A Very Special Afternoon of Poetry
Food For Thought Books, Everywoman's Center, Perugia Press, and the Jones Library present "A Very Special Afternoon of Poetry."
Nikky Finney is the 2007-2008 Graze Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College. Her book of poetry, Rice, was awarded the PEN American Book Award.
Lynne Thompson, the winner of this year's Perugia Press Prize, is the author of Beg No Pardon, which also won the Great Lakes Colleges Association 2008 New Writers Award.
Keli Stewart's current work boldly explores race, class and gender in the Pioneer Valley. She is the recipient of the Douglas Turner Ward/Alice Childress Scriptwriting Award given by the Gwendolyn Brooks Center and has one chapbook titled Womanish.
Kim Rogers won the Pulp City Magazine's Short Story Prize in 2000 and is the winner of the Ruth Olin Corbin Prize for Poetry (2007). Her poems center on women's issues, often exploring, recovering and retelling women-focused historical narratives.
Laurie Guerrero is a two-time winner of the Rosemary Thomas Poetry Prize, and her chapbook manuscript was recently selected by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the 2008 Panhandler Publishing competition. Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, she is currently an Ada Comstock Scholar at Smith.
Karen Johnston is a member of the Florence Poets Society, located in her current hometown. Her work has been published in Silkworm, Equinox, and can be found in the forthcoming anthology, Women. Period. (SpinsterInk, 2008). She has one chapbook, a collection of her sensual poems, titled Struck Just So.
Food for Thought Books is a non-profit workers' collective located at 106 North Pleasant Street in downtown Amherst. Everywoman's Center (EWC) is a multicultural campus-based women's center established in 1972. Perugia Press is an independent, not-for-profit literary press publishing one collection of poetry each year by a woman at the beginning of her publishing career. The Jones Library on Amity Street in Amherst is the town's public library.
This event is free, open to the public, and wheelchair accessible. Refreshments and booksigning will follow the reading. For more information, contact Food for Thought at (413) 253-5432, Everywoman's Center at (413) 545-0883, or Perugia Press at (413) 587-2646.
