the sign-up sheet that will be provided prior to the reading.

ABOUT THE WRITERS

Lillian Browne is a journalist, outdoor enthusiast and lover of stories. Between hikes, she writes about the environment, politics and crime in Delaware County. Her collection of local ghost stories, Haunted Walton, will be released later this year.

Simona David is a Communications and Public Relations Consultant living in New York. She is the author of Self-Publishing and Book Marketing, A Research Guide (2013), and Art in the Catskills (3rd edition, 2016). She is the President of Writers in the Mountains, and co-founder of the Greater Roxbury Business Association. In addition, Ms. David produces and hosts a weekly radio program on WIOX radio station in Roxbury.

Geoff Rogers, a full time resident of the Catskill Mountains since 1975, has operated a Custom Picture Framing shop in Pine Hill for almost thirty years. He is a host of “The Writers Voice” program heard weekly on WIOX 91.3 FM from Roxbury N.Y. A lifelong journal keeper Geoff began taking WIM classes in 2009, and joined the board of directors the following year. He soon became enamored with the writing process, and embraced two basic tenets; write about what you know and write every day.  He credits this process with improving his ability to focus scattered thoughts, feelings, and memories into coherent written passages. Geoff sees the writing process as a journey of self-discovery and revelation, one where you can explore neglected interests, address anxieties, heal emotional damage, celebrate life or just rant at an unjust world.

Sharon Israel hosts the radio program, Planet Poet-Words in Space, an edition of the Writer’s Voice, on WIOX FM, in Roxbury, New York. Sharon recently appeared as a panelist at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival in Salem, Mass. As a poet and soprano, Sharon collaborates with composer Robert Cucinotta on works for voice, live instruments, and electronics and has premiered several of his works in New York. Sharon has a B.A. from Brooklyn College and an M.S. from the New School of Social Research. She was an early recipient of Brooklyn College’s Leonard Hecht Poetry Explication Award, and her work most recently appeared in Per Contra, SPANK the CARP, 5:2 Crime Poetry Weekly, Medical Literary Messenger and Spry Literary Journal.

Lissa Kiernan is the founding director of the Poetry Barn, a literary center based in West Hurley, New York, wim-headshotsponsoring workshops, readings, craft talks, and book arts for all ages.  Her first collection of poetry, Two Faint Lines in the Violet (Negative Capability Press), was a 2014 Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award Finalist, as well as a finalist for the Julie Suk Award for Best Poetry Book by an Independent Press. Her book-length braided essay, Glass Needles & Goose Quills: Elementary Lessons in Atomic Properties, Nuclear Families, and Radical Poetics, is forthcoming in fall 2016. Individual poems can be found in numerous journals and anthologies including Podium Literary Journal of the 92nd Street Y, and The Yale Journal for the Humanities in Medicines, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She holds her MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from the Stonecoast, ​the University of Southern Maine, and an MA from The New School. More at lissakiernan.com.

Bonnie Lykes Bonnie Lykes is a monologist, performance and voice over artist, as well as a previously Seattle based jazz/rock vocalist. She and her husband Sean produced and released three albums with their band Epigene before writing their rock opera, A Wall Street Odyssey—the soundtrack manifesting exuberant reviews from Vanity Fair and Chronogram magazine.  She has also has been a contributing playwright for Jersey City’s Art House Production’s The Heist Project after writing copy for a Miami based magazine. She’s been recently published in Crack The Spine Literary Journal in poetry and creative non-fiction, and she is also featured in the upcoming December issue for the live subscribable podcast:  The Strange Recital. Her beginnings in radio and voice over work started as a Smooth Jazz Radio host for Seattle 99.3 fm and she currently hosts Non Fiction Railroad, the 2nd Tuesday of the month edition of The Writer’s Voice, on WIOX.org 91.3 fm.

Carrie Bradley Neves is an Upstate New York native who grew up outside Albany and returned to the area eight years ago. She has a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Williams College, where she also studied playwriting and poetry, and a master’s degree in fiction writing from the University of New Hampshire, where she studied fiction writing and poetry. For the last twenty-five years, Carrie has focused many of her writing goals on writing lyrics, making records, performing, and touring as a singer-songwriter and violinist. Other current writing and activities and projects include secretaryship of her college alumni publication, writing for her town newspaper, The Times of Halcott, and new work on a musical play. Her work-for-pay life is as a copy editor, specializing in cookbooks.

Sharon Ruetenik is the author of a poetry chapbook, The Wooden Bowl.She is currently working on a manuscript of sevenlings. Her work has appeared in print and online journals, most recently The Green Door. Ruetenik was awarded a poetry fellowship at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. As a speaker for the the New York Council for the Humanities, she has lectured on short stories, novellas, and poetry. Her day job is working at SUNY Delhi as the coordinator of the writing center, the international student advisor, and adjunct instructor in composition and literature.Ruetenik lives in Delhi with her family, which includes many large dogs and several indolent cats.

Nina Shengold writes in many genres. Her books include the novel Clearcut (Anchor Books), a Book Sense Selection; River of Words: Portraits of Hudson Valley Writers, with photographer Jennifer May (SUNY Press); and 13 theatre anthologies for Vintage Books and Viking Penguin. She won the Writers Guild Award for her teleplay Labor of Love, starring Marcia Gay Harden, and the ABC Playwright Award for Homesteaders. Nina has taught creative writing at the University of Maine, Manhattanville College, Vermont College of Fine Arts, and locally at Word Cafe, the Omega Institute, and as a visiting guest artist at SUNY Ulster.

Anique Taylor holds an MFA in Poetry from Drew University, and an MFA in Drawing from Pratt Institute as well as a Diplome from Sorbonne University in Paris, France. She’s co-authored works for HBO, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, a three-act play performed at Playwrights Horizons. She’s given featured readings at St. Mark’s Poetry Project, Dixon Place, the Speakeasy, Cedar Tavern, and group readings at What Happens Next, Tompkin’s Square, Charas, The Knitting Factory. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Common Ground Review, Stillwater Review, The World (St. Mark’s Poetry Project), Adanna, Cover Magazine, Cheap Review, Southern Poetry Review, Earth’s Daughters. She’s been anthologized in Veils Halos & Shackles, Pain & Memory. She’s published a chapbook Poems (Unimproved Editions Inc). Her chapbook Where Space Bends was chosen Finalist by both Minerva Rising’s and also in Blue Light Press’ Chapbook Contests. Her chapbook Under the Ice Moon was chosen Finalist by Blue Light Press Chapbook Contest. She’s taught The Creative Journal at Bard LLI and the Poetry Workshop at Benedictine’s Oncology Support Program.

Writers in the Mountains is a 501 ( c ) (3) not-for-profit organization with a mission to provide a nurturing environment for the practice, appreciation and sharing of creative writing. Online at writersinthemountains.org.

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