Moonstone Arts Center

Live Poetry: Sydney Coffin, Raina J. León, and Genevieve Rand
2025-08-20 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday August 20, 2025 7pm- LIVE
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Sydney Coffin is halfway done an MFA with NYU in Paris, and taught poetry, English, journalism, wrestling and experiential arts in Philadelphia’s public schools for 20 years, English Language Learning at Job Corps, and recently became the night manager of facilities for the Fleisher Memorial Art School on Catherine Street in the Italian Market area; he has been published by Moonstone Press, Mad House Press, Yale University Press, Lobo Press, and a few other locations.
Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, and teacher educator. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Macondo. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She is a recipient of a National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Grant.
Genevieve Rand is a variety artist whose work blends poetry, stand-up, song, and immersive art into performances that feel like sacred chaos. Her debut one-woman show iParty—part ceremony, part spectacle—will premiere this September at Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Tickets are on sale now, and this is your official invitation to enter the iParty portal.
Sean Hanrahan Host – Open Reading Follows

Live Poetry: George Marshall and Sophia Tempest
2025-08-27 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday August 27, 2025 – 7pm- LIVE
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
George Marshall is a writer out of Omaha, Nebraska. He went to school for Nonfiction and works as a freelance writer and bartender. Poetry was where he found his love for writing. Outside of writing he spends time taking toilets apart to rebuild them stronger or standing in the middle of the street trying to achieve photosynthesis.
Sophia Tempest is the author of three poetry collections, INFINITE LIGHT (Bottlecap Press, 2025), WHEN I GET TO HEAVEN (Another New Calligraphy, 2022) and a lamb hangs by its own foot (Ghost City Press, 2019). She is also a coeditor for the press and journal Discount Guillotine.
Mac Chandler Host – Open Reading Follows

Live Poetry: W. D. Ehrhart, Nathalie Anderson, and Eileen M. D'Angelo
2025-09-03 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday September 3, 2025 7pm- LIVE
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Book Launch of Smart Fish Don’t Bite by W. D. Ehrhart ($22 – Moonstone Press)
W. D. Ehrhart, author of Smart Fish Don’t Bite, is a Marine Corps veteran of both the Vietnam War and Vietnam Veterans Against the War. As the poems in this most recent collection demonstrate, he is a writer who fought in Vietnam, not a Vietnam writer.
Nathalie Anderson is the author of 5 books of poetry and manages the list-serv Lit-Philly that informs about 500 members about literary events in the Philadelphia area. She has recently retired from Swarthmore College, where she taught for 39 years, and served as Director of the Program in Creative Writing.
Eileen M. D’Angelo, author of several books, is Executive Director of Mad Poets Society, coordinated over 2000 special events in the tri-state area, twice been nominated for a PA Governor’s Award in the Arts and Pushcart Prize, and was six-term President of the Board of the Philadelphia Writers Conference.
Aaren Perry Host – Open Reading Follows

Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Reading Series: Alicia Askenase
2025-09-09 18:30 - 20:30 | virtual
Tuesday September 9, 2025 – 6:30pm – Live Broadcast
Can be viewed on the Phillycam website Or Cable 66/966HD/967
or Verizon FIOS, 29/30 In Philadelphia.
Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Readings Series
Alicia Askenase is the author of several books, was a founding co-editor of the literary journal 6ix and director of the Walt Whitman Art Center Literary programs, and taught English as a Second Language in Puerto Rico, Spain, New York, and finally, Philadelphia. Her poetry has appeared in several anthologies: New Works by Philadelphia Poets, and Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets, and lit journals, among them, Chain, The World, Feminist Studies, The Manhattanville Review, Paterson Literary Review, and The Painted Bride Quarterly.
Charles S. Carr, Host

Live Poetry: Mac Chandler, Tim Lynch, and Amy Saul-Zerby
2025-09-10 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday September 10, 2025 – 7pm- LIVE
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Mac Chandler is a writer from West Philly who has been published in some places and not in others, host quarterly shows for Moonstone Arts, and is author of There Is A Thing Haunting Me I Could Grow To Love.
Tim Lynch was awarded a 2025 Individual Artist Fellowship by Delaware Division of the Arts, poems appear in Only Poems Daily, Gather, and Villain Era, and his first screenplay earned semifinalist in the ScreenCraft Horror Competition.
Amy Saul-Zerby is author of Paper Flowers Imaginary Birds, Deep Camouflage and Choose Your Own Beginning. She edits Voicemail Poems and her poems have appeared in The Rumpus, The Chicago Review of Books, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere.
Sean Lynch Host – Open Reading Follows

Honoring Evan Wang and the Youth Poet Laureate Program
2025-09-14 17:00
Sunday September 14, 2025 – 5pm – VIRTUAL
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/YGL0FkWeS5WHQX54GffCZQ
Honoring Evan Wang and the Youth Poet Laureate Programs
Host – Joanne Leva is founder and executive director of the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program and founder and editor-in-chief of Tekpoet, an online poetry manuscript services company. Leva’s poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Peace Is a Haiku Song, 50 Over Fifty, Apiary, E-Verse Radio, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Rag Queen Periodical, Bucks County Writer, Transcendent Visions, and elsewhere. Honoring 王潇/Evan Wang – the 2025 National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, the first male and East Asian individual to hold this title, and author of Slow Burn, winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize and finalist for the Vinyl 45 Chapbook Prize. His work appears in POETRY Magazine, The Kenyon Review, The Journal, RHINO, Sixth Finch, Waxwing, The Margins, and elsewhere. He was the Youth Poet Laureate of Mongomery County.
The Philadelphia area has a wonderful collection of poets and poetry organizations; we especially like to welcome young people to the poetry community. Moonstone’s New Voices program publishes an anthology twice a year for poets under the age of 25, including first-time and experienced young poets alike. We’ve featured many exemplary young writers and work closely with the Youth Poet Laureate programs in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties who we are featuring today.
Professor Ethel Rackin, co-ordinates the Bucks County program, has been teaching language and literature at Bucks County Community College, also finds time to pursue her passion – writing.. She will introduce Nilüfer Betkas, a junior at Harry S. Truman High School in Bristol Township, has been named the 2025 Bucks County High School Poet of the Year. Bektas rose to the top of more than 120 entries from all over the county, judged by current Bucks County Poet Laureate Lake Angela and last year’s poet laureate Tara Tamburello.
Cheri Crow co-ordinates the Delco Young Poets Competition and Awards, the longest running youth poetry competition in the area, founded by the Mad Poets Society in 1989. Ms. Crow is dedicated to providing quality children’s services to families in the library and through outreach services. She will introduce Anika Fernandes, 11 grade student at Merion Mercy Academy
Joanne Leva, founder and executive director of the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program will introduce Tina Ramberg-Michael, a ninth grader at Cheltenham High School, who took first place in the poetry slam at the Delaware Valley Consortium for Equity and Excellence and has published her poetry with Young Inklings.
Yona Yurwit, co-ordinates the Philadelphia Youth program. Yona has been serving teens at the Free Library of Philadelphia for 6.5 years. Her favorite poets are Jericho Brown and Anis Mojgani. She will introduce Cydney Brown, Philadelphia’s 2020 Youth Poet Laureate and 2023’s Northeast Regional Youth Poet Laureate. “It’s always been the best way for me to express myself,” says Brown, who started writing poems in fifth grade, an age often marked by complicated emotions

Live Poetry: Jane-Rebecca Cannarella, Josh Dale, Cameron MacKenzie, Iheoma Nwachukwu
2025-09-17 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday September 17, 2025 – 7pm – LIVE
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Jane-Rebecca Cannarella, is a writer and editor living in West Philadelphia. She edits HOOT Review, a magazine published on postcards, Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit, a broadside press, and was an editor for Lunch Ticket from 2015 to 2017. Josh Dale lives in Pennsylvania and in the company of cats and nature.. Author of Duality Lies Beneath and The Light to Never Be Snuffed. Cameron MacKenzie’s work has appeared in Blackbird, Salmagundi, and The Michigan Quarterly Review, among other places. His novel, The Beginning of His Excellent and Eventful Career, chronicles the rise to power of Pancho Villa. Iheoma Nwachukwu won fellowships from the Michener Center, the Chinua Achebe Center and the Mississippi Arts Commission. Nwachukwu’s fiction interrogates what it means to yearn for a self-inside and outside one’s native landscape. His work centers immigrant narratives that thrive in settings alien to the character
Sean Hanrahan Host – Open Reading Follows

Live Poetry: Ebs Sanders, Michael Joseph Walsh
2025-09-24 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday September 24, 2025 – 7pm – LIVE
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Ebs Sanders is the author of Low Ecstasies, Intimacies that did not destroy us and A Fallow Channel. Their writing has appeared in bæst, b l u s h, Discount Guillotine, Full Stop and Tripwire, among others. They co-edit the tiny and are one of ten 2025 Convent Arts fellows. Michael Joseph Walsh is the author of A Season, winner of the Georgia Poetry Prize, and Innocence, winner of the Lighthouse Poetry Series. He is co-editor of APARTMENT Poetry, and his poems, reviews, and translations have appeared in various publications.
Amy Saul-Zerby Host – Open Reading Follows

Live Poetry: Camille Llawella Ralphs, Ernest Hilbert
2025-09-28 17:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Sunday September 28, 2025 – 5pmEDT – LIVE
Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Camille Llawella Ralphs is an English poet, critic and editor. Ralphs’ first collection of poems After You Were, I Am was a book of the year in The Telegraph and The Guardian, and was widely reviewed elsewhere.Since 2020, Ralphs has been poetry editor at The Times Literary Supplement. She is the first woman to hold this role.
Ernest Hilbert is the author of the poetry collections Sixty Sonnets, All of You on the Good Earth, Caligulan—selected as winner of the 2017 Poets’ Prize—Last One Out, and Storm Swimmer, winner of the 2022 Vassar Miller Prize.
Host – Open Reading Follows

Live Poetry and Music
2025-10-01 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday October 1, 2025 – 7pm- LIVE – Poetry & Music
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Launch of A Little Music For the Soft War by Mark Svenvold
Poet, songwriter, and nonfiction writer, Mark Svenvold’s book of poems, Soul Data, won the Vassar Miller Award, selected by Heather McHugh; Empire Burlesque, won The Journal Prize. Svenvold’s poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, and others. He teaches creative writing at Seton Hall University. A denizen and regular performer at CBGB’s before it became a clothing store, Ted Sabety studied guitar with Larry Coryell, electronic music with Morton Subotnick, and composition with Marty Bresnick. Recently, his punk-wave act Les Techno’s “Edge of the World” reached # 20 and #144, respectively, on the Indie DRT and Global DRT charts.
With Special Features
“Elliot Levin on tenor saxophone and flute, has a 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, there is nothing watered-down about his performances, no attempt to make the music a bit more accessible to the novices, tender-hearted or just plain wimpy. On the poetry scene he has performed with Miguel Algarin, Gloria Tropp, Mbali Umoja, Marty Watt, and Frank Messina.
Lindsay Hargrave is a poet, first mate at Scribes on South, a coproducer at House Poet, half of the experimental group Kelpius, the author of two chapbooks and a copywriter for Temple University. Aaren Perry Host: Open Reading Follows

Poesía sin Fronteras: Poetry in Spanish in the United States
2025-10-04 11:00 - 16:00 | Kimmel Center, 300 S Broad St
Poesía sin Fronteras
¿Escribes poesía en español y te gustaría publicar uno de tus poemas? ¡Este llamado es para ti! ¡Esperamos tu voz!
La convocatoria a la primera edición de Poesía sin Fronteras (2025-2026) busca nuevas voces para promover la paz, la concordia y la armonía a través de la poesía. Da rienda suelta a tu imaginación y sé parte de esta celebración de la poesía y el espíritu creativo. ¡Anímate a participar y cuéntales a otros!
https://moonstoneartscenter.submittable.com/submit/333410/poesia-sin-fronteras-poetry-without-borders
Do you write poetry in Spanish?
Poetry without Borders seeks voices to promote peace, concord and harmony through poetry. Unleash your imagination and be part of this celebration of poetry and the creative spirit, get involved and tell others!
The Latin American Book Fair connects authors, illustrators, writers, designers, book lovers and our community in the city. Organized by Philadelphia’s Latin non-profits organizations such as Acción Colombia, Casa de Venezuela, Taller Puertorriqueño as well as an amazing group of volunteers.
The International Poetry Festival Everywhere is a solidarity proposal that allows simultaneous readings in various parts of the world during the month of May. Today the “Word in the World” Festival is presented as a proposal of SUR International Cultural Project, Isla Negra Magazine and Havana International Poetry Festival and had more than 2500 events in 2025.

Live Poetry: Alicia Askenase, Cassie MacDonald & Aaren Yeatts Perry
2025-10-08 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday October 8, 2025 – 7pm – LIVE
Live at Sueno Restaurant, 114 S. 12th Street
Alicia Askenase is the author of several books, was a founding co-editor of the literary journal 6ix, and director of the Walt Whitman Art Center Literary programs for many years. Her poetry has appeared in various journals.
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.
Aaren Yeatts Perry has performed his poems at the Nuyorican, Kimmel Center, World Café, Fringe Festival, Kelly Writers House and the Philadelphia Writers Conference, he received a PA Council on the Arts Grant. His collections include Open Fire, Poetry Across the Curriculum: An Action Guide for Elementary Teachers.
Alina Macneal & Jennifer Hook Hosts – Open Reading Follows

Virtual Reading: Indigenous Peoples Day
2025-10-12 14:00 - 15:00 | Virtual
Indigenous Peoples Day
Sunday October 12, 2025 – 2pm VIRTUAL
Register for Zoom here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/ITiexC3URACn-4yLkowizw
Submit to be a part of the anthology before Oct. 5th: https://moonstoneartscenter.submittable.com/projects/edit/3d76a3e1-a9d1-403b-b835-d63e8c9d4b51
Indigenous Peoples Day will be celebrated on Monday, October 13th. The date falls on the same day as Columbus Day, giving us a chance to shift the focus toward honoring Indigenous cultures and reflecting on colonialism’s impact. Indigenous Peoples Day shines a light on the histories, cultures, and contributions of Native American communities. It’s a reminder of the strength and resilience Indigenous peoples continue to show today, particularly to highlight the importance of acknowledging the historical injustices faced by Native Americans. It’s a chance to listen to Indigenous voices and recognize their efforts in keeping their land, language, and culture alive. Join us as poets reflect.

Wednesday October 15, 2025 – 7:00pm - LIVE
2025-10-15 19:00 | Sueño Restaurant, 114 S 12th St, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Heather Bowlan, author of Highlights and Blackouts and co-director of Philadelphia Small Works, an art gallery and performance space.

Christopher K.P. Brown aka KP ULTRA is the founder of Pecola Breedlove & The Freedom Party, ran 2 Pens & Lint, under which he published chapbooks for over 400 runs Poetry215.com. His newest poetry book and album is titled 84 ULTRA.
Krystle Griffin is an Aquarian alien who emerged from the depths of the Delaware River. Krystle teaches a monthly poetry workshop at Philly Typewriter, is a masthead on a couple of publications such as Meow Meow Pow Pow.
Bonafide Rojas is a Poet, Musician & has five collections of poetry: is a Mellon-Flamboyan Letras Boricuas Fellow, A BRIO award winner & has appeared on Def Poetry Jam and performed at Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Museum, and Philadelphia Museum Of Art among others.
Alexis Young is a writer, visual artist, and teacher. Her poems have appeared in a Moonstone Press anthology and The Swarthmorean, and she recently completed her first public mural.

Sean Hanrahan Host – Open Reading Follows

House Poet: Beyond the Grave with Nicole Coladonato & Rachel Eve
2025-10-29 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
House Poet: Beyond the Grave with Nicole Coladonato & Rachel Eve
Wednesday, October 29th at 7pm
Live at Fergies Pub, 1214 Sansom St.
Nicole Coladonato @fouronefivetwo began performing in her youth and quickly developed an affection for the spotlight. She quit being a failed visual artist to become a writer, embracing this new path with the same passion. Her writing abuses grammar, memes, and the audience. Nicole’s poetry is found in zines and at open mics around Philadelphia, where she continues to explore her work.
Rachel Eve @rachelevemusic writes and sings from a place that is at once personal and universal, taking inspiration from the mysteries and complexities of the human experience. Rachel’s voice has been described as “passionate,” “soulful,” “songbird-like,” and her diverse and lyrical songwriting infused with folk, jazz and blues influences. Her newest single “Right Where You Are” is out now on all major streaming platforms
Lindsay Hargrave, Host – Open Mic to follow
Setlist by @khaleelmason

Remembering Ezra Pound - Sunday November 2nd - 2pm - Virtual
2025-11-02 14:00 | Virtual
Pound was an American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a collaborator in Fascist Italy during World War II. His works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and his 800-page epic poem The Cantos (c. 1917–1962).
Pound’s contribution to poetry began in the early 20th century with developing Imagism, a movement stressing precision and economy of language. Working in London as a foreign editor of several American literary magazines, he helped discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as H. D., Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. Hemingway wrote in 1932 that, for poets born in the late 19th or early 20th century, not to be influenced by Pound would be “like passing through a great blizzard and not feeling its cold”.
Pound blamed the war on finance capitalism, he moved to Italy in 1924, embraced Mussolini’s fascism, and expressed support for Hitler. Ruled mentally unfit to stand trial, Pound was incarcerated for over 12 years at St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C., whose doctors viewed Pound as a narcissist and a psychopath, but otherwise completely sane.
While in custody in Italy, Pound began work on sections of The Cantos, which were published as The Pisan Cantos (1948), for which he was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1949 by the Library of Congress, causing enormous controversy. Reflections on Ezra Pound.

"Headless" Book Release - Wednesday November 5 - 7:00 PM - LIVE
2025-11-05 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
“In Headless, poet Sean Hanrahan takes us on a winding road that twists through desire, intellectual curiosity, and various explored icons—pop culture, mythic, historic, political, sexual—traveling with a speaker always seeking to understand who and what society expects him to be. If art is a conversation with everything before and after, then so is identity, moving from “paper silhouette of a boy” to reveling in the middle-aged body, declaring “we are all of us orchids.” The self is multifaceted, multitalented, and—belying the title—multiheaded. Hanrahan, at the height of his poetic power, has learned to navigate this hydralike path and “choose the sacramental in-between.” In these pages, we are blessed to be invited to walk beside him.” – Chad Frame, author of Little Black Book.
Sean Hanrahan is the author of Headless, Safer Behind Popcorn and Ghost Signs, Hardened Eyes on the Scan and Gay Cake . His work has also been included in various anthologies and journals, he has taught classes titled “A Chapbook in 49 Days,” “Ekphrastic Poetry,” “Poetry Embodied,” and has hosted and read at poetry events throughout Philadelphia.
Adam Gianforcaro is the author of the poetry collection Every Living Day and Poems to Stage Dive to. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, his work can be found in Ninth Letter, The Offing, Poet Lore, Third Coast, Northwest Review, and elsewhere.
Alison Lubar teaches high school English by day and yoga by night. They are a queer, nonbinary, biracial Nikkei femme whose life work has evolved into bringing mindfulness practices to young people. They’re the author of The Other Tree, and METAMOURPHOSIS, as well as four chapbooks and is a board member for Philadelphia’s Blue Stoop.
Amy Saul-Zerby is the author of Paper Flowers, Imaginary Birds, Deep Camouflage, and Choose Your Own Beginning, her poems have appeared in various journals and she is the Director of Marketing and Development for The Free Books Project and Editor-in-Chief of Voicemail Poems.
Aaren Perry Host – Open Reading Follows

"Without You" Book Release - Sunday November 9 - 5pm - LIVE
2025-11-09 17:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
“In flashes of recollection, in flares of supposition and speculation, the fragments and fables of Ditta Baron Hoeber’s Without You trace the aftermath of a childhood trauma, with its attendant guilts and resentments and mystifications. Terse, taut, gnomic, wrenching, and subtly evocative, Without You offers a compelling demonstration of a reality at once irrecoverable and irrevocable.” — Nathalie Anderson, Professor Emerita, Swarthmore College, author of Stain
Ditta Baron Hoeber’s first book, Without You is just out, her poems have been published in magazines including Gargoyle, Burningword Literary Review, Noon, Pank, the American Poetry Review and the American Journal of Poetry. Her photographs, drawings and book works have been exhibited nationally and have been acquired by several collections in the US and in the UK.
Lisa Isaacson has published poems in antiphony, New American Writing, Colorado Review, Fence and Denver Quarterly among others. She has recently returned to the United States after 22 years teaching World Humanities and World Poetry in Abu Dhabi, UAE and now lives in Milwaukee.

Peace like War is Waged: Reading with Jan Barry and W.D. Ehrhart
2025-11-13 17:30 - 18:30 | The Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine Street, 1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Peace like War is Waged
A Discussion and Reading with Jan Barry and W.D. Ehrhart
Thursday, November 13th @ 5:30pm
Live Poetry @ Central Free Library, 1901 Vine Street, History Department on 2nd Floor
“One Jan Barry’s most characteristic beliefs comes from a poem called “The Peacemaker” by Walker Knight: “Peace, like war, is waged.” Jan Barry has been actively and energetically waging peace since he turned away from an appointment to the US Military Academy and chose a very different path into his own future.
All through the book, I encounter over and over again Jan’s refusal to give in to despair, his unwavering belief that good will eventually come of good-willed people acting together. He challenges Americans to protest and resist the agenda of the “tyrannical head of state” now occupying the White House. He urges all of us to vigorously and actively support federal employees, LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, Palestinian self-determination, and a free and independent Ukraine.
Here, in a few words, is what Jan Barry taught me: take that rage and pain and frustration and do something constructive with it.” – W. D. Ehrhart
Waging Peace: From Vietnam to Volgograd ($30.00 – 2025) is a collection of essays, poetry and art by Jan Barry, a Veterans For Peace Poet Laureate and cofounder of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The memoir conveys memorable stories about the transformation of soldiers in war zones into communities of peace activists. Jan Barry is the author of Waging Art: Tackling Grief and Trauma with Creative Arts, among other works.
Smart Fish Don’t Bite ($22.00 – 2025) by W. D. Ehrhart, a Marine Corps veteran of both the Vietnam War and Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The author of multiple books of both prose and poetry, including Vietnam-Perkasie: a Combat Marine Memoir, and Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems. As the poems in this most recent collection demonstrate, he is a writer who fought in Vietnam, not a Vietnam writer.

Live Poetry: Magnus Mateo, Jane Edna Mohler, & Louisa Schnaithmann
2025-11-19 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry: Magnus Mateo, Jane Edna Mohler, & Louisa Schnaithmann
Live @ Fergies Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Magnus Mateo is a genderfluid, neurodivergent poet, performer, and event organizer based in the Lehigh Valley. In addition to their debut chapbook, She’s Jealous of my Purple Sky, Magnus has been published in various literary magazines and poetry anthologies. When he’s not writing and performing, Magnus is the main host and event organizer of Noble Quills in Easton and of IceHouse Literary Arts Committee in Bethlehem.
Jane Edna Mohler is a Bucks County Poet Laureate (PA) emeritus, and winner of the Main Street Voices. She was nominated multiple times for a Pushcart Prize and once for Best of the Net. Recent publications include Gargoyle, One Art, and Verse Virtual. Her collections, Broken Umbrellas and Autumn Clears are both from Kelsay Books. She is Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. www.janeednamohler.com
Louisa Schnaithmann is the author of the poetry chapbook Plague Love and the consulting editor for ONE ART: a journal of poetry. Her poems have appeared in Cultural Daily, Gargoyle, The Mantle, SWWIM, and the Summerset Review. She lives in southeastern Pennsylvania.
Sean Hanrahan Host, Open Reading Follows

Book Release: And If You Saw Me by Craig Czury
2025-11-23 17:00 - 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Book Release: And If You Saw Me by Craig Czury
Featuring: Craig Czury, J. C. Todd, and Olga Livshin
Live at Fergies Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Craig Czury has been conducting innovative life-writing and poetry workshops in schools, shelters, prisons, psych wards, community centers, and universities for over 30 years. A native of the Wilkes-Barre area of Pennsylvania, Craig is also an editor, publisher, and tireless arts advocate. He has authored over 20 books of poetry, many of which are translated into other languages, and he has been featured in poetry festivals all over the world. Craig lives, writes, and teaches in northern Italy and in northeastern Pennsylvania.
You can purchase copies at the event or online on Square here.
J. C. Todd explores the traumatic effects of war on women and the environment. Author of six books of poetry, most recently Beyond Repair (Able Muse Press, 2021) and a bilingual new and selected What Kept Me Awake? / Kas neleido užmigti? (PDR, 2024), she is a co-editor of Convergence: Poetry on the Environmental Impacts of War, a ground-breaking anthology addressing war’s damage to the natural world (Scarlet Tanager Press, 2026). Awards include fellowships from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She has taught Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College and in the Rosemont MFA Program.
Olga Livshin’s poetry and translations recently appear in Poetry magazine, the Southern Review, the New York Times, and Ploughshares. She is the author of A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman (Poets & Traitors Press, 2019). Livshin co-translated Lyudmyla Khersonska’s Today is a Different War (Arrowsmith Press, 2023) and Vladimir Gandelsman’s A Man Only Needs a Room (New Meridian Arts, 2022). She lives just outside Philadelphia.
Open Reading Follows

Live Poetry: Barb Gonzalez & c.r. hooker
2025-11-26 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry: Barb Gonzalez & c.r. hooker
Live @ Fergies Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Barb Gonzalez (they/he) is a Philadelphia based poet just here to prove that there is something charming, or maybe a lesson to be learned in the mundane. as a haunter of dreams, naturally they write about nightmares and woes of their own.
c.r. hooker (they/them) is a nonbinary, bisexual poet and artist born and raised in the unforgiving heat of the Arizona desert. They are the photographer for Scribes on South and currently call the concrete jungle of Philadelphia their home
Mac Chandler Host, Open Reading Follows

New Voices: Live at Parkway Central Library
2025-12-02 17:30 - 19:30
New Voices: Fall 2025
A series for emerging poets between the ages of 10 and 25. This bi-annual publication invites poets to voice their experiences, introduce their new ways of thinking, and create the next generation of poetry. New Voices brings diverse voices and perspectives to print, from varied ethnic, gender, and class backgrounds.
Join us as contributors read their poems!
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2025 – If you live near Philadelphia please join us live.
LIVE at 5:30 EDT – Central Library, 1901 Vine St.

Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Readings Series - Live Broadcast
2025-12-02 18:30 - 20:00
Moonstone Poetry @ PhillyCAM: Can be viewed on the Phillycam website Or Cable 66/966HD/967 or Verizon FIOS, 29/30. In Philadelphia.
Leonard Gontarek is the author of eight books of poems, his poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Field, Poet Lore, Fence, and in the anthologies, The Best American Poetry among others. He coordinates The Philadelphia Poetry Festival, Peace/Works: Poetry Readings for Peace, the Green Line Café Reading and Interview Series, and Poetry In Common. Since 2006 he has conducted 1000 poetry workshops in venues including, The Moonstone Arts Center, Musehouse, The Kelly Writers House, University City Arts League, Free Library of Philadelphia, Mad Poets Society, Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership, and a weekly Saturday workshop from his home in West Philadelphia. In 2014 he created the first Philly Poetry Day.
Charles S. Carr, Host

Live Poetry: Peter E. Murphy, Karol Wasylyshyn, & Bernardine (Dine) Watson
2025-12-03 19:00 - 21:00
Live Poetry: Peter E. Murphy, Karol Wasylyshyn, & Bernardine (Dine) Watson
Live @ Fergies Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Peter E. Murphy is the author of thirteen books and chapbooks of poetry, his writing has appeared in The Michigan Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Poetry Wales, and elsewhere. The founder of Murphy Writing of Stockton University, Peter leads workshops for writers in the US and Europe.
Karol Wasylyshyn has published volumes of poetry, in the wake of her husband’s death in 2024, she edited a collection of his grammar columns in a book entitled The Queen’s English, and is now working on a series of illustrated grief poems. Karol and Ken Butera are pictured here.
Bernardine (Dine) Watson has written on social policy issues for major foundations, nonprofit organizations and for the Washington Post. Her memoir, Transplant, won the 2023 prize for nonfiction and appeared on National Public Radio’s 2023 list of “Books We Love.” Her poetry has been published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Bourgeon/Mid Atlantic Review, and others. While living in Philadelphia, Dine served as president of The Painted Bride Art Center board of directors and as a board member for Scribe Video Center. She recently joined the board of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House.
Aaren Perry Host, Open Reading Follows

Live Poetry: Derrick C. Brown & Erica Miriam Fabri
2025-12-07 08:00 - 17:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry: Derrick C. Brown & Erica Miriam Fabri
Wednesday December 10, 2025 – 7pm
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Derrick C. Brown is a renowned poet, comedian and former Paratrooper. He is the poet laureate of Los Feliz, CA. His album, ‘A Close Shave with Heaven’ earned him Paste Magazine’s ‘2023 Album of the Year.’ Winner of the Texas Book of The Year award for Poetry, owner and president of Write Bloody Publishing, hailed by Forbes and Filter Magazine as one of the nation’s premier independent poetry presses with a sister company, Write Bloody North in Toronto. He has authored ten poetry books and four children’s books. Brown’s impact on literature is undeniable. He’s toured stages worldwide, from Glastonbury to The Tonight Show, and collaborates with poets and comedians like Bobcat Goldthwait, Kristin Schaal, David Cross, and Eugene Mirman.
Erica Miriam Fabri is a NYC-based poet and the author of Dialect of a Skirt (a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize) and Morphology (winner of the Write Bloody Publishing Jack McCarthy Book Prize.) Her poetry has been widely published in magazines, anthologies, and featured in multi-media formats including art installations, short films, and television commercials. She teaches writing at Pace University and for The City University of New York.
Amy Saul-Zerby Host – Open Reading Follows

Live Reading: 30th Annual Poetry Ink
2025-12-13 14:00 - 16:00 | The Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine Street, 1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
30th Annual Poetry Ink – LIVE READING
Saturday, December 13, 2pm
Central Free Library, 1901 Vine Street, Literature Dept. 2nd Floor

The 30th Annual Poetry Ink Anthology contains 118 poems by poets from around the world.
We want you all: Published Poets, Unpublished Poets, Academic Poets, Street Poets, Poets who write Sonnets, Villanelle, Haiku, Ekphrastic poems, Concrete Poems, Epitaph, Limerick, Ballad, Ode, Free Verse. Join us for our 30th year of Presenting Poetry Ink.
You can also purchase the 30th Poetry Ink anthology on our ecommerce site here.
There will also be a virtual Zoom reading for poets who are not in the Philadelphia area to participate.

Virtual: 30th Annual Poetry Ink
2025-12-14 14:00 - 16:00 | Virtual
30th Annual Poetry Ink – LIVE READING
Sunday, December 14, 2pm
Online via Zoom: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/GeRraO9xQ_yAefQXVw3J2g

The 30th Annual Poetry Ink Anthology contains 118 poems by poets from around the world.
We want you all: Published Poets, Unpublished Poets, Academic Poets, Street Poets, Poets who write Sonnets, Villanelle, Haiku, Ekphrastic poems, Concrete Poems, Epitaph, Limerick, Ballad, Ode, Free Verse. Join us for our 30th year of Presenting Poetry Ink.
You can also purchase the 30th Poetry Ink anthology on our ecommerce site here.

Virtual: Bill of Rights 2025 Anthology
2025-12-21 14:00 - 15:00 | Virtual
Virtual: Bill of Rights 2025
Sunday December 21, 2pm EST
Register for Zoom here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/oYNfQ0_WTCSJj2p4dFC62Q
The United States’ Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791, meant to guarantee civil rights and liberties. Below is a reminder of the rights included in the ratification.

Our last anthology of the year – What happened to our rights?

Join us and reflect on the founding of the United States.

Free and open to everyone; not all poets will be reading
Virginia Alcott
Patricia Bailey
A. C. Blake
Linda M. Crate
Jeanne DiGrazio
Francis Flavin
William Scott Galasso
Marjorie Gowdy
Bruce Grossberg
Steven Halpern
Annie Hartford
Valdez Hill
Jones Irwin
Annie Lanzillotto
Lynn Lipinski
George Schaefer
Jennifer Schneider
Karamo Muchuri Sulieman
Eike Waltz

Live Reading: Moonstone Hosts
2026-01-07 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Reading: Moonstone Hosts
Wednesday, January 7th at 7pm
Live at Fergies Pub: 1214 Sansom Street
Featured readers for this live event are all of Moonstone’s poetry reading hosts. We hope you join us in the new year to meet our hosts, hear their latest work, and gather in community.
Featured Moonstone Poetry Hosts
Liz Allen
Charles Carr is author of 3 collections, and his poetry has been published widely in the small press. He is the host of Philly Loves Poetry on Philly Cam and is active with the Moonstone Arts Center.
Mac Chandler is a writer. They have been published in some places and not in others. You can find them hosting for Moonstone, as well as reading, bartending, and, i don’t know, just kinda waiting around.
Julianna Forlano, writer, radio host, and educator, whose work weaves personal narrative with politics, culture, and Italian-American history, her writing explores cultural memory, and family.
Sean Hanrahan, author of Headless, Safer Behind Popcorn and Ghost Signs, Hardened Eyes on the Scan and Gay Cake. His work has also been included in various anthologies and journals..
Lindsay Hargrave is a poet, first mate at Scribes on South, a coproducer at House Poet, half of the experimental group Kelpius, the author of two chapbooks and a copywriter for Temple University.
Warren C. Longmire, Black poet, performer, and technologist from North Philadelphia, whose poetry and hybrid media work investigate race, surveillance, and digital embodiment through generative literature, interactive design, and live performance.
S.W. Lynch is a writer and editor, author of five books of poetry and a novel entitled The Beast in the Pines. He has worked with Moonstone Arts Center for over a decade as an editor and poetry reading host
Aaren Perry, author of Shipping and Receiving and Open Fire, is a grant writer and editor. He co-edited Under Lock and Key: 100 Poems From Death Row; and The Art Of Inclusion.
Amy Saul-Zerby, author of three poetry collections, her poems have appeared in The Rumpus, The Chicago Review of Books, American Poetry Review, , and elsewhere. She edits Voicemail Poems.
Anne-Adele Wight, author of An Internet of Containment, The Age of Greenhouses, Opera House Arterial, and Sidestep Catapult. Her work has appeared in Poets and Writers, Luna Luna, and other publications.
Larry Robin is the director of the Moonstone Arts Center.
