Deborah Burnham, author of Anna and the Steel Mill, Still and  a volume ofpoetry, is the Associate Undergraduate Chair of the English Department and teaches poetry and poetry writing, with a particular interest in formal poems and in the history of women’s poetry at UPENN. Deborah Fox found her love for poetry as a result of a 5th grade homework assignment and has been writing poetry ever since. She is author of Treasures in Darkness and In the Stillness. Deborah Fries is a poet and non-fiction writer whose work reflects her interest in environmental, medical and social issues. She is the author of two books of poetry and her recent poems and essays appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Grit, Gravity & Grace, 0-Dark-Thirty, Philadelphia Stories, Terrain.org, Narrative Matters and Poet Lore.  Debra Leigh Scott is a multi-disciplined artist – a singer, writer, playwright, documentary filmmaker as well as an activist whose work focuses largely in areas of education rights and economic justice. She is the Founding Director of Hidden River Arts and her fiction has appeared in such literary journals as The Oxford American, The Chattahoochee Review, River City, Words of Wisdom, TPQ, The Abiko Quarterly (Japan), Purnev (Portugal) and The Ashen Eye (Thailand)

An open mic will follow the featured readers, Suzan Jivan, Host.