Moonstone Arts Center

Moonstone Virtual Event: Poems From Your Psyche
2023-05-07 14:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York)
Moonstone Poetry Readings
Sunday May 7, 2023 – 2:00pm
Virtual
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAodOmrrDsjHtd4OlL4eORzQZETeuwo5oB9
Poems From Your Psyche
is a type of poetic expression which addresses the multiple psychological aspects of the human existence. April 24 is the 100th anniversary of The Ego and the Id by Sigmund Freud, an analytical study of the human psyche outlining Freud’s theories. It develops a groundwork for explaining various psychological conditions which result from powerful internal tensions. In honored of this by inviting poets to write a poem illustrating these tensions.

Join us as poets explore their Psyche

Live Poetry Reading!
2023-05-10 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Moonstone Arts Center’s Poetry Reading
Wednesday May 10, 2023 – 7pm
Live at Fergie’s Pub – 1214 Sansom Street and on zoom – Registration Link
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAqduygpjMuHd0HPcfGrZY8yNfOp-0L4ixR
Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the full length collections Her Whole Bright Life (winner of the Jack McCarthy Book Prize); Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart; and Beautiful & Full of Monsters. She loves nail polish, tattoos and a soy latte each morning. Find her online at www.courtneyleblanc.com Her Whole Bright Life is a collection of poems that weave together the trauma and exhaustion of a life lived with disordered eating and the loss and grief of the death of the poet’s father. Love and hunger intertwine and become inseparable as the poet grapples to find, and listen, to both. With a distinct and feminist voice, this collection delves into a life now lived without a beloved parent, while trying to survive a pandemic, and battling demons that have lived inside her for most of her life. With both fierceness and tenderness, we see a woman trying to find her place within her own body and within an ever-changing world. This collection of poems is both an elegy and an anthem – praising both those who’ve been lost and those who remain.

Lauren Ray is a Junior Creative writing major with an Art history minor at the University of the arts. She writes poetry and stories from the lens of the black woman experience. She is excited to share her work to an audience for the first time in a couple of years.

Ruth Rouff is a freelance educational writer living in Collingswood, NJ. Her poetry and prose have been published in various literary journals, including Parhelion, New World Writing, the International Quarterly, Philadelphia Poets, and Philadelphia Stories. In 2016, Bedazzled Ink published her collection of poetry and prose entitled Pagan Heaven. Her novel Lone Star, which is based on the life of famed athlete, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, was published by Bedazzled Ink in 2022 and is available on Amazon.com, BN.com, and BedazzledInk.com.
Larry Robin Host, Open Reading Follows

Live Poetry Reading!
2023-05-17 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Moonstone Arts Center’s Poetry Reading
Wednesday May 17, 2023 – 7pm
Live at Fergie’s Pub – 1214 Sansom Street and on zoom – Registration Link
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZckdu-trjIvGd2Q9NK9mK9MtZzQ3PmYhVIt
dev kiyota is an editor; they got an MFA in Creative Writing from Temple University.

Lynda Gene Rymond author of The Village of Basketeers and Oscar and the Mooncats, attended Bucks County Community College, received a B.F.A. from the California College of Arts and Crafts, and was a member of Dr. Chris Bursk’s Master Poetry Workshop. A runner-up or finalist for Bucks County Poet Laureate for the past four years, her poems and short stories have been published in multiple journals and the anthology, Carry Us to the Next Well. She lives on Goblin Farm in Applebachsville, Pa, where she and her husband tend goats, chickens, honeybees, cats, and an enormous fruit and vegetable garden.
Cleveland Wall is a poet, teaching artist, and librarian. She is the author of Let X=X and many homemade chapbooks and zines. She performs with interactive poetry troupe No River Twice & with musical combo The Starry Eyes and hosts an experiential poetry series called Poetry Lab at the Ice House in Bethlehem, PA. She is falling deeply in love with antiproductivity. More info at clevelandwall.com.
Lauren Yates is a writer, visual artist, & burlesque performer from Philadelphia by way of San Diego. Lauren has represented Philly at the National Poetry Slam and the Women of the World Poetry Slam. Her work has been featured in bedfellows, Voicemail Poems, GLITTERBRAIN, Bettering American Poetry, and more. Lauren is also a teaching artist and is currently developing a workshop that marries poetry and burlesque.
Sean Hanahan Host, Open Reading Follows

VIRTUAL Poetry Reading: World Laughter Day
2023-05-21 14:00 - 16:00
Moonstone Poetry Readings
Sunday May 21, 2023 – 2:00pm
Virtual
Register for the event HERE:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0rd-yuqj4oGdQ1vLBDn31qkpzuQMtjqjM9
World Laughter Day
(May 7) is an annual event celebrated is a celebration that raises awareness about all the benefits of laughing and promotes world peace through laughter.
It raises awareness about laughter and its many healing benefits, as well as about thousands of community groups around the world who regularly practice comedy that promote wellness.
After dealing with Freud and your internal conflict, write something we can laugh at.

Live Poetry Reading!
2023-05-24 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Moonstone Poetry Readings
Wednesday May 24, 2023 – 7:00pm
Live at Fergie’s Pub
1214 Sansom Street and on zoom
Registration Required for zoom – use this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIscO6rrj8iHtb48QlmLMmqMWfM5uAm1lHv
Kelly McQuain is a painter and poet, and the author of Scrape the Velvet from Your Antlers (2023), a collection chosen by Texas Review Press for the Southern Breakthrough Award. He has also authored two chapbooks, and his prose, poetry and illustrations have appeared in Best American Poetry Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Rattle and Superstition Review, as well as such anthologies as: Best New Poets 2020; LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry from Appalachia; and Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology. A native of WV, he now lives in Philadelphia and teaches at Community College of Philadelphia.
Lucy Bell Sellers, a retired drama teacher, is a longtime resident of Germantown. Her book of poems. Don’t Drop Me God, came out last summer.

Alina Macneal & Jennifer Hook Hosts, Open Reading Follows

2023-05-28 14:00 - 16:00
Moonstone Poetry Readings
Sunday May 28, 2023 – 2:00pm
Virtual
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0vcu6hrT4oG9fNr0Fk5e7nRIYG54JD0wA9
Mother’s Day (May 14)
This is not a program about your mother but about motherhood in its many forms. We want poems that embrace the bare and grotesque nature of motherhood. For, in a time like ours, mothers have no room to be sentimental. Inspired by Julia Kilchinsky Dasbach books 40 Weeks and The Many Names for Mother.

Live Poetry: Debora Kuan & Jeffrey McDaniel
2023-07-26 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry Reading: Debora Kuan & Jeffrey McDaniel
Wednesday, July 26 @ 7:oopm ET

Live at Fergie’s Pub – 1214 Sansom Street
And on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEsfuysqj8sGdfVuBztAiNMRw-_Z7J809Xm
Debora Kuan is the author of three poetry collections XING (Saturnalia Books), Lunch Portraits (Brooklyn Arts Press), and the forthcoming Women on the Moon (The Word Works). She has been awarded a U.S. Fulbright creative writing fellowship (Taiwan), University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop Graduate Merit Fellowship, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference work-study scholarship, multiple Pushcart Prize nominations, the NELLE Three Sisters Award, and residencies at Yaddo, Macdowell, and the Santa Fe Art Institute. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Boston Review, The Baffler, Fence, The Iowa Review, ZYZZYVA, and other publications. Currently, she lives in Wallingford, CT, where she is poet laureate and works remotely for the MIT Press.

Jeffrey McDaniel is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Thin Ice Olympics (Write Bloody, 2022) Other books include: Holiday in the Islands of Grief (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020), Chapel of Inadvertent Joy (Pittsburgh, 2013), The Endarkenment (Pittsburgh, 2008), The Splinter Factory (Manic D Press, 2002), The Forgiveness Parade (Manic D, 1998), and Alibi School (Manic D, 1995). McDaniel’s poems have appeared in numerous places, including The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The New York Times, and Best American Poetry 1994, 2010, and 2019. Recipient of an NEA fellowship, he teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.
Alina Macneal & Jennifer Hook, Hosts
Open Reading Follows

Remembering Woody Guthrie
2023-07-30 14:00 - 15:00 | virtual
Remembering Woody Guthrie
A Moonstone Anthology Reading
Sunday, July 30 @ 2pm ET
Register at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwtde2tqTwtEtUjpGY7ROT771gcvgkLZGrU
In celebration of our Remember Woody Guthrie anthology, featuring over 25 poets writing for his memory.
Woody Guthrie was an American singer-songwriter, one of the most significant figures in American folk music whose work focused on themes of American socialism and anti-fascism. He has inspired generations both politically and musically with songs such as “This Land Is Your Land”, written in response to the American exceptionalist song “God Bless America”. Woody’s empathy allowed him to insert himself into the stories of others, and he shared those narratives through music, prose, and artwork. We feel his presence and see his influence when people everywhere speak out for those who need a voice and shine a light on injustice in our world. Join us as poets reflect Woody’s vision.

“Wherever little children are hungry and cry
Wherever people ain’t free
Wherever men are fightin’ for their rights
That’s where I’m a-gonna be, Ma
That’s where I’m a-gonna be”
(from Tom Joad by Woody Guthrie)

List of Featured Poets to be announced.

Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Reading: Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
2023-08-08 18:30 - 19:30 | PhillyCAM, 699 Ranstead Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19106, United States
Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Reading: Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
Tuesday, August 8, 2023 @ 6:30pm
Virtual via PhillyCAM website, Cable 66/966HD/967 or Verizon FIOS, 29/30
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach is the author of three poetry collections: 40 WEEKS (YesYes Books, 2023), Don’t Touch the Bones (Lost Horse Press, 2020), winner of the 2019 Idaho Poetry Prize, and The Many Names for Mother, winner the Wick Poetry Prize (Kent State University Press, 2019) and finalist for the Jewish Book Award. She is currently working on a poetry collection as well as a book of linked lyric essays, both of which grapple with raising a neurodiverse child with a disabled partner under the shadow of the war in Ukraine, Julia’s birthplace. Her poems have appeared in POETRY, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, The Nation, and AGNI, among others. Julia holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania. She is an Assistant Professor of English/Creative Writing at Denison University.
Julia also worked with Moonstone on our recent anthology, The Weight of Motherhood, as inspiration for our poets.
Charles S. Carr, Host

Poetry From the Ukraine: Live Reading
2023-08-09 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Poetry from the Ukraine: Live Poetry Reading
Wednesday, August 9 @ 7pm ET
Featuring: David Acosta, Sibelan Forrester, Sean Hanrahan, Olga Livshin, Lynn Levin, and Warren C. Longmire
Live at Fergies Pub – 1214 Sansom Street
And on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUrfuuoqjgjGNM2meg9Y-c3Zh8hI-tcRU5M
Moonstone is selling book bundles for the featured Ukrainian poets on our website. All profits will be donated to Ukraine TrustChain. Books are sold online and at the event.
Today is a Different War by Lyudmyla Khersonska
Translated by Olga Livshin, Andrew Janco, Maya Chhabra, and Lev Fridman – $18.00, Arrowsmith Press – A portrayal of life from inside war-torn Ukraine. No other volume of poems captures the duality of fear and bravery, anger and love, despair and hope, as well as the numbness and deep feeling of what it means to be Ukrainian in these unthinkable times. If you want to know what’s in the heart of the Ukrainian people, look no further than this stunning volume of poems. Lyudmyla Khersonska is a poet and translator from Odesa, Ukraine. She is the author of four poetry collections in Russian. Khersonska was recently included in the list, “33 International Women Writers Who are Bold for Change.” Olga Livshin is the author of A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman and her poems appear in various journals.

In the Hour of War: Poetry from Ukraine – Edited by Carolyn Forché & Ilya Kaminsky $22.00, Arrowsmith – “… Indeed, we have heard the barrage on the 6 o’clock news, but now we engage the war’s most apt witnesses who command the human heart through images and rhythms of language. These poems written primarily in Ukrainian, and then translated into English, refuse to glorify gore, but instead render reflection. Have we grown numb to body counts? Poets of the Ukraine deliver a reckoning, and the souls of a people are laid bare. … Such surrealism bears not only blinding terror, but also moments of natural beauty. … some fight even with their hands tied behind their backs.” -Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize winning poet

“We act like children with our dead,” Halyna Kruk writes as she struggles to come to terms with the horror unfolding around her: “confused,/ as if none of us knew until now/ how easy it is to die.” In poem after devastating poem, Kruk confronts what we would prefer not to see: “a person runs toward a bullet/ with a wooden shield and a warm heart…” Translated with the utmost of care by Amelia Glaser and Yulia Ilchuk, A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails is a guidebook to the emotional combat in Ukraine.

Live Poetry: Mac Chandler, Mikey Franz, & Faith Paulsen
2023-08-16 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Mac Chandler, Mikey Franz, and Faith Paulsen
Wednesday, August 16 @ 7pm
Live at Fergie’s Pub (1217 Sansom Street)
And on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZElcumvpzooE9Lkcp94pXXWZiAskj7MUwoS
Mac Chandler is a recent graduate of The University Of The Arts. She has been published in HASH magazine, Rappahannock Review, and High Shelf Press.

Mikey Franz is a writer & composer from the Philadelphia area who uses his work to explore the relationship between music & language. His debut chapbook, Terrestrial Sanctuaries was published by Moonstone last year & you can typically find him performing at various open mics throughout the Philadelphia area.

Faith Paulsen’s work has appeared in venues including Philadelphia Stories, Apiary, Ghost City Press, Book of Matches, One Art, Panoply, Thimble, Evansville Review, Literary Mama and Mantis. She is the author of three chapbooks, including We Marry We Bury We Sing or We Weep with Moonstone Press.
https://www.faithpaulsenpoet.com/

Remembering Charles Bukowski
2023-08-20 14:30 - 15:00 | virtual
Remembering Charles Bukowski
Sunday, August 20, 2023 @ 2pm ET
Virtual on Zoom, register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIkceurrzsvGtLKg_bv0IY358lkec-u3qU2
Submissions are open until August 13th at midnight. Send us a poem here.
A reading from our Remembering anthology series. List of featured poets to be announced.
Charles Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a prolific underground writer who used his poetry and prose to depict the depravity of urban life and the downtrodden in American society. A cult hero, Bukowski relied on experience, emotion, and imagination in his work, using direct language and violent and sexual imagery. Bukowski’s work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column Notes of a Dirty Old Man in the LA underground newspaper Open City. Bukowski published extensively in small literary magazines and with small presses beginning in the early 1940s and continuing on through the early 1990s. He wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books during the course of his career. Some of these works include Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame. Join us as poets continue the tradition.

Live Poetry: Marion Deutsche Cohen, Paige Menton, & Aaron Poochigian
2023-08-23 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Marion Deutsche Cohen, Paige Menton, & Aaron Poochigian
Wednesday, August 23, 2023 @ 7pm
Live at Fergie’s Pub (1214 Sansom Street)
And on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwrf-6qpjIvGtNxsmbaYlsKYyf_iEJ2zGlM
Marion Deutsche Cohen is known for poetry and memoir on three topics: spousal chronic illness, late pregnancy loss, and math. She is the author of 33 books; her newest poetry collection is Disturbing Shapes and her latest prose collection is Not Erma Bombeck: Diary of a Feminist 70s Mother. This year, her work has been included in six anthologies. She teaches a course she developed, Mathematics in Literature, at Drexel University’s Honors College.

Paige Menton, author of Wrim and Twenty Miles to April lives outside of Philadelphia where she runs a land restoration organization called Journeywork and cares for the land of a Quaker meeting. She is a poet, gardener, and teacher of writing and environmental education, has led writing workshops for homeschoolers for the past fifteen years, has taught children how to garden and publishes a journal of environmental writing and art for young people called Planet A. A mixture of Socratic method and Zen koan, Wrim’s erasure poetics models the participatory learning essential to national and global health.

Aaron Poochigian earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, including the thrillers-in-verse, Mr. Either/Or and its sequel, Mr. Either/Or: All the Rage. His work has appeared in such publications as Best American Poetry, The Paris Review and POETRY.

Larry Robin Host, Open Reading Follows

Virtual: Winners of 2022 Moonstone Chapbook Contest
2023-08-27 14:00 - 16:00 | virtual
Winners of the 2022 Moonstone Chapbook Contest
Sunday, August 27 @ 2pm
Virtual on Zoom, register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUucumgqT4pGtIQzeCL8bdb_uJmWhjgKSwh
Chad Frame (winning chapbook Smoking Shelter) is the author of Little Black Book (2022, nominated for the Lambda Literary Award, and a chapbook, Cryptid. He is Director of the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program and Poet Laureate Emeritus of Montgomery County, PA, the Poetry Editor of Ovunque Siamo, a founding member of the No River Twice poetry/improv performance troupe, and Founder of the Caesura Poetry Festival and Retreat. His work appears in Rattle, Pedestal, Barrelhouse, Rust+Moth, and elsewhere, on iTunes from the Library of Congress, and was sent to the moon as part of the Lunar Codex Project.
Leonard Kress (winning chapbook Poppy Seeds) author of Living in the Candy Store and Other Poems, Walk Like Bo Diddley, The Orpheus Complex, Sappho’s Apples Thirteens, Braids & Other Sestinas, and The Centralia Mine Fire. His poetry, fiction, non-fiction, reviews, and translations have appeared in Missouri Review, Massachusetts Review, Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, and Harvard Review. He has received grants in playwriting and poetry from the Ohio Arts Council and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, studied religion at Temple University, Poetry at Columbia University, and Polish at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, He currently teaches religion, philosophy, and English at Owens Community College.
Alina Macneal (winning chapbook After a War) 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.
Karin Molde (author of Self-Portrait with Sheep Skull), feels at home in Ireland and Germany. She teaches languages and has published in magazines like Honest Ulsterman, Light Journal, The Blue Nib, Skylight 47, and in anthologies, e.g. Everything that can happen. (Emma Press, 2019), Identity (Fly on the Wall, 2020), Remembering Toni Morrison (Moonstone Press, 2020), “New Beginnings” (Renard Press, 2021), and Ukraine War Special Edition (Poetica Review, 2022).

John Timpane (winning chapbook Buck in the Piano Room) is former Commentary Page Editor (1997-2008) and Books Editor (2014-2020) for The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philly.com. His work has appeared in Sequoia, The Fox Chase Review, Apiary, Cleaver, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Rathalla Review, Per Contra, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Vocabula Review, Wild River Review, and elsewhere. Among his books is a chapbook, Burning Bush (Judith Fitzgerald/Cranberry Tree, 2010). He is the spouse of Maria-Christina Keller. They live in New Jersey.

Nathalie Anderson, Judge of the 2022 Moonstone Chapbook Contest, is author of Following Fred Astaire, Crawlers, Quiver, Stain, Held and Firmly Bound. Her new book, Rough, is forthcoming in 2024. Anderson’s 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, was 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.

Reading hosted by the chapbook contest’s annual judge, Nathalie Anderson.
Their prize-winning chapbooks are all available for purchase on our website.

Live Poetry: Lauren Holguin, Gabriel Ramirez, & Nicole Steinberg
2023-09-06 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Lauren Holguin, Gabriel Ramirez, & Nicole Steinberg
Wednesday, September 6 @ 7pm

Live at Fergie’s Pub (1214 Sansom Street)

On Zoom(Zoom Registration Required): https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAkf-GorjIrHt0InuIzJoO7o0oivHo2OOLS
Lauren Holguin is a writer, educator, & dancer from Los Angeles who now calls Philly home. She teaches K-12 neurodivergent students while pursuing her MFA in fiction and poetry at Rutgers Camden. She is the Co-creator of West Philly based Spit Poetry reading series & open mic, assistant poetry editor at Barrelhouse Magazine, and fiction reader for Story Quarterly. You can check out her poems at Subnivean Magazine & The Fourth River.

Gabriel Ramirez is a Queer Afro-Latinx writer, performer and educator. A 2023 Gregory Djanikian Scholar in Poetry at Adroit Journal. Gabriel has received fellowships from Palm Beach Poetry Festival, The Conversation Literary Arts Festival, CantoMundo, Miami Book Fair, a graduate fellow at The Watering Hole, and a participant in the Callaloo Writer’s Workshops. Gabriel has performed on Broadway at the New Amsterdam Theatre, United Nations, Lincoln Center, Apollo Theatre, The National Museum of Romanian Literature, and other venues. Gabriel was featured in Huffington Post, VIBE Magazine, Blavity, Upworthy, The Flama, and Remezcla. You can find his work in various spaces, including Youtube, and in publications like POETRY Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, Adroit Journal, The Volta, Split This Rock, BOMB, Acentos Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly and others.
Nicole Steinberg is the author of Glass Actress (Furniture Press Books, 2017), Getting Lucky (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2013), and multiple chapbooks, including dear Elsie / seltzer (Bloof Books, 2023) and Fat Dreams (Barrelhouse, 2018). She is also the editor of Forgotten Borough: Writers Come to Terms with Queens (SUNY Press, 2011). Her work has been featured or reviewed in the New York Times, Newsweek, Flavorwire, Bitch, and Hyperallergic. She was the 2021 Poet Laureate of Bucks County, PA and since 2019, she has served on the board of the American Poetry Review.
Amy Saul-Zerby Host – Open Reading Follows

Which Side Are You On? - Labor Day 2023 Anthology Reading
2023-09-10 14:00 - 16:00 | virtual
Which Side Are You On?
Moonstone’s Labor Day Anthology 2023
Sunday September 10, 2pm Eastern

Virtual Poetry Reading: Register Here https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcsf-GgpzItGtEprSH7oS_w4fC9ME9T9R37

Labor is increasingly militant after years of inaction
“It’s been a fast and furious few weeks for labor. First, 3,000 workers went on strike at 150 Starbucks, then 6,000 Los Angeles hotel workers walked out, and now 11,500 Hollywood writers and 160,000 television and movie actors have gone on strike. Not only that, 340,000 UPS workers seemed ready to walk out on 1 August, and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union is threatening to strike one or more Detroit automakers later this summer.” – The Guardian
Join us as people read their a poem about work, labor activity, labor history, and more.

The book includes photos taken by Frank Espada and poetry written by his son, the author and people’s attorney, Martín Espada.

Diane Sahms: Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Reading
2023-09-12 18:30 - 19:30
Diane Sahms: Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Reading
Moonstone Poetry @ PhillyCAM

Watch on the PhillyCAM website
Or Cable 66/966HD/967 or Verizon FIOS, 29/30 (in Philadelphia)
Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Readings Series
Diane Sahms, a native Philadelphian, is author of six poetry collections, most recently City of Shadow & Light (Philadelphia), 2022, with her latest chapbook, Luna, the lesser light available from Moonstone Press, 2023. Published in North American Review, Sequestrum Journal of Literature & Arts, Brushfire Literature & Arts Journal, The Northern Virginia Review, POEMS-FOR-ALL, Valley Voices, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Chiron Review, Southern Arizona Press, among others, with poems forthcoming from Tiny Seed Literary Journal & Arlington Literary Journal. Winner of several poetry awards, including the Partisan Press Award, and recipient of an AEVentures Foundation Grant for Poetry. Former high school English teacher, she works full time for the government and is poetry editor of North of Oxford. https://dianesahmsguarnieri.wordpress.com & http://www.dianesahms-guarnieri.com/ & https://www.youtube.com/@dianesahms-uarnieri9258/featured

E-Verse Equinox Reading Series: Kathleen Ossip & Robyn Schiff
2023-09-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
E-Verse Equinox Reading Series with Kathleen Ossip & Robyn Schiff
Wednesday September 13, 2023 – 7pm

Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
On Zoom (Zoom Registration Required): https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIsfu-opzItE9f7cd5C6rwgG98X26_pFlmY

Kathleen Ossip’s books include July, one of NPR’s best books of 2021; The Do-Over, a New York Times Editors’ Choice; The Cold War, one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2011; The Search Engine, selected by Derek Walcott for the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize; and two chapbooks, Cinephrastics and Little Poems. Her poems have appeared widely in such publications as The Washington Post, The Best American Poetry, The Best American Magazine Writing, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Statesman, Poetry, The Paris Review, and The Poetry Review (UK). She teaches at The New School and at Princeton University, and she has been a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute.
Robyn Schiff is the author of four collections of poetry, including the volume Information Desk: An Epic, out from Penguin in August of 2023 and A Woman of Property (Penguin, 2016), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and named a best book of the year by The New Yorker and the Chicago Tribune. Schiff is an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard, a co-editor of Canarium Books, and is the recipient of the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, a gift of the Drue Heinz Trust, at the American Academy in Rome. She recently joined the faculty of the University of Chicago.
Ernest Hilbert, Spencer Short, and Luke Stromberg Hosts – Open Reading Follows

New Books from Moonstone Press: Virtual Reading
2023-09-26 19:00 - 21:00 | Virtual
New Books from Moonstone Press
September 26, 2023 – 7pm Eastern – VIRTUAL
Zoom registration required
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYkcO6sqzkjGtOgxLEXgialYpLRAU4sIiZw
With featured works from:
Beth Bayley is a writer, yoga instructor, and occasional archivist who divides her time between Massachusetts and Singapore. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Evening Street Review, Ghost City Review, Slant, Vox Poetica, and Neologism Poetry Journal, among others.
Jefferson Carter has work in such journals as Carolina Quarterly, Barrow Street, and Rattle. He published his ninth collection, Get Serious: New and Selected Poems, chosen as a Southwest Best Book of 2013. Birkenstock Blues, is now available through his website: jeffersoncarterverse.com. He taught writing for 30 years at Pima Community College, the last 18 years as Writing as Department Chair. Currently, he’s a passionate supporter of Sky Island Alliance, a regionally-based environmental organization.
Flower Conroy is a LGBTQ+ writer, NEA and MacDowell Fellow and former Key West Poet Laureate, Snake Breaking Medusa Disorder was chosen as the winner of the Stevens Manuscript Competition; A Sentimental Hairpin is forthcoming from Tolsun Books. Her poetry will/has appeared in American Poetry Review, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Michigan Quarterly Review and others.
Marjorie Gowdy writes at home in the Blue Ridge mountains, she has three chapbooks, her poetry has been published in a number of journals, including the international Friends Journal, Artemis, Streetlight, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and Roanoke Review.
Richard Stimac, author of Bricolage, Of Water and of Stone, and published over thirty poems in Burningword, Clackamas, The Examined Life Journal, Faultline, Havik, Michigan Quarterly Review, Mikrokosmos, New Plains Review, Novus, Penumbra, Salmon Creek, and Wraparound South. He published flash fiction in BarBar, The Blue Mountain Review, Book of Matches, Bridge Eight, New Feathers, and more. He is a poetry reader for Ariel Publishing, Clepsydra, and a fiction reader for the Marine Review.
Daniel Williams, recipient of the Robinson Jeffers Poetry Prize, is a long-standing member of Poets’ West, California Federation of Chaparral Poets, Poets & Writers, and the Ina Coolbrith Circle and has poems in Yosemite National Park’s time capsule, a haiku engraved on MAVEN, the Mar’s orbiter, and has been nominated for Pushcart Prize in poetry. His poem, Water Creatures in Yosemite Fall, was awarded first place for poems in the California Federation of Chaparral Poets’ contest for 2022.
Theresa Wyatt, a Buffalo native, is a retired teacher. She is the author of Hurled Into Gettysburg, and her work has appeared in New Flash Fiction Review, Spillway, Snapdragon, steel bellow, The Ekphrastic Review, The Healing Muse, The Phare, W.W. Norton’s New Micro, and elsewhere. She credits her artistic parents, participation in the Siena, Italy Program during college, and teaching in the NYS prison system and abroad – as the major influences on her life.

New Voices Fall 2023: Live Reading
2023-11-16 18:00 - 20:00 | Parkway Central Library, 1901 Vine St
Live Reading: New Voices Fall 2023
November 16th at 6pm
Hosted: Parkway Central Library, 1901 Vine Street
In cooperation with the Literature Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia

Celebrate the release of our Fall 2023 volume of the New Voices anthology for young and emerging poets!

New Voices is series for emerging poets between the ages of 10 and 25. It includes a monthly reading series and a bi-annual publication which strives to bring together younger poets from various communities.

We tend to gather in our own communities. There is nothing wrong with that except we begin to sound alike, look alike, think alike. New Voices is our attempt to expand everyone’s experience, to introduce other ways of everything and to give a platform to the young writers of this generation.

Join us on November 16th at 6pm at the Literature Department of the Parkway Central location of the Philadelphia Free Library.

A virtual reading will be held on November 19th as well for poets who are not local to Philadelphia.

New Voices Fall 2023: Virtual Reading
2023-11-19 14:00 - 15:30
Virtual Reading: New Voices Fall 2023
November 19th at 2pm
Via Zoom (registration required): https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYlcuqpqTwoHt2LdMLO0LIelaovDd0q08NP

Celebrate the release of our Fall 2023 volume of the New Voices anthology for young and emerging poets!

New Voices is series for emerging poets between the ages of 10 and 25. It includes a monthly reading series and a bi-annual publication which strives to bring together younger poets from various communities.

We tend to gather in our own communities. There is nothing wrong with that except we begin to sound alike, look alike, think alike. New Voices is our attempt to expand everyone’s experience, to introduce other ways of everything and to give a platform to the young writers of this generation.

Join us on November 19th at 2pm online to support the next generation of poets and writers.

Poetry Reading: Cydney Brown, Savannah Cooper-Ramsey, & Lawrence Dugan
2023-12-27 19:00 - 20:30 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday, 12/27 LIVE @ Fergie’s Pub
7PM ET & on Zoom
Zoom Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEvcOGspzgiG9ISfRlJNdRQj2faXJsWhktf

Cydney Brown is the 2023 Northeast Regional Youth Poet Laureate, 2020-2021 Philadelphia Youth Poet Laureate and author of Daydreaming. She is a Sophomore at Northwestern University and has been writing poetry since she was in 5th grade.
Savannah Cooper-Ramsey’s published an artist book, Not Fit For Print: Forthcoming Titles (Waterhouse Ltd Press, 2018) and poems in publications like the Moonstone anthologies, Whirlwind Magazine, Bomb Magaine, and Cul-de-sac of Blood (forthcoming). She received a PhD in Italian from Columbia University. She works in the service industry and teaches at CCP.
Lawrence Dugan’s new book, The Sea again: Poems, made up of poems that first appeared in magazines and journals such as Daedqlus, Arion, Cyphers, The Gettysburg Review, Nation Review and others. He is retired from The Free Library of Philadelphia where he once ran the Monday Poets Series.

Larry Robi, Host – Open Reading Follows

Book Release: Eat This Poem by Charles S. Carr feat. David Kertis
2024-01-03 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Book Release: Eat This Poem by Charles S. Carr
Wednesday January 3, 2023 – 7pm – LIVE at Fergie’s Pub
Registration Required for zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0rcu2spz4sGtRH0yB2BbQ5PnqJd-96A05B
Charles S. Carr from Philadelphia graduated from LaSalle College and has an M.A. in American History from Bryn Mawr College. Charles worked in Social and Community Development services for 45 years. Charles has been a lay missionary for Hands Together raising money to serve the poorest of the poor in Haiti. He has two books of poems paradise, pennsylvania, (Cradle Press, 2009) and Haitian Mudpies and Other Poems, (Moonstone Press, 2013). In 2008, one of Charles’s poems won first place in Mad Poets Review. His poems have been published in local and national print and online poetry journals, For five years Charles hosted the second Tuesday Moonstone Poetry series at Fergie’s Pub. For the past seven years he has been the host of Philly Loves Poetry, a monthly broadcast from Philly CAM. Charles has one son, Evan, and is married to award-winning artist Karen Stabenow. His latest chapbook is Eat This Poem with Moonstone Press.
Proceeds from the sales of the chapbook will go to Ukraine Trust Chain.
David Kertis, author of Word of the Day. was born in 1955 and grew up in northern New Jersey. He attended Oberlin College where he studied creative writing with David Young, and has lived in Philadelphia since 1978. He is married and works as a claims adjuster. In Philadelphia, he has studied with Leonard Gontarek and Eleanor Wilner. He has been published on line in Frigate and Apiary and given a number of readings in the Philadelphia area. His book, Word of the Day, has recently been published.
Leonard Gontarek Host, Open Reading Follows

Moonstone Poetry @ PhillyCAM: Autumn McClintock
2024-01-09 18:30 - 19:30
Moonstone Poetry @ PhillyCAM: Autumn McClintock
Tuesday January 9, 2023 @ 6:30pm VIRTUAL
Watch for free on the PhillyCAM website
Or Cable 66/966HD/967 or Verizon FIOS, 29/30 in Philadelphia.

Autumn McClintock is a freelance writer and editor living in Germantown. Her newest chapbook, Dirt Bird, was recently published by Alexandria Quarterly Press, and poems of hers have appeared in The Account, Cimarron Review, Denver Quarterly, and The Georgia Review, among others. She is Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Find her online at autumnmcclintock.com.

Charles S. Carr, Host

Live Poetry: Elliott Levin, Ursula Rucker, and Yolanda Wisher
2024-01-10 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry: Elliott Levin, Ursula Rucker, and Yolanda Wisher
Wednesday January 10, 2024 – 7pm
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
And on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcoc-msrDgjGNDxkIxf_eV0ZxVv2dn-IOG61/17/2024
Elliott Levin, author of does it swing and his newest poetry CD A Word by Any Other Name is a Philadelphia jazz legend. Whatever it is jazz performers do when they blow into their horn as Levin does a lot of it, on tenor saxophone and flute. 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. Other listeners might find the entire free jazz experience itself torture, in which case it’s back to the beginning as far as advice regarding Levin: there is nothing watered-down or weak about his performances, no attempt to make the music a bit more accessible to the novices, tender-hearted or just plain wimpy.
Ursula Rucker is an interdisciplinary poet, performer, and recording artist whose work reflects on personal history, family, and place. She characterizes her work as situated “along the edge of the terrains of poetry.” Rucker has released five albums and collaborated with a wide range of artists outside of the field of poetry, including The Roots, musicians and Pew Fellows Jamaaladeen Tacuma and King Britt, and, most recently, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Clarence Williams III.
“I stand for poetry as a source of profound truth. That truth, for me, is connected to the idea that cities are places that redeem our strivings and leave us longing; the ways family life shapes and shakes us, and brings us back; and the thought that artists safeguard stories and struggles” Ursula Rucker
Yolanda Wisher was named inaugural Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, third Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, and currently serves as chair of the Philadelphia Poet Laureate Governing Committee. She is the author of Monk Eats an Afro and co-editor of the anthology Peace is a Haiku Song with mentor Sonia Sanchez. Wisher performs a blend of poetry and song with her band Yolanda Wisher & The Afroeaters. She co-founded Germantown Poetry Festival and served as Director of Art Education for Philadelphia Mural Arts from, founded of School of Guerrilla Poetics, a training ground for folks interested in nurturing and mobilizing communities through poetryand with Trapeta B. Mayson she co-founded ConsenSIS, an initiative that seeks to count, gather, and memorialize Black femme poets in the Philadelphia area. A Pew and Cave Canem Fellow, Wisher received the Leeway Foundation’s Transformation Award in 2019 for her commitment to art for social change, and last year, she was named a Philadelphia Cultural Treasures Artist Fellow.
Larry Robin, Host

Live Poetry: Jonathan Koven, Pat Rodgers, and Robert Zell
2024-01-17 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Jonathan Koven, author of Palm Lines, Below Torrential Hill (EE) a winner of the Electric Eclectic Novella Prize, and Mystic Orchards, Grew up on Long Island, NY. He holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from American University, works as a technical writer, and reads chapbooks for Moonstone Arts. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Delana, and their cats Peanut Butter and Keebler. He has had both fiction and poetry published, by Assure Press, Animal Heart Press, Thirty West Publishing, and more.
Pat Rodgers is a poet based in West Philadelphia. His published work can be found in Neptune and several Moonstone anthologies. Recall is the title of his first chapbook.
Robert Zell has published two chapbooks: One and Reflections. His work has also appeared in Whirlwind magazine, North of Oxford, and several Moonstone Arts anthologies. He is also the host of the Sunday reading series at the Pen and Pencil Club.
Sean Hanrahan Host, Open Reading Follows

Live Poetry: W.D. Ehrhart and M.L. Liebler
2024-01-24 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday January 24, 2024 – 7pm
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
And on Zoom:
ttps://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIodOmrqz8sEtaWMbfHtRb-xMHXESjVcrpm
W. D. Ehrhart, Poet, Writer, Scholar and Teacher began writing when he was 15 years old and has been writing more or less continuously ever since. His first published work, a poem about Swarthmore College, appeared seven years later in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the following year eight of his poems were included in Winning Hearts and Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans. Exclusively a poet until he was almost 30, he has since written and published a wide variety of nonfiction prose from 400-word newspaper commentaries to 40-page scholarly essays to 400-page personal narratives. The influence of Ehrhart’s encounter with the Vietnam War can readily be seen in his writing, but though he is known primarily as a “Vietnam War poet,” in fact his subject matter ranges widely.
M. L. Liebler is a internationally known Detroit poet, university professor, literary arts activist and arts organizer. He is the author of 15 books and chapbooks including the Award winning Wide Awake in Someone Else’s Dream, has read and performed his work around the world, taught English, Creative Writing, American Studies, Labor Studies and World Literature at Wayne State University and he is the founding director of both The National Writer’s Voice Project in Detroit and the Springfed Arts: Metro Detroit Writers Literary Arts Organization. He was selected as Best Detroit Poet by The Detroit Free Press & Detroit’s Metro Time, and his groundbreaking anthology Working Words: Punching the Clock & Kicking Out the Jams was given a 2011 Library of Michigan Notable Book Award.

Live Poetry: 27th Annual Poetry Ink
2024-01-28 14:00 - 17:00 | The Rotunda, 14014 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Sunday January 28, 2024 – 2pm
Live at The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut Street
We want you all: published poets, unpublished poets, academic poets, street poets, poets who write Sonnet, Villanelle, Haiku, Ekphrastic Poems, Concrete Poems, Epitaph, Elegy, Epigram, Limerick, Ballad, Ode, Free Verse.
Join us for our 27th year of presenting 100 poets reading in alphabetical order. We will have the live event at the Rotunda on Sunday and a Virtual event over Zoom on Monday. Last year we presented 50 poets at each event.

Virtual Poetry: 27th Annual Poetry Ink
2024-01-29 14:00 - 16:00
27th Annual Poetry Ink Anthology
Monday, January 29th, 2024 – 2PM
Virtual on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYqduytqjwjG9dP-hVrP8szAyz7uxDeUXTe
We want you all: published poets, unpublished poets, academic poets, street poets, poets who write Sonnet, Villanelle, Haiku, Ekphrastic Poems, Concrete Poems, Epitaph, Elegy, Epigram, Limerick, Ballad, Ode, Free Verse. Join us for our 27th year of presenting 100 poets reading in alphabetical order. We will have the live event at the Rotunda on Sunday and a Virtual event on zoom on Monday. Last year we presented 50 poets at each event.

Live Poetry: House Poet @ Fergie's with Lindsay Hargrave and Noah David Roberts
2024-01-31 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday, January 31st – 7PM
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
And over Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYpd–tpj4uEtTGjg-a2O9NZBvpHqx9GFyw
Welcome to House Poet @ Fergie’s
Since March 2022, House Poet has strived to bring together writers, dancers, DJs and musicians alike. Join us in 2024 as we bring that energy to Moonstone’s Poetry Nights at Fergie’s, featuring an open reading, featured readers, live music and a soundtrack you can bounce to.
Lindsay Hargrave is a poet, editor at Graphic Violence, and a copywriter for Temple University. Read more at https://linktr.ee/Hargrave or follow @notporkroll on Twitter. Noah David Roberts is a non-binary poet, the author of 6 collections, including Mutable Forests. In 2022, Roberts won the Judith Stark poetry contest. They are a 2023 Pushcart nominee. You can learn more on Instagram at @the.apocalypse.poet.
Warren Longmire Host, Open Reading Follows
