Live Poetry Reading

Wednesday May 3, 2023 – 7pm

Live at Fergie’s Pub – 1214 Sansom Street and on zoom – Registration Link

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIpce6vrzsjGd0lKdmttrpxCM9RPs8seGAo

Eleventh-grade student, Matilda Bray, is author of When You Wanted Blue, just published by Moonstone Press. Her first book of poetry, Under the Moon as My Sun at the age of twelve.  The full-length collection was featured on PhillyCam’s Poetry Interview and Reading Series, and in February of 2023, she was the high-school winner of the Phillip’s Mill Play With Words Youth Playwriting Challenge. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Tipton Poetry Journal, Sad Girls Club, OpenDoor Magazine, Schuylkill Valley Journal, River Poets Journal, and the Moonstone Poets Anthology. Matilda competes regularly at open poetry competitions and is a voracious reader and cross-country runner who resides in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her family and beloved dog, Tuck.

Matthew Thorburn’s new book of poems is String (LSU Press, 2023). He’s also the author of seven previous collections of poetry, including The Grace of Distance, a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, and Dear Almost, which received the Lascaux Prize. His work has been recognized with a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, as well as fellowships from the Bronx and New Jersey arts councils. Originally from Michigan and for many years a New Yorker, he lives with his family just up the road in Kingston, New Jersey.

Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon  – PhD (Cultural Anthropology), MA (Anthropology), MFA (Theater), Graduate Certificate) Women’s Studies, BA (Journalism); is an Associate Professor of Urban Theater and Community Engagement. Recipient of a 2003 Provost’s Arts Commission Grant; a 2001 Independence Foundation Theater Communications Group Grant, the 2000 winner of the PEW Charitable Trust fellowship in scriptwriting, and the 1999, winner of the DaimlerChrysler “Spirit of the Word” National Poetry Competition. Author of Through Smiles and Tears: The History of African American Theater (From Kemet to the Americas); The Secret Messages in African American Theater: Hidden Meaning Embedded in Public Discourse. She has had over twenty-three of her plays produced. Her stage credits include thirteen productions and she is a contributing poet to twenty-six poetry anthologies.

Larry Robin Host, Open Reading Follows