Astronomical Winter: A Conspiracy of Love


Join three luminous literary talents to usher in the winter solstice and celebrate the spirit of the holidays! Albany’s Therese Broderick, Rhinebeck’s Cait Johnson, and Woodstock’s own Will Nixon will bring the heat, igniting your heart’s pilot light and setting your toes aglow. “Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love!” (Hamilton Wright Mabie, 1846 -1916).

An open mic will follow. 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. Readings relevant to the evening’s theme are encouraged!

About the Readers

Therese L. Broderick, MFA, MLS, has served the community of writers in Albany, NY, for more than 15 years in numerous roles, including Board officer and contest judge. Her poems have been published in many venues, both paper (Poet Lore) and digital (Barzakh); and have received several awards, including an Intro Journals Project prize from the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, and the Overall Winner prize from The Poetry Project with Poetry Ireland. Her new chapbook, Green-Weak, was released in October by Red Wolf Journal. Therese can be found on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Linkedin, and at theresebroderick.wordpress.com. Her life as a poet is not possible without the ongoing support of her husband Frank.

Cait Johnson has authored six works of spiritual non-fiction, including Celebrating the Great Mother (co-authored with Maura D. Shaw), a handbook of earth-honoring creative projects and ritual celebrations for parents and children; Witch in the Kitchen, which restores a sense of the sacred to cooking and eating; and Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, a look at the common elemental roots of the great religious traditions. She writes poetry grounded in an appreciation of the sacredness in the everyday and the interconnectedness of all things; her poem “Cold Moon” was included in Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters, from Random House, and other poems have appeared in AboutPlace, Kalliope, the Platte Valley Review, 30 Days Hath September, and the Harriet Blog on the Poetry Foundation website. She is formerly faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of Southern Maine, and is is an Emeritus Fellow of the Black Earth Institute. She trained with the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and has a private practice as an intuitive counselor in the Hudson Valley, where she writes, directs, and performs in her own original shamanic theatre pieces. Her latest book, The Road to Minsk, with artwork by Ania Aldrich, is just out from Baba Yaga Press.

As a poet Will Nixon has published My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse, Love in the City of Grudges, and Acrostic Woodstock. With Michael Perkins he has co-authored Walking Woodstock: Journeys into the Wild Heart of America's Most Famous Small Town and The Pocket Guide to Woodstock. Listen to his Starbucks’ holiday poem, “The Queen of America” here.