Moonstone Poetry @ PhillyCAM: Poetry from Prison with F. X. Baird and host Charles S. Carr
2021-09-07 18:30 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | PhillyCAM, 699 Ranstead Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19106, United States
Moonstone Poetry @ PhillyCAM: Poetry from Prison with F. X. Baird and host Charles S. Carr

2021 Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Readings Series
Watch the live broadcast at Comcast Cable 66/966HD/967 | Verizon FIOS 29/30 in Philadelphia | PhillyCAM TV: https://phillycam.org/watch
Host Charles S. Carr talks with F. X. Baird who will also read poetry from the workshop

F. X. Baird began the poetry workshop for incarcerated individuals in 2016, some of the poetry was published in the Schuylkill Valley Journal. Guest Editor Eric Greinke said“… Poetic talent can appear anywhere, under any circumstances, because it is the result of the inner human drive to evolve and connect. These five poets transcend situational concerns and rise to a universal level that communicates to our shared humanity. Their poems have in common an emotional intensity but each poet sings with his own unique voice.”
Fran’s poems have appeared in the Schuylkill Valley Journal, Philadelphia Stories, and others. He is a Pushcart nominee, the author of Painting with My Father and Square Peg, Round Hole, and has conducted a poetry workshop with long term incarcerated men at Phoenix (formerly Graterford) Prison. Since the pandemic, the workshop has been conducted via email and now includes poets from other state prisons and recently has expanded to include women incarcerated at Muncy State Correctional Institution.

E-Verse Equinox Reading Series: James Brookes, Louisa Schnaithmann, and David Yezzi
2021-09-08 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
E-Verse Equinox Reading Series: James Brookes, Louisa Schnaithmann, and David Yezzi
Live Reading at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, and on Zoom
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84308329737?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 843 0832 9737 – Passcode: [REDACTED]
Join us back at Fergie’s Pub for live poetry, drinks, and food. This reading will be hybrid, with both in-person performances and a Zoom livestream. As the COVID-19 situation develops, Moonstone will monitor recommendations of health officials.
James Brookes is author of Spoils, recent poems have appeared in journals including The London Review of Books, The Hopkins Review, Image Journal and Literary Matters.

Louisa Schnaithmann is author of Plague Love (forthcoming from Moonstone Press), her work has appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Mantle, and Wine Cellar Press, among others.

David Yezzi’s latest book is More Things in Heaven: New and Selected Poems (Measure Press). He teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins.

In collaboration with E-Verse Equinox Reading Series – John Wall Barger Host, Open Reading Follows

Virtual Poetry Reading: Tribute to RuNett Nia Ebo
2021-09-12 14:00 - 16:00 | Moonstone Arts Center
Virtual Poetry Reading: Tribute to RuNett Nia Ebo
Virtual Poetry Reading: Tribute to RuNett Nia Ebo
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84532069956?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 845 3206 9956 – Passcode: [REDACTED]

RuNett Nia Ebo
RuNett Nia Ebo, author of 8 chapbooks and 3 paperbacks of poetry and counting. She is also the co-author of a poetry book entitled Truth With Purpose with Victoria Huggins Peurifoy. Her signature poem is “Lord, Why Did You Make Me Black?” It is featured in Chicken Soup For the African American Soul and a children’s version is available as a coloring book. Ms. Ebo visits schools (all grades) as part of Nia’s Purpose: Poetry & Percussion At Work. She is a recipient of the Golden Mic Award (2014) from World Renowned Entertainment and was honored for Poetic Excellence by Poetic Ventures and the National Black Authors’ Tour (2016). Ms. Ebo has written 3 plays and a blog for her church. She has co-hosted a poetry venue- “POET-IFY: Poetry to Edify” bi-monthly since 2005.

Plus a new chapbook by RuNett Nia Ebo, Expressing Myself on Purpose ($10.00, Moonstone Press)

Live Poetry Reading: Adriann Toombs Bautista, Nzinga Asele El, and Justin Udo with Host Elijah Pringle
2021-09-15 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry Reading with Adriann Toombs Bautista, Nzinga Asele El, and Justin Udo
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
On zoom https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84308329737?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 843 0832 9737 – Passcode: [REDACTED]
This reading will be hybrid, with both in-person performances and a Zoom livestream. As the COVID-19 situation develops, Moonstone will monitor recommendations of health officials.
Adriann Toombs Bautista is author of Sister Strength (published with Moonstone Press in 2021), Sanctuary of Snow and Ballad of a Beautiful Brown King.

Nzinga Asele El is a North Philly Poet, Still Rising with a Mission: To Inspire, To Uplift and To Inform.

Justin Udo, a lover of Haiku and Images, often pairs them together creating a synergy that makes the whole something greater than the individual parts.

Elijah Pringle, Host, Open Reading Follows

LIVE Poetry Reading: Alison Hicks and Cassie MacDonald
2021-09-22 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry Reading: Alison Hicks and Cassie MacDonald with Hosts Alina Macneal & Jennifer Hook

Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
On zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84308329737?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 843 0832 9737 – Passcode: [REDACTED]
This reading will be hybrid, with both in-person performances and a Zoom livestream. As the COVID-19 situation develops, Moonstone will monitor recommendations of health officials.

Alison Hicks’s latest book of poems, Knowing Is a Branching Trail, winner of the 2021 Birdy Prize from Meadowlark Books, has just been released. Previous books include poetry collections You Who Took the Boat Out and Kiss, a chapbook Falling Dreams, a novella Love: A Story of Images, and an anthology, Prompted. Her work has appeared in Eclipse, Gargoyle, Permafrost, and Poet Lore. She was named a finalist for the 2021 Beullah Rose Prize from Smartish Pace, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Green Hills LiteraryLantern. She is founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops.

Cassie MacDonald serves as Hearthkeeper of Brigid’s House in Camden, New Jersey where facilitates a twice-monthly writing circle, organizes readings, workshops and other writing arts events, and creates neighborhood murals as part of the Poetry Liberation Front (“Poetry to the People!”) She has been a featured reader at Fergie’s, Big Blue Marble Bookstore and Eleven One Gallery in Camden and is always game for an open mic, even an unscheduled one on a moving train.

Alina Macneal & Jennifer Hook, Hosts
Open Reading Follows

Virtual Poetry Reading: Protest 2021 Anthology with 100 Thousand Poets for Change
2021-09-25 14:00 - 16:00
Virtual Poetry Reading: Protest 2021 Anthology with 100 Thousand Poets for Change
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82855093815?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 828 5509 3815 – Passcode: [REDACTED]
Moonstone Arts Center celebrates 11 years of 100 Thousand Poets for Change with readings from our new anthology Protest 2021

100 Thousand Poets for Change (100 TPC) has organized over 5000 poetry, art and music gatherings for the cause of Peace, Justice, and Sustainability across the globe in the last 10 years. Poets from many languages, cultures, geographical regions, ethnicities, creeds, beliefs, and religious affiliations have come together year after year to lead and promote poetry readings, without any preconditions or censorship, where participants speak out for causes nearest their hearts. In the process, oppressions, exploitative practices, biases, and abuses of many kinds have been highlighted (personal and social, communal, political and economic, spiritual, intellectual and emotional)—whether based on gender, race, class, or religious affiliation, color, territory, language and cultural tradition, or any form of differentiation whatsoever.
These are real troubles that wrack our world; there are distinct and often mortal consequences to these regimes of tyranny and persecution; and there is a collective interest in striving toward the demanding ideal that 100 TPC has set for itself in calling for Peace, Justice, Sustainability.
Moonstone is continuing this global initiative with our latest anthology, Protest 2021. The anthology includes over 40 poets writing about creating change through protest.

Virtual Poetry Reading: J. C. Todd and Beyond Repair
2021-09-26 14:00 - 16:00
Virtual Poetry Reading: J. C. Todd and Beyond Repair

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84532069956?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 845 3206 9956, Passcode: [REDACTED]

J. C. Todd’s Beyond Repair bears vivid witness to the struggles for healing, both small- and large-scale, in global hotspots of conflict. With precisely crafted poems, imbued with empathy and grace, Todd examines those who must continue with daily life amidst horror and chaos. This fierce and moving collection is a special honoree for the 2019 Able Muse Book Award.
Beyond Repair ($19.95, Able Muse Press, 978-1773490595) is woven of war and aftermath. Survival lives in the blood-wit of each turn in this wrought collection, singing and daring the heart awake. This voice is refined to an edge. . . . Leaps and associations feel calibrated as the reader finds oneself sizing up the angle of heart and head, becoming part of the accumulative turns—an accord of people, voices, places, times—and we confront what war does to one who has a capacity for grace. Yusef Komunyakaa, Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth
Bearing unflinching witness to upheaval across borders and time, places where “nothing / is left, not even names,” Todd’s poems give voice to the oppressed and missing, asking “Without a speaker language what is it.” Compassionate, questioning, she remains keenly aware of the challenges of representation, acknowledging how “beyond the cropped shot” the “background resists / insists.” . . . . J. C. Todd’s unforgettable voices and visions will leave you transformed forever. Dilruba Ahmed, Bring Now the Angels
In these powerful, impassioned poems of war’s devastation, what counts is . . . bodies and minds caught in modern warfare’s mutilating gears. Eloquent in witness, with searing exactitude, J. C. Todd restores life’s meaning—always war’s first casualty. Filling the acronym PTS with substance—“memory a carnivore ravening the entrails / of castaway reason”—she takes us inside those who’ve served, the poet as faithfully vigilant as the Air Force doctor charged with care, even of those damaged “beyond repair.” Eleanor Wilner, Before Our Eyes

Virtual Poetry Reading: Margaret Randell, Cynthia Dewi Oka
2021-09-28 19:00 - 21:00
Virtual Poetry Reading with Margaret Randell and Cynthia Dewi Oka
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84308329737?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 843 0832 9737 – Passcode: [REDACTED]

Margaret Randell is a feminist poet, writer, photographer and social activist. Author of more than 150 books, releasing this month are Thinking About Thinking (not quite essays) and Out of Violence Into Poetry. She has lived for extended periods in Albuquerque, New York, Seville, Mexico City, Havana, and Managua. Shorter stays in Peru and North Vietnam were also formative. In the turbulent 1960s she co-founded and co-edited EL CORNO EMPLUMADO / THE PLUMED HORN, a bilingual literary journal which for eight years out of Mexico City published some of the most dynamic and meaningful writing of an era. From 1984 through 1994 she taught at a number of U.S. universities.
“My life and work have been profoundly informed by parents who gave me love and adventure, and encouraged creativity; the dramatic desert canyons, rich colors and open skies of the southwestern United States; Socialist ideals; the second wave of feminism; and the generous mentorship of many great friends and colleagues. My children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren are always with me, even when far away; and my spouse Barbara is bedrock. New York’s abstract expressionist painters in the 1950s, Mexico and her struggles of the 1960s, the Cuban revolution’s second brave decade in the 1970s, the Vietnamese people’s struggle against US attack and occupation in that same decade, and the Sandinista attempt to change Nicaragua in the early 1980s were places and events that shaped me. The exploration of ancient sites continues to be a source of nourishment, and I have long been involved with oral tradition. I deeply believe in humanistic values, combating our culture of violence and greed, and art as a tool for change.” Her memoir I Never Left Home: Poet, Feminist, Revolutionary came out in 2020.

Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of Fire Is Not a Country (2021), Salvage, and Nomad of Salt and Hard Water. She is Poetry Editor at Kweli Journal. Cynthia worked as an organizer, trainer, and fundraiser in social movements for gender, racial, economic, and migrant justice. As an immigrant and former young single mother with working-class roots, her aesthetics are guided by her core values: self-determination, collaboration, and attention to the peripheral. Cynthia has taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr College and literary/arts organizations including Murphy Writing of Stockton University, The Blue Stoop, and Asian Arts Initiative, with whom she partnered in the aftermath of the 2016 election to offer Sanctuary: A Migrant Poetry Workshop for immigrant poets based in Philadelphia. She has served as a visiting Distinguished Writer at Widener University, and conducted workshops and readings at Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, The New School, New York University, Swarthmore College, and Williams College, among others.

Live Poetry Reading: Terence Culleton, Eileen M. D'Angelo, and Aaren Yeatts Perry
2021-09-29 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry Reading: Terence Culleton, Eileen M. D’Angelo, and Aaren Yeatts Perry
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84308329737?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 843 0832 9737 – Passcode: [REDACTED]
This reading will be hybrid, with both in-person performances and a Zoom livestream. As the COVID-19 situation develops, Moonstone will monitor recommendations of health officials.

Terence Culleton taught writing and literature for forty years, he is the author of A Communion of Saints, Eternal Life and A Tree and Gone. Mr. Culleton publishes in diverse magazines and reviews, and reads widely throughout the Philadelphia region, as well as in northeastern PA and New York. His work has been featured on radio and cable TV shows in Pennsylvania and New York. and on NPR, and he has won a number of prizes and awards both for his poetry and his teaching. His work has also been set to music and recorded by Vermont composer Don Jamison for his book and CD Far Heaven, as well as by Darryl Harper and Onus for their CD Stories in Real Time.

Eileen M. D’Angelo is Founder/Executive Director of the Mad Poets Society and Founder/Managing Editor of the lit mag, Mad Poets Review (1990-2010). Since 1987, she produced over 1,500 special events, including performances, slams, readings, conferences, workshops, bonfires and literary festivals in the Delaware Valley. Twice nominated for a PA Governor’s Award in the Arts, D’Angelo also received two Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Press nominations. Poetry, op-eds, essays and book reviews were published in numerous journals. She was awarded the Victim Rights Award by Domestic Abuse Project and District Attorney’s Office of Delaware County and named 2017 Paralegal of the Year by DCCC Paralegal Advisory Board.

Aaren Yeatts Perry is an independent editor and writing coach. Perry teaches nonviolence-and-writing workshops and mindful poetics to all ages at schools, colleges and festivals on the East Coast and in the Midwest. He has performed his poems at the Nuyorican Cafe, Bower Poetry Club, Kimmel Center, World Café, Fringe Festival, and Philadelphia Writers Conference and other stages and classrooms. His work appears in magazines on NPR and on regional television. He produced and directed Page2Stage, a long-running all-poetry TV show on Cable. Bilingual with an MFA from Vermont College, he received a PA Council on the Arts Grant. His collections include Open Fire (Whirlwind Press), Poetry Across the Curriculum: An Action Guide for Teachers (Allyn&Bacon), a spoken word recording, Mercury Calling (MelodyVision), and a 2021 chapbook called Shipping and Receiving (Moonstone Press).
Open Reading Follows

Moonstone Poetry @ PhillyCAM: Leonard Gontarek with host Charles S. Carr
2021-10-05 18:30 - 19:30
Moonstone Poetry @ PhillyCAM: 2021 Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Readings Series
Watch the live broadcast:
Comcast Cable 66/966HD/967 | Verizon FIOS 29/30 in Philadelphia | PhillyCAM TV: https://phillycam.org/watch

Charles S. Carr talks with Leonard Gontarek
Charles S. Carr talks with Leonard Gontarek, who will also read from is new book, The Long Way Home ($26.00 BlazeVOX)
Leonard Gontarek is the author of seven books of poems, including Take Your Hand Out of My Pocket, Shiva. His poems have appeared in Field, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, Fence, Poetry Northwest, American Poetry Review, Joyful Noise: An Anthology of American Spiritual Poetry, and The Best American Poetry (edited by Paul Muldoon). He coordinates Peace/Works, Poetry In Common, Philly Poetry Day, hosts The Green Line Reading & Interview Series, and is Poetry Consultant for Whitman at 200: Art and Democracy. He conducts the poetry workshop: Making Poems That Last. His poem, 37 Photos From The Bridge, selected by Alice Quinn, was a Poetry winner for the Big Bridges MotionPoems project and the basis for the award-winning film sponsored by the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis. He also has two chapbooks from Moonstone Press: The Paris Poems of Jim Morrison, and Contact.

“Leonard Gontarek is a Whitmanic visionary: in one moment he’s chanting incantations; in the next, he’s out in the street making sense of his American moment. No matter his angle of approach, in his vision Gontarek sees us with devastating clarity. Yet, we are drawn toward this seering vision because he expresses it with disarming sincerity. Which is to say, he tells it like it is and we can’t help but agree. With The Long Way Home, this poet’s poet has crafted a tour de force.” – Iain Haley Pollock, author of Ghost, Like a Place and Spit Back a Boy
“What is it with Leonard Gontarek and cats? What is it with coats, car parts, with parties across the river? What is it with Katy Perry, what is it with Donald Barthleme, with Breughel snapping at us? What is it with fathers? With mothers? With house-painters, their ladders, what is it with the American light dropping like lumber? I say let it be and let it be praise. Let it be a song, or a moan, or a two-foot walkie-talkie ch-ch-ch-ing into the night. And let it be, all ye who enter, your face given back by this shining cup of darkness.” –Kate Northrop, author of cuntstruck and Things Are Disappearing Here

LIVE Poetry Reading: C. M. Crockford and Anthony Palma
2021-10-06 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Moonstone Poetry Reading: C. M. Crockford and Anthony Palma

Wednesday October 6, 2021 – 7pm
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
On Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84308329737?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 843 0832 9737 – Passcode: [REDACTED]

C.M. Crockford is a neurodivergent poet whose work has been featured in Wilde Boy, Serotonin, Toho Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, and Wingless Dreamer among others. His second chapbook Mark The Place recently sold out it’s second print run with Thirty West Publishing. Crockford currently lives in West Philadelphia with his partner and their cats. You can find more about him and his writing on cmcrockford.com or via his twitter, @cm_crockford

Anthony Palma’s work attempts to bridge the gap between poetry and other forms while addressing issues of social justice, identity, and existence. His work has appeared in publications such as Rue Scribe, Oddball Magazine, and the Show Us Your Papers Anthology. His debut collection of poetry, flashes of light from the deep (Parnilis Media), is now available on Amazon. Be sure to look him up on social media at anthonypalmapoetry.

Sean Lynch Host, Open Reading Follows

Virtual Poetry Reading: Birds of North America with Susan Hagen, Nathalie Anderson, and Lisa Sewell
2021-10-07 19:00 - 21:00
Birds of North America: Drawing and Poetry with Susan Hagen, Nathalie Anderson, and Lisa Sewell

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81617063546?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 816 1706 3546 – Passcode: [REDACTED]

Nathalie Anderson’s books of poetry include Following Fred Astaire, Crawlers, Quiver, Stain, and the chapbook Held and Firmly Bound. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Atlanta Review, DoubleTake, Natural Bridge, The New Yorker, Nimrod, and Plume. She manages the list-serv Lit-Philly that informs about 500 members about literary events in the Philadelphia area. A 1993 Pew Fellow, she has recently retired from Swarthmore College, where she taught for 39 years, and served as Director of the Program in Creative Writing.

Susan Hagen is a Philadelphia artist, writer and educator engaged in social and environmental issues. Ms. Hagen’s artwork has been featured in museums and galleries throughout the U.S, has been a Fellow at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, in Ballycastle, Ireland. Other honors include artist’s residencies at the Ragdale Foundation and the McColl Center for the Arts, as well as artist’s grants from the George Sugarman Foundation, the Leeway Foundation, and the Independence Fellowships in the Arts. Ms. Hagen is an Associate Professor at the Bucks County Community College and has taught workshops and master classes at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Anderson Ranch, and Penland.

Lisa Sewell is the author of The Way Out, Name Withheld, Long Corridor and Impossible Object, winner of the Tenth Gate prize from The Word Works press. She has co-edited several collections of essays for Wesleyan University Press, most recently North American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Beyond Lyric and Language, with Kazim Ali, and is working on a new collection with Jena Osman. Recent work is appearing from Split Rock Review, Ecotone, Louisiana Review and Prairie Schooner. She has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Leeway Foundation, among others. She teaches at Villanova University.

Virtual Poetry Reading: Remembering Léopold Sédar Senghor and the Négritude Movement
2021-10-10 14:00 - 15:30
Virtual Poetry Reading
Remembering Léopold Sédar Senghor and the Négritude Movement
Sunday October 10, 2021 – 2pm EST

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84532069956?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 845 3206 9956, Passcode: [REDACTED]

Léopold Sédar Senghor (10/9/1906 – 12/20/2001) and the Négritude Movement
In May 1935, the word ‘Négritude’ appeared for the first time in the only issue of the literary magazine L’Etudiant noir, edited by Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire and Léon-Gontran Damas. Négritude was defined it as “the simple recognition of the fact that one is black” and transcended the borders of the black Francophone literary world.
Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka countered the idea with his famous quote, “A tiger does not shout its tigritude, it pounces.”
Léopold Sédar Senghor was president of the Republic of Senegal from 1960 to 1981 and Africa’s most famous poet. His poetry, alive with sensual imagery, contrasts the lushness and wonder of Africa’s past with the alienation and loss associated with assimilation into European culture. Ideologically an African socialist, he was the major theoretician of Négritude and the founder of the Senegalese Democratic Bloc party, was the first African elected as a member of the Académie française and won the 1985 International Nonino Prize in Italy.
Négritude is a framework of critique and literary theory developed during the 1930s, aimed at raising and cultivating “Black consciousness”. Drawing on a surrealist style their work often explored the experience of diasporic being, asserting ones’ self and identity, and ideas of home, home-going and belonging and inspired the birth of many movements across the Afro-Diasporic world, including Afro-Surrealism, Creolite in the Caribbean, and black is beautiful in the United States.
This is a dual language anthology in collaboration with the Alliance Francaise de Philadelphie.
Join us as contributors to this new Moonstone Anthology read their work.

Live Poetry Reading: New Chapbooks from Moonstone Press
2021-10-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Poetry Reading: New Releases from Moonstone Press
Featuring: F. X. Baird, RuNett Nia Ebo, Nina Gadson, g emil reutter, and Diane Sahms Guarnieri
Wednesday October 13, 2021 – 7pm

Live at Fergie’s Pub 1214 Sansom Street
And on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84308329737?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 843 0832 9737 Passcode: [REDACTED]

F.X Baird is author of Painting with My Father and Square Peg Round Hole, a Pushcart nominee, his poems have appeared in the Schuylkill Valley Journal, Philadelphia Stories, and more. He has conducted a poetry workshop with long term incarcerated men at Phoenix Prison which since the pandemic has been conducted via email and now includes poets from other state prisons and recently has expanded to include women incarcerated at Muncy State Correctional Institution.

RuNett Nia Ebo is a poet of purpose, author, ghost writer, blogger, editor, essayist, venue host, and event planner whose signature poem, Lord, Why Did You Make Me Black? was performed by the Fresh Visions Youth Theatre Group and is available in a coloring book. She is a contributing writer for Kwee, a Liberian magazine published in Monrovia., ghost writer, blogger, editor, essayist, venue host, and event planner. Her latest chapbook is Expressing Myself on Purpose with Moonstone Press.

Nina Gadson is the author of When I Was 16. She wrote and collected these poems when she was 16 and younger, a time capsule into that period of her life. Her inspiring and heartfelt poems always have an impact, she feels that trials and tribulations come with every new season in life. It’s about growth and a turning point. She is grateful that God has sustained that 16-year-old girl to become the young Women she is, and was born to be.

g emil reutter is a writer of poems and stories, has worked in the factories, steel mills and with the railway police. His work has been widely published in the small and electronic press and fifteen volumes of his collections have been published. He is currently a contributing editor at North of Oxford and published The Fox Chase Review. His publications include Poems of the Pennypack and Violence in My City.

Diane Sahms Guarnieri is the Poetry Editor of North of Oxford; served as Poetry Editor at The Fox Chase Review, served on the Editorial Board of Philadelphia Stories Magazine, founded, and runs The Tenth Muse Poetry Workshop. Diane has performed her poetry at venues along the east coast of the United States from Boston, Massachusetts to Richmond, Virginia. Her newest chapbook with Moonstone Press, COVID-19, 2020: A Poetic Journal, is an astute reflection on the modern plague year.

All of their chapbooks are currently available on the Moonstone Online Store.

Virtual Poetry Reading: Moonstone Chapbook Contest Winners 2020 to 2015
2021-10-17 14:00 - 16:00
Virtual Poetry Reading
Moonstone Chapbook Contest Winners 2020 to 2015
Hosted by J. C. Todd, our 2021 judge

Sunday October 17, 2021 – 2pm – Virtual

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84532069956?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 845 3206 9956 Passcode: [REDACTED]

Kyle Laws won in 2020 for The Sea Is Woman, author of Uncorseted, Ride the Pink Horse and Faces of Fishing Creek, she has 8 nominations for a Pushcart Prize. she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance.

Faith Paulsen was a runner up in 2020 for We Marry, We Bury, We Sing or We Weep. Her work has appeared in venues including Ghost City Press, Book of Matches, Panoply, Thimble, Evansville Review, and Mantis.

Kenneth Pobo won the 2019 contest for Book of Micah. He is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections. Recent books include Bend of Quiet, Uneven Steven, and Lavender Fire, Lavender Rose.

Emma Wynn was runner up in 2019 for Help Me to Fall. Her poetry has appeared in Sky Island, West Trade Review, The Raw Art Review, and Delmavra Review. She was a finalist for the Subvinean magazine 2021 poetry award.

Mbarek Styfi shared first prize in 2018 for The Trace of a Smile. Poet and translator, teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, his work has appeared in CELAAN Review, World Literature Today, Banipal, and many other journals.

Lisa Grunberger shared first prize in 2018 for i am dirty. She is also the author of Yiddish Yoga, Born Knowing, and her play, Almost Pregnant. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Hanging Loose Press, Crab Orchard Review.

Bevil Townsend was a runner-up in 2018 with One Hell of a Woman. She is a poet, feminist, and political junkie—sometimes in reverse order. She currently lives in Washington, DC and teaches storytelling to campaign activists.

George McDermott won the 2017 contest for Pictures, Some of Them Moving. He is a Philadelphia poet, who has been an English teacher, a speechwriter, and a screenwriter (those are not mutually exclusive, not even especially different).

Vernita Hall won the 2016 contest for Hitchhiking Robot Learns About Philadelphians. She is the author of Where William Walked: Poems About Philadelphia and Its People of Color.

Joe Roarty won our first chapbook contest in 2015 for Moritat, German for “street ballad”. Poetry of high-octane energy, passionate intelligence, supercharged, insistent blues, jazz and heightened speech rhythms.

All books are available at our Online Store.

There’s still time for you to join this list of winners! Our annual chapbook contest is open for submissions until November 5th, 2021.
Submit to the 2021 Moonstone Poetry Chapbook Contest: deadline 11/5/2021

Live Poetry Reading: Music and Poetry
2021-10-20 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Moonstone Live Poetry Reading
Music and Poetry

Wednesday October 20, 2021 – 7pm
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84308329737?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 843 0832 9737 – Passcode: [REDACTED]

Lindsay Hargrave is a poet with recent publications in giallo, Button Eye Review, Maudlin House, Wrongdoing, Rust + Moth and more. They perform in the Philly area with improvised music collective Oarsman and indie pop band Mitamu and have a weekly tarot poetry column in the Philly Plain Dealer. Twitter: @notporkroll.

Elliott Levin is a Philadelphia jazz legend plays the saxophone and the flute and he’s also an abstract poet and often combines poetry and music during his performances. He has has toured and recorded with Cecil Taylor and The Arkestra’s Tyrone Hill and Marshal Allen, to name a few. He has a quite active career as a published poet and likes to combine the two aesthetics in his performances, much to the delight of the growing live poetry audience and to the chagrin of hipsters who insist jazz poetry is a form of torture, worse than cold showers. There is nothing watered-down or weak about his performances, no attempt to make the music a bit more accessible, tender-hearted or just plain wimpy. He also doesn’t seem to play music as if it was connected to some kind of career strategy, other than to just play all the time.

Joe Roarty was born in 1953 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has lived in Pittsburgh, Pa., Cleveland, Ohio, Boston, Mass., and Chicago, IL. and Philadelphia. He won the Moonstone Chapbook Contest in 2015 for Moritat (German for “street ballad”), poetry of high octane energy, passionate intelligence, supercharged, insistent blues, jazz and heightened speech rhythms, whose original language mixes dictions with masterful ease–at home on the street and in the stratosphere, a colloquial invention that uses texting’s phonetic spelling, omitting vowels in a way that drives the lines, while his images mix references in our polyglot way: “I hav hrd/ americn wrds”.

Virtual Poetry Reading: Poets Speak Back to Hunger
2021-10-23 14:00 - 16:00
Virtual Poetry Reading: Poets Speak Back to Hunger
Featuring readers from an e-Collection of Poems from Around the World

Saturday October 23, 2021 – 2pm EST
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84532069956?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 845 3206 9956, Passcode: [REDACTED]

Join us as we mark the publication of a ground-breaking collection of poems that Speak Back to Hunger. Several poets from near and far will read their work from the collection. And notable anti-hunger advocates will speak about the role that poetry can and should play in fighting hunger. We’ll also have time for questions and discussion.
Hunger needs an audience. This anthology is giving it one. A poet’s job is to speak the
truth: Teri Cross Davis says, “Shoo away the vulture, whose crime is hers too, hunger…”;
Henry Crawford says, “On those nights I made an apple out of sand / and watched it blow
away.”This truthful book speaks about “being gripped by hunger like a fist in his belly”;
Listen hard to the hungry people. Let the poets speak.
– Mary Ann Larkin, Poet, Maryland, USA
Poetry X Hunger thanks the following supporters and partners: The Maryland State Arts Council, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s Liaison Office for North America, the Capital Area Food Bank, AaronR, Rebecca Roach and Diane Wilbon Parks, and Drs. Susan Schram and Tatiana LeGrand.

Host Hiram Larew
Followed by Q&A and Discussion

Virtual Poetry Reading: Gregory Djanikian and Daniel Simpson
2021-10-26 19:00 - 21:00
Virtual Poetry Reading: Gregory Djanikian and Daniel Simpson

Tuesday October 26, 2021 – 7pm
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84308329737?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 843 0832 9737 – Passcode: [REDACTED]

Gregory Djanikian is the author of seven collections of poetry, The Man in the Middle, Falling Deeply into America, About Distance, Years Later, So I Will Till the Ground, Dear Gravity, and most recently, Sojourners of the In-Between (February, 2020), all appearing from Carnegie Mellon University Press. His poems have appeared in such places as The Adroit Journal, The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, crazyhorse, The Florida Review, The Iowa Review, New Ohio Review, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, TriQuarterly, and numerous other periodicals and anthologies including Best American Poetry, Good Poems, American Places (Viking), Killer Verse: Poems of Murder and Mayhem (Knopf), Becoming Americas: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing (Library of America), Poem in Your Pocket (The Academy of American Poets), Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond (Norton), 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day (Random House), among others. He was for many years Director of the Creative Writing Program at Penn until his retirement in 2015. He lives outside of Philadelphia.

In 2017, Daniel Simpson and his wife, Ona Gritz, collaborated on two books, as co-authors of Border Songs: A Conversation in Poems and as co-editors of More Challenges for the Delusional, an anthology of prose, poetry, and writing prompts. School for the Blind, his first collection of poems, came out in 2014. His work has been anthologized in Welcome to the Resistance: Poetry as Protest, About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times, and Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, and has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Cortland Review, and many other journals. “Let’s Walk Together,” a composition for bass soloist and choir, based on a text he wrote, received its premiere performance by Voces8 in London last December. Voces8 and four other choirs also performed “A Song Everyone Can Sing, for which he served as lyricist in March, 2019. The recipient of a Fellowship in Literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, he tends a blog, Inside the Invisible, which can be found at insidetheinvisible.wordpress.com.

Alina Macneal & Jennifer Hook, Hosts – Open Reading Follows

Live Poetry Reading: Michele Belluomini, Ronald Carter, and Charlie O'Hay
2021-10-27 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry Reading: Michele Belluomini, Ronald Carter, and Charlie O’Hay

Wednesday October 27, 2021 – 7pm
Live at Fergie’s Pub
And on Zoom
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84308329737?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 843 0832 9737 Passcode: [REDACTED]

Michele Belluomini’s poetry has been published in American Poetry, Philadelphia Poets, Beltway, The Mad Poets Review and Apiary. Her poems have also appeared in various Poetry Ink (Philadelphia) anthologies and the anthology COMMONWEALTH: Poets on Pennsylvania. The chapbook Crazy Mary and Others was a winner in the Plan B Press chapbook competition. Her most recent volume of poetry is Signposts for Sleepwalkers, also published by Plan B Press (Alexandria, VA). She works as an Adjunct Library Faculty member at Community College of Philadelphia

Ronald Carter is a native of Philadelphia. He started wring poetry at an early age of twelve. His love of poetry was influenced by the writings of Edgard Allen Poe, Niki Giovani, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Alex Hailey. Since 1995 to the present Ronald has participated in many poetry, historical reenactment, and storytelling events with such organizations as Mad poets Societ5y, La unique Book Store and Cultural Center’s Poets Den, Poets and Prophets, Philadelphia Poetry and Literary Forum, ,Moonstone Arts Center, Pen and Pencil Club, Historic Philadelphia, Keepers of the Culture, National Association of Black Storytellers, Patchwork Storytelling Guild, October Gallery AAMP. Rob is also published in the Mad Poets’ and Philadelphia Poetry and Literary forum’s

Charlie O’Hay is author of Far from Luck and Smoking In Elevators. Charlie’s poems have appeared in over 100 journals, including Mudfish, West Branch, Painted Bride Quarterly, Cortland Review, Gargoyle and The New York Quarterly. He is the recipient of a 1995 Fellowship in Poetry from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Since 2010, Charlie’s ongoing photo series “Everyone Has a Name” has shared images and stories of the homeless in Center City Philadelphia to promote understanding, dignity, and an end to homelessness in America.

Followed by an open reading

Virtual Poetry Reading: David R. Slavitt and Julie Swarstad Johnson
2021-10-31 14:00 - 16:00
Virtual Poetry Reading: David R. Slavitt and Julie Swarstad Johnson

Sunday October 31, 2021 – 2pm EST
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84532069956?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 845 3206 9956, Passcode: [REDACTED]

David R. Slavitt’s new book is Opus Posthumous and Other Poems ($19.95, LSU Press, 978-0807175668). He is a poet, novelist, critic, and author of more than 130 works of literature, in styles ranging from dramatic translations to pulp fiction. Despite the diversity of his literary endeavors, however, poetry remains his primary occupation. He has said, “There is almost always a longish project to which I can repair for entertainment and occupation. But I will put that aside, whatever it is, if a poem presents itself to me.” Like the rest of his work, Slavitt’s poetry is full of wit, though it balances satire with a sense of gravity. His new book, Slavitt traverses Africa, India, Israel, and the America in which he finds himself, complete with visits to zoos, casinos, baseball fields, and cemeteries, as he searches for clues from which he might learn at least a little. He translates verse from Yiddish and Provençal and offers commentaries on received wisdom, everyday events, and the vagaries of existence. Slavitt’s awards include a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for translation, an award for literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Rockefeller Foundation artist’s residency. He currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“The power of narrative to transform the events it recounts is among the most rewarding mysteries by which we can be absorbed. David Slavitt is among the most accomplished living practitioners of that art, in both prose and verse; his poems give us a pleasurable, beautiful way of meditating on a bad time. We can’t ask much more of literature, and usually we get far less.”—Henry Taylor in Compulsory Figures: Essays on Recent American Poets
“[Slavitt’s] range in forms, tones of voice, and subject matter is wide and various. He shows that he can handle all kinds of tough, tricky forms, and that he likes forms. He is perfectly at home in many rhythms, formal and syncopated. The language is brilliant, the range almost complete (from Ronald Firbank to Lenny Bruce and Dave Gardner). He can be witty or can crack wise as the occasion demands. Above all, he can think in verse, thus inviting the reader to use his intelligence, too.”—George Garrett in The Hollins Critic

Julie Swarstad Johnson is the author of Pennsylvania Furnace (2019), editor’s choice selection for the Unicorn Press first book series, and co-editor of the anthology Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight (University of Arizona Press, 2020). She has served as Artist in Residence at Gettysburg National Military Park, which led to the chapbook Orchard Light (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020). She lives in Tucson and works at the University of Arizona Poetry Center.
“In poems quietly fierce, meticulously observed, faithfully rendered, musically tempered; in the uncanny ability to evoke both the presence of the past, its once molten iron, and its abandonment by time, Julie Swarstad Johnson raises a ‘host of silent voices praising every shadow.’ In these graceful poems, Claudia Emerson has found an heir. Pennsylvania Furnace is fired by the haunting beauty and revelation of its resonant images, ‘finding use / not in the thing itself, but in what / it opened…’” —Eleanor Wilner, Before Our Eyes: New and Selected Poems, 1975-2017

Live Poetry Reading - Sean Lynch, Warren Longmire, Rocky Wilson
2021-11-03 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Nick Virgilio Haiku Association Anthology Reading
Featuring Sean Lynch, Warren Longmire and Rocky Wilson
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84308329737?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 843 0832 9737 Passcode: [REDACTED]

Celebrate the release of the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association’s Haiku in Action anthology ($20.00, A Year in Poems: Haiku in Action Volume 2, 2020)! Featuring haiku from around the world, the new anthology continues the tradition of haiku in the modern age.

Sean Lynch, he/him, is a poet and editor who lives in South Philadelphia. His poems have appeared in journal, s including Hobart, Meow Meow Pow Pow, and Drunk Monkeys. He’s on the editorial board of Moonstone Arts Center and serves as the Program Director of the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association. His Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor of choice is Citalopram.

Warren Longmire is the co-founder of the Excelano Project Spoken Word Collective and the former Director of Poetry Events for Blue Stoop. He’s been published in journals including American Poetry Review, Eleven Eleven, Graviton and The Painted Bride Quarterly. He is featured in the Best American Poetry 2021 anthology and will release his first full collection with Radiator Press this fall. You can find his writings, musings and selfies on Instagram @alongmirewriter.

Rocky Wilson is a poet, performance artist and substitute teacher who lives along the Delaware River in Camden, NJ with his little puppet friend bongo.
“Rocky Wilson is not just the muse of Camden, New Jersey, the poorest city in these rich, un-united states, he is its soul. Camden is where he finds redemption for a lifetime of loss, “What saves our lives” HE WRITES, “a 6th grade girl, a little cloth monkey, a dull knife, an angel’s wings brushing through the ghetto night.” There’s no doubt in my mind, that if Walt Whitman were alive, he would be rocky Wilson’s biggest fan.” — Peter E. Murphy, Stockton College

Sean Lynch, Host

Virtual Poetry Reading: Charles Carr, Cathleen Cohen, Faith Paulsen
2021-11-04 19:00 - 20:00
Virtual Poetry Reading with Charles Carr, Cathleen Cohen and Faith Paulsen

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84308329737?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 843 0832 9737 – Passcode: [REDACTED]

Charles Carr is author of paradise, pennsylvania, and Haitian Mudpies & Other Poems (Moonstone Arts 2012). A Philadelphian, he was educated at LaSalle and Bryn Mawr College and worked in social and community development services for 45 years. Charles has been active in raising funds for various missions and organizations serving the poorest of the poor In Haiti. In 2007, Charles was The Mad Poets Review First Prize Winner for his poem “Waiting To Come North.” For five years Charles was the host of the Moonstone Poetry series at Fergie’s Pub. Since 2016 he has been the host of Philly Loves Poetry a monthly broadcast on Philly Cam. He has read poems in the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin Ireland as part of international 100,000 Poets For Peace.

Cathleen Cohen, author of Camera Obscura (Moonstone Press, 2017) and Etching the Ghost (forthcoming). She was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. A painter and teacher, she founded the We the Poets program at ArtWell, an arts education non-profit in Philadelphia. Her poems appear in Apiary, Baltimore Review, Cagibi, East Coast Ink, 6ix, North of Oxford, Passager, Philadelphia Stories, Rockvale Review, Rogue Agent, She received the Interfaith Relations Award from the Montgomery County PA Human Rights Commission and the Public Service Award from National Association of Poetry Therapy. Her artwork is on view at Cerulean Arts Gallery.

Faith Paulsen is author of A Color Called Harvest, We Marry, We Bury, We Sing or We Weep (runner-up in Moonstone’s 2020 chapbook contest), and forthcoming, Cyanometer. Her poetry and prose have appeared in many venues including One Art, Ghost City Press, Seaborne, Book of Matches, Thimble Literary Magazine, Evansville Review, Mantis, Psaltery and Lyre, and Terra Preta. Her work has also been anthologized in collections such as 50/50: Poems & Translations by Womxn over 50 (QuillsEdge). She has been nominated for a Pushcart. For more information, please check her website at https://www.faithpaulsenpoet.com/.

Virtual Poetry Reading: Cynthia Dewi Oka with Charles S. Carr
2021-11-09 18:30 - 19:30
Moonstone Poetry @ PhillyCAM
Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Reading Series, featuring Cynthia Dewi Oka

Watch the live broadcast: Comcast Cable 66/966HD/967 | Verizon FIOS 29/30 in Philadelphia | PhillyCAM TV: https://phillycam.org/watch

Cynthia Dewi Oka was born in Bali, Indonesia. Since 2012, she has been based in the Greater Philadelphia Area, Lenni Lenape Land, with her son and partner. She is the author of Fire Is Not a Country ($17.00, 9780810144217, Northwestern University Press), Salvage and Nomad of Salt and Hard Water and serves as a Poetry Editor at Kweli Journal. A 2021-2022 Poet in Residence at the Amy Clampitt House in Lenox, MA, she has been awarded the Leeway Foundation’s Transformation Award, the Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize, and the Fifth Wednesday Journal Editor’s Prize in Poetry. Cynthia has taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr College and literary/arts organizations including Murphy Writing of Stockton University, The Blue Stoop, and Asian Arts Initiative, with whom she partnered in the aftermath of the 2016 election to offer Sanctuary: A Migrant Poetry Workshop for immigrant poets based in Philadelphia. She has served as a visiting Distinguished Writer at Widener University, and conducted workshops and readings at Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, The New School, New York University, Swarthmore College, and Williams College, among others.
In her third collection, Cynthia dives into the implications of being parents, children, workers, and unwanted human beings under the savage reign of global capitalism and resurgent nativism. With a voice bound and wrestled apart by multiple histories, Fire Is Not a Country claims the spaces between here and there, then and now, us and not us. As she builds a lyric portrait of her own family, Oka interrogates how migration, economic exploitation, patriarchal violence, and a legacy of political repression shape the beauties and limitations of familial love and obligation. Woven throughout are speculative experiments that intervene in the popular apocalyptic narratives of our time with the wit of an unassimilable other.

Charles S. Carr, host

Live Poetry Reading: Erica Abbott, Theodosia Mayfield, and Brooke Palma
2021-11-10 19:00 - 20:00
Live Poetry Reading: Erica Abbott, Theodosia Mayfield, Brooke Palma, hosted by Sean Hanrahan
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84308329737?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 843 0832 9737 – Passcode: [REDACTED]
Erica Abbott (she/her) is a Philadelphia-based poet and writer whose work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Kissing Dynamite, Midway Journal, Serotonin, The Broadkill Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, and other journals. She is the author of Self-Portrait as a Sinking Ship (Toho, 2020) and volunteers for Button Poetry, Kissing Dynamite, and Mad Poets Society.

Theodosia Mayfield is a nonbinary performer, writer, and artist specializing in surreal moments of whimsy and existential hope. They specialize in immersive experiences that ask audience members to join in the story wherever it may go, especially if it goes off the rails. In their free time, Theodosia likes to cuddle the sentient sack of potatoes the shelter insisted was a dog.

Brooke Palma grew up in Philadelphia and currently lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Many of her poems focus on the connections between culture and identity and finding beauty in the everyday. Her work has been published in The Mad Poets’ Review, Moonstone Arts, Toho Journal, and E-Verse Radio (online). Her chapbook, Conversations Unfinished, was published by The Moonstone Press in August 2019. She hosts the Livin’ on Luck Poetry Series at Barnaby’s West Chester and serves as Vice President/Treasurer for the Mad Poets Society.

Sean Hanrahan, Host
Open Reading Follows

Virtual Poetry Reading: The Disasters of War: An Anthology for Veterans Day
2021-11-14 14:00 - 16:00
Virtual Poetry Reading from The Disasters of War: An Anthology for Veterans Day

Event Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84532069956?pwd=[REDACTED]

The Disasters of War: An Anthology for Veterans Day
So much of what is presented on Veterans Day is the pomp and circumstance of the military, the parades and speeches extolling patriotism and bravery. All governments claim the high ground and send their young people to battle and then when some of them return broken, they are ignored. This is not new, nor is it one country or ideology.
The disaster of war is what it does to human beings.
Some veterans suffer combat-related injuries, including mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, traumatic brain injury. Other issues include extreme fatigue, neurological issues, insomnia, migraines, joint pain, persistent coughing, gastrointestinal issues such as diarrhea and constipation, skin problems, dizziness, respiratory disorders, and memory problems. The list goes on. These issues can lead to homelessness as well as drug or alcohol addiction.
We asked Veterans, their families, and the public to send us poems for Veterans Day reflecting on this, which will be read on November 14th. Please join us as the contributors read their work.

Virtual Book Reading: Samuel R. Delany
2021-11-16 19:00 - 20:00
Virtual Book Reading with Samuel R. Delany

Starting with this event, Moonstone is requiring registration for Zoom readings. To access the reading, you must register in advance.
Register for the reading here.

Samuel R. Delany’s newest book is Of Solids and Surds: Notes for Noël Sturgeon, Marilyn Hacker, Josh Lukin, Mia Wolff, Bill Stribling, and Bob White.

His work includes fiction (especially science fiction), memoir, criticism and essays on science fiction, literature, sexuality, and society. After winning four Nebula awards and two Hugo Awards over the course of his career, Delany was inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002. From January 1975 until his retirement in May 2015, he was a professor of English, Comparative Literature, and/or Creative Writing at SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Albany, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Temple University. The Science Fiction Writers of America named him its 30th SFWA Grand Master in 2013, and in 2016, he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. Delany received the 2021 Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award.

“Delany’s prismatic output is among the most significant, immense and innovative in American letters.”—Jordy Rosenberg, New York Times
“A fascinating glimpse into the creative life of novelist and critic Delany …. He dispenses wisdom about craft—including the demanding revision process his dyslexia requires—but most moving are the moments when he sheds light on connections he has made with other readers and writers …. Delany’s fans are in for a treat.”—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Register for our reading with Delany

Buy an Autographed Copy!

Live Poetry Reading: Sydney Hunt Coffin, Naa Koikoi Aziza Zenzile Kebe, Alina Macneal
2021-11-17 19:00 - 20:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry Reading with Sydney Hunt Coffin, Naa Koikoi Aziza Zenzile, and Alina Macneal
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84308329737?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 843 0832 9737 – Passcode: [REDACTED]

Sydney Hunt Coffin has been with the Philadelphia Writing Project since 2011, when he was working as an English teacher at University City High School. He has taught English, Poetry, and Art for 20 years in Philadelphia, spending summers working and studying at Yale University and has served on the Teacher Advisory Council of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As a poet he has been published in Mad House Press, Apiary magazine, and Yale University Press, and is currently an MFA student at New York University in Paris.

Naa Koikoi Aziza Zenzile Kebe (After the Queen, Precious, One Who Controls Her Destiny) is a Multimedia Artist, Activist, Griot, Public Servant, and Citizen of the World who utilizes her artform to uplift her culture, promote Black Womanhood in a positive light, and cultivate a consciousness receptive to social and political change. Her poetry has also been included in Hair Stories, Now Anthology, Poetry Ink, Howard University’s Amistad Literary Journal, Poetry Ink Tenth Anniversary, The Apiary, Versadelphia, E Pluribus Unum: An Anthology of Diverse Voices, For Women: In Tribute to Nina Simone, and Philly Jawns, For Women Revisited as well as, other publications worldwide

Alina Macneal is a Philadelphia-based educator/writer/poet/translator/architect and co-host of the Fourth Wednesday Moonstone poetry series at Fergie’s. Her poems have appeared in Apiary, Poems for the Writing, The World to Come, and Poetry 24. In 2015 she was a finalist for the Raynes poetry prize. She has been a member of the faculty at Drexel University for over 20 years. Since the last presidential election Alina has been translating the 1930’s political poems of the Polish poet, Julian Tuwim. As Mark Twain said, History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

Virtual Poetry Reading: Readings from New Voices: Fall 2021
2021-11-20 14:00 - 15:00
Virtual Poetry Reading of Readings of New Voices: Fall 2021

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84532069956?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 845 3206 9956, Passcode: [REDACTED]
Help us celebrate the young voices of poetry with our Fall 2021 New Voices anthology release!
New Voices: Philadelphia’s Emerging Poets is a program designed for emerging poets under the age of 25. It aims to create a platform for younger poets by welcoming them into the larger Philadelphia poetry community and giving them the opportunity to share their work with a wider audience.
We tend to narrow our audience and present to others in our schools or poetry groups. Moonstone’s goal is to expand your audience, get you published, and introduce you to others who share your interest in poetry but live in different communities. Each month we present three poets from different communities followed by an open reading.
Click here to see our previous volumes of New Voices.

Live Poetry Reading: R.G. Evans, Michael Storm Miller, and Rocky Wilson
2021-11-24 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry Reading with R.G. Evans, Michael Storm Miller, and Rocky Wilson

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84308329737?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 843 0832 9737 – Passcode: [REDACTED]

R.G. Evans’s books include Overtipping the Ferryman (Aldrich Press Poetry Prize), The Holy Both, and Imagine Sisyphus Happy. His poems and prose have appeared in RATTLE, Philadelphia Stories, and Weird Tales among other publications. Evans’s first album of original songs, Sweet Old Life, is available on most streaming platforms, and he is currently recording a follow up album.

Michael Storm Miller is a poet/ spoken word artist from Chester who served in the military for 15 and uses spoken word as a median to bridge the gap in understanding between veterans and civilians so that together we all can find healing.

Rocky Wilson is a poet, performance artist and substitute teacher who lives along the Delaware River in Camden, NJ with his little puppet friend bongo.
“Rocky Wilson is not just the muse of Camden, New Jersey, the poorest city in these rich, un-united states, he is its soul. Camden is where he finds redemption for a lifetime of loss, “What saves our lives” HE WRITES, “a 6th grade girl, a little cloth monkey, a dull knife, an angel’s wings brushing through the ghetto night.” There’s no doubt in my mind, that if Walt Whitman were alive, he would be rocky Wilson’s biggest fan.” -Peter E. Murphy, Stockton College

Open Reading Follows

Book Release Party: John Wall Barger's "Resurrection Fail" with Savannah Cooper-Ramsey, Ernest Hilbert, Warren C Longmire, Glorious Piner, Luke Stromberg
2021-12-01 19:00 - 20:00
Book Release Party for John Wall Barger’s “Resurrection Fail”
Featuring readings from Savannah Cooper-Ramsey, Ernest Hilbert, Warren C Longmire, Glorious Piner, Luke Stromberg, hosted by Fayyaz Vellani
1214 Sansom Street and on zoom
Register for the Zoom link here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86880897372?pwd=[REDACTED]

John Wall Barger is the author of Pain-proof Men; Hummingbird; The Book of Festus; The Mean Game and Resurrection Fail. He is a contract editor for Frontenac House, and teaches at UARTS.

Savannah Cooper-Ramsey is the author of the artist book Not Fit for Print, winner of BOMB Magazine’s 2018 Biennial Poetry Prize and finalist for the 2018 Sandy Crimmins National Poetry Award.

Ernest Hilbert is the author of Sixty Sonnets, All of You on the Good Earth, Caligulan—selected as winner of the 2017 Poets’ Prize—and Last One Out, he works as a rare book dealer and book critic for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

Warren C Longmire is a writer, software engineer and educator from the bad part of North Philadelphia. His writing has been published in American Poetry Review, Eleven Eleven, The Painted Bride Quarterly and in the upcoming Best American Poetry Anthology of 2021.

Glorious Piner teaches Poetry at the University of Maryland and at the University of the Arts, published in Queerbook, The American Poetry Review, The Florida Review, Conduit Magazine, and more.

Luke Stromberg’s poetry and criticism have appeared in Smartish Pace, The Hopkins Review, The New Criterion, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Golidad Review, Think Journal, and others, he is Associate Poetry Editor of E-Verse Radio.

HOST: Fayyaz Vellani is a British-Canadian writer who has lived in London, New York, and Philadelphia, where he teaches writing at the University of Pennsylvania. His first novel Tea with Ms. Tanzania will be published by Africa World Press in 2022.
