Moonstone Arts Center

Virtual Reading: Betrayed: Violence Against Women
2025-07-20 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | virtual
Virtual Reading: Betrayed: Violence Against Women
Sunday July 20, 2025
2pm EDT – VIRTUAL
Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/3RqcVPSiSfO6TwlOsIMQmg
BETRAYED – Violence Against Women, invites survivors of gender-based violence to share their stories so that we can bring awareness to this issue and challenge the culture surrounding domestic violence—a culture that overwhelmingly encourages silence and shame.
The purpose of this anthology is to uplift survivors and open up a space for them to share their stories. We hope to create a community in which we can ultimately find healing through the powerful medium of art. 50 Poets responded.
Not All Poets Will Be Reading

Nicole Abuhamada
Lisa Acerbo
Jenny Adrekedes
Virginia Alcott
Kimm Antell
Jeff Bien
Jill Bindewald
A. C. Blake
Susan Breall
Maia Brown-Jackson
Suzanne Bruce
Katerina Canyon
AJ Chilson

Candice Louisa Daquin
Nickie DeSardo
R.G. Evans
Francis Flavin
Ana Fores Tamayo
Caitlin Gille
Linda Goss
Juliana Gray
Alaina Hammond
Colleen Harris
Annie Hartford
Leah Hummel

Taylor Johnston
Kathleen Johnston
AtiyaOla Malik Kahn
Jennifer Karp
J. M. Liles
Patricia Middleton
Alison Miller
K. Molle (Carol Fisher)
Shagufta Mulla
Traci Neal
Andrea Nicki
Katie Rose
Arivana Russell

David Schast
Courtney Seymour
Miki Simic
Katherine Stairs
Pam Ward
Gail Wasserman
Erin Watson
Becky Bishop White
Kelley White
Pharoha Womack
Diana Woodcock
Samantha Wright
Otella Wruck

This program was stimulated by the publication of Not If I Can Help It: A Family Lawyer’s Battles for Justice for Victims of Domestic Violence and the Poor By Meg Groff – who will be presenting an inter-active presentation at the Free Library at 19th and Vine Street on Tuesday July 15, 2025.
“The cases she recounts range from harrowing to infuriating: The police shrugged away potential murders as suicides, children were left unsupervised with dangerous fathers with devastating results, doctors assumed that struggling young mothers must be alcoholics. Each episode carries a tremendous punch, as well as a searing lesson about the failings of society to help those in need. . . . Despite such heavy details and subject matter, Groff balances her book with warmth and humor.” – Kirkus Reviews
Buy the inspiring book @ https://moonstone-arts-center.square.site/product/groff-meg-not-if-i-can-help-it/526
Buy the Moonstone anthology @ https://moonstone-arts-center.square.site/product/betrayed-violence-against-women/DWSMPVY47RUGQBLCDGLBFFKM?cs=true&cst=custom

Live Poetry: Bree Bailey, Miriam Kramer, and Sheleen McElhinney
2025-07-20 14:00 - 16:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry: Bree Bailey, Miriam Kramer, and Sheleen McElhinney
Sunday July 20, 2025 – 2pm – LIVE
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Bree Bailey is a queer Latina poet, a mistress of the music of inflections, pulses, and ironic chuckles. A Jersey native now in Austin, TX, she writes with heart and humor about mental health, love, and resilience. A former educator and 2023 Write Bloody Jack McCarthy Prize winner, her debut collection, Wailing on Whisper Street, is out now and everywhere you buy books. Find her in Exposition Review, West Trade Review, Remington Review, and more. Follow @breebaileypoetry or visitbreebaileypoetry.com.
Miriam Kramer is a queer, Jewish poet residing in New Jersey with her partner, daughter, and two cats. She was the winner of the 2023 Jack McCarthy Book Prize. Miriam loves stick figure drawings, bright sneakers, and embroidery. Her debut full length collection, Built by Storms, was published by Write Bloody Publishing and nominated for The Lambda Literary Prize and The New Writers Award, Great Lakes College Association. Find her on social media: miriadwords
Sheleen McElhinney is a poet living in Glenside, Pa whose work has appeared in lily Poetry Review, Bayou Magazine, Bear Review, and elsewhere. Her debut book, Every Little Vanishing, was the winner of the 2021 Write Bloody Publishing Book Award.
Sean Lynch Host – Open Reading Follows

Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania
2025-07-27 14:00 - 17:00 | virtual
Sunday July 27, 2025 2pm EDT – VIRTUAL
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/MV1XXDyjSxm5hcwx5hpxOg
Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania
Edited by Marjorie Maddox & Jerry Wemple ( $27.90 Pennsylvania State University Press)
Buy the book: https://moonstone-arts-center.square.site/product/keystone-poetry-contemporary-poets-on-pennsylvania/527

From Philadelphia to Erie, and from the shale fields to the coal mines, Keystone Poetry celebrates the varied landscapes and voices of Pennsylvania. This collection brings together the work of 182 poets who, with keen eyes and powerful language, commemorate the hometowns, history, traditions, and culture of the Commonwealth.
Please join us as 49 of the 182 Poets in Keystone Poetry Read Their Poems:

Allison Adair
Nathalie F. Anderson
Grace Bauer
Jan Beatty
Alyse Bensel
Carole Bernstein
Chris Bullard
Geraldine Connolly
Paola Corso
Mark Danowsky
Gregory Djanikian
Daniel Donaghy
Joseph Dorazio
Christine Gelineau
S.E. Gilman
Mauricio Kilwein Guevara

Vernita Hall
Jocelyn Heath
Amanda Hodes
Erin Hoover
Chuck Joy
Kristin Kovacic
Leonard Kress
Richard Krohn
Lynn Levin
Marjorie Maddox
Sharon Fagan McDermot
Ann E. Michael
Julie L. Moore
Heather Myers
Robbi Nester
Jacqueline Osherow
John Repp
Laura Rutland
Mark Saba
Barbara Sabol
Judith Sornberger
Julie Standig
Alison Carb Sussman
Philip Terman
Elaine Terranova
Patricia Thrushart
J. C. Todd
Lee Upton
Matthew Ussia
Jeanne Murray Walker
Susan Weaver
Virginia Watts
Martin Jr. Willitts

Live Poetry: Ryan Eckes and Nycir Keen
2025-07-30 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday July 30, 2025 – 7pm- LIVE
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Ryan Eckes is the author of Wrong Heaven Again, General Motors, Valu-Plus and Old News, as well as several chapbooks. His poems have appeared in Prolit, Protean Magazine, Tripwire, The New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere. With Kim Gek Lin Short, he runs Radiator Press.
Nycir Keen is an active performer and spoken word artist, has been a member of the Collective Mic and is a frequent poet for the Gullah Traveling Theater.
Aaron Gadbury, Lindsay Hargrave, Warren Longmire Hosts, Open Reading Follows

Virtual Poetry: Tyler Dunston, Maria James-Thiaw, Miho Kinnas, E. Ethelbert Miller, and Terra Oliveira
2025-08-03 14:00 - 16:00 | virtual
Sunday August 3, 2025 – 2pmEDT – VIRTUAL
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/Q7Xq5kmfTySArIh_8ejLtg
Tyler Dunston, author of Octaves, is a writer and visual artist, whose poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Hawaiʻi Pacific Review, Narrative Magazine, Raleigh Review, and other journals.
Maria James-Thiaw is an award-winning poet, performer, and playwright.  She is the author of three poetry books, has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, and is the founder of Reclaim Artist Collective.
Miho Kinnas is a Japanese writer, translator and poet, author of three poetry collections, and teaches Poems of All Sizes: Japanese Poetic Forms at Writers.com and New York Writers Workshop.
E. Ethelbert Miller is a literary activist and author of several poetry collections. He was given a 2020 congressional award in recognition of his literary activism, awarded the Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award, named a Grammy Nominee Finalist for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album and was awarded the Furious Flower Lifetime Achievement Award.
Terra Oliveira is the author of Itinerant Songs, and the founding editor of Recenter Press. A finalist in the 2024 Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry, her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Bamboo Ridge, The Common, Puerto del Sol, Protean Magazine, and more.

Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Reading Series: David Ebenbach
2025-08-05 18:30 - 20:30 | virtual
Tuesday August 5, 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
David Ebenbach, the author of collections of fiction (Between Camelots; Into the Wilderness), poetry (We Were the People Who Moved; Autogeography) and essays (The Artist’s Torah) was born and raised in the great city of Philadelphia, home of America’s first library, first art museum, first public school, and first zoo, along with David’s very first stories and poems, though those early efforts went on to become (deservedly) less famous than, for example, the zoo. Since those days he’s lived in Ohio, Wisconsin, Philadelphia again, New York, New Jersey, Indiana, and Ohio again, picking up some education (formal and otherwise) along the way, and he now lives very happily in Washington, DC.
Charles S. Carr, Host

Live Poetry: Phoebe Brown, Courtney LeBlanc, and Sean W. Lynch
2025-08-06 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday August 6, 2025 7pm- LIVE
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Phoebe Brown is a poet recently published by Anthropocene Poetry, in “Impossible Task” with Another New Calligraphy, Hog River Press, and Moonstone Arts Center.
Courtney LeBlanc is the Arlington County Poet Laureate, founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press and founder of the Poetry Coven, a monthly generative workshop.
Sean W. Lynch is author of five books of, has been the editor of various magazines, journals, anthologies, and books, and worked for non-profit organizations such as Moonstone Arts Center and the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association.
Aaren Yeatts Perry Host – Open Reading Follows

National Book Lovers Day
2025-08-10 14:00 - 17:00 | virtual
Sunday August 10, 2025 – 2pm EDT – VIRTUAL – National Book Lovers Day
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/6vfdhJLjQ_q5lAr_bMgtuQ
From clay tablets to today’s eBooks, literature has played a crucial role in preserving cultures, educating the masses, and storytelling. Thanks to Johannes Gutenberg’s 15th-century printing press, anyone, not just royalty, monks or landed gentry, could read and own books.
With time, printing on woodblocks also became the go-to way of reproducing books in China. The ancient scrolls dating back to the 4th century B.C. are considered the first ‘books,’ but by today’s definition, the oldest surviving compiled book is “The Diamond Sutra” which was published in China on May 11, 868.

Live Poetry: Shaina Clingempeel, Jacqueline Jewell, Warren C. Longmire, and Lynda Gene Rymond
2025-08-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday August 13, 2025 7pm- LIVE
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Shaina Clingempeel, author of in the homes that house my history, is a Philly-based poet and the owner of a small book editing business (Cypress Editorial) and literary magazine (Cypress Review). Her poems can be found in Coffin Bell, The Passionfruit Review, The Rupture, and many other places. She has a poetry MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Follow @cypresseditorial (IG, TikTok) for updates on her work and more.
Jacqueline Jewell, author of Lady Arab, is a poet, college professor, EMMY Award-winning journalist, mother, and activist. A Philadelphia area native and proud daughter of an immigrant, Jacqueline uses her poetry to amplify underrepresented and discounted voices. She has won the first-ever “Share Your Voices” award, a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Writing Contest, in honor of Black History Month at Rosemont College. Jacqueline’s poetry collection, Lady Arab, is based on a true story of her grandmother surviving genocide, her mother escaping war, and Jacqueline’s own experience with racism and misogyny as a young woman of color. The three Arab women represented in Jacqueline’s collection is more than just her family’s story, it’s the story of every Arab woman stripped of their rights, suffering from a world that has forsaken them.
Warren C. Longmire is a writer, performer and educator from the bad part of North Philadelphia. He is author of Bird/Diz: An Erased History of Bebop and you can find his work in journals including Action, Spectacle, R&R, and the American Poetry Review as well as in the anthologies Best American Poetry 2021 Anthology and A Black Philadelphia Reader. He is the former contributing editor for Apiary Magazine, the host of House Poet: Spoken Word Dance Party and the founder of _mixlit, has been a CUPSI grand slam and NPS group piece finalist, coached the Philly Pigeon and Fuze Slam Team, and has performed in venues including the Kimmel Center, The Nuyorican Poetry Cafe. Warren is currently attending the Iowa Writer’s Workshop pursuing a master’s degree in Poetry.
Lynda Gene Rymond, author of Spellbook, a member of Dr. Christopher Bursk’s Masters Poetry Workshop and is a multi-year finalist/runner-up for Bucks County Poet Laureate. Her work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, she authored the children’s books The Village of Basketeers and Oscar & the Mooncats . Lynda Gene lives and works on Goblin Farm in Applebachsville, Pa, and is the creator of the online Words Come Easy writing workshops.
Open reading follows

Virtual Poetry: Julia Bouwsma, Hiram Larew, Peter E. Murphy, and Scott W. Williams
2025-08-17 14:00 - 16:00 | virtual
Sunday August 17, 2025 – 2pm EDT – VIRTUAL
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/s2XRWbF_Q2C7hQaK6Bf0PQ
Julia Bouwsma lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine where she works as a poet, homesteader, editor, teacher, and small-town librarian. She is Maine’s sixth Poet Laureate and is the author of Death Fluorescence, Midden, and Work by Bloodlight. Bouwsma’s honors include a 2024 Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets and two Maine Literary Awards. Her work can be found in Ecotone, Green Mountains Review, Kenyon Review, Plume, Poetry Daily, and others. She has taught in the Creative Writing the University of Maine (Farmington), serves on the Community Advisory Board for the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, and works as the Library Director for Webster Library.
Hiram Larew’s poems have received the Louisiana Literature Prize, the Washington review poetry blue ribbon, and have been nominated for four Pushcarts. His work has appeared in Poetry Scotland, Poetry South, The Brown Critique, Contemporary American Voices, Honest Ulsterman, Amsterdam Quarterly and others. He’s received an artists’ grants from Arts Councils as well as the United Nations for his Poetry X Hunger initiative which encourages poets to contribute to anti-hunger efforts, founded the Voices of Woodlawn, a powerful program of poetry, music and art that explores America’s tragic history of slavery, is a Courtesy Faculty at five U. S. universities.
Peter E. Murphy has published a dozen books of nonfiction and poetry, has appeared in hundreds of journals, anthologies and textbooks including The Sun, The Shakespeare Quarterly, Teachers & Writers Guide to Frederick Douglass, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Guernica, Harpur Palate, The Literary Review and The New Welsh Reader. For more than forty years Peter has led workshops for thousands of writers in the United States and abroad. He has been a consultant to The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Educational Testing Service, Arts Horizons, AtlantiCare Health System, The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, The New Jersey Councils for the Arts and the Humanities, The New Jersey Department of Education, and countless school districts from coast to coast.
Scott W. Williams (University of Buffalo Mathematics Professor Emeritus) is a traveling poet and author of short stories. He is author of The Gamblers Woods: Poetry from Baltimore’s Wilson Park, (Moonstone Press) and six other books. Scott edits the syfy poetry&flash-fiction anthology series, A Flash of Dark and A Flash of Dark vol 2, and hosts workshops of the poetic forms Ghazal, Haiku and Senryu and co-hosts the series Second Stage Writers and Poets Soup).

Live Poetry: Sydney Coffin, Raina J. León, and Genevieve Rand
2025-08-20 19:00 - 21:00 | 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 | PA
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
