Summertime & September: Ekphrastic Teaching, Reading, Writing & More

It’s been awhile since I’ve written a post here, which means I’ve been working hard and living life! But there are several timely things to check in about, so here goes:

I’m teaching a new class coming up through Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop next month. It’s a four-week, genre-agnostic generative workshop exploring ekphrastic writing. I’d love you to join me on four Monday nights this fall. Here’s a flyer featuring my class and one offered by Perugia poet Gail Thomas:

Two of my poems accompany woodcut portraits in the “Look Again: Portraits of Daring Women” exhibit by Julie Lapping Rivera up at the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, MA. Check out their site to read more about the exhibit and listen to the accompanying poems. The exhibit is up until February 23, 2025. Here I am with two women I was honored to write about in the exhibit: Sylvia Plath and Rachel Carson:

My September Readings

• September 11: with Michael Favala Goldman and Michael Shandler in the “Writers Read” series at Lava Center, Greenfield, MA, 7pm EDT (in-person)
• September 17: featuring honorees of the River Heron Review Poetry Prize (online)
• September 19: in collaboration with Julie Lapping Rivera’s “Look Again: Portraits of Daring Women” exhibit, D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA, 12-1:30pm EDT (hybrid)
• September 29: with Doug Anderson in “Gallery of Readers” series at Florence Civic Center, Florence, MA, 4pm EDT (hybrid)

This month I was honored as a contest winner at River Heron Review for my poem “Thinking about Why Sylvia Didn’t Tell the Hunter about the Nest.” You can read my finalist poem and the other winners here.

Wearing my Perugia Press hat, our contest for the 2025 Perugia Press Prize has just opened for submissions. And this year’s book, Joan Kwon Glass’s Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms, is on presale. I’m so proud of this book, and all our books. This month I’m sharing space at River Heron Review with Perugia poet Carolina Hotchandani, who was interviewed about her beautiful collection, The Book Eaters (Perugia, 2023). And in June, I was invited to be the featured guest on the podcast “Poet Talk,” where a poet visits to read and talk about their own work as well as a poem they admire. I chose a poem from Diane Gilliam’s Kettle Bottom (Perugia Press, 2004) in honor of that book’s twentieth anniversary. Take a listen to the podcast here.