Moonstone Arts Center

PhillyCAM - Generations of Poetry
2020-02-04 18:30 (America/New_York) | PhillyCAM, 699 Ranstead Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19106, United States
Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Readings Series on PhillyCAM
There are there are over 50 organizations that promote poetry in the Philadelphia area. They represent every poetry form, ethnic background, age, gender and community. This series consists of a panel of guest poets and artists discussing the opportunities which their group or organization provides for poets in Philly as well as the themes that influence them.
The program is broadcast live on the first Tuesday of each month. The program is free and open to everyone. Please join us.

Octavia McBride-Ahebee ‘s work presents human relationships within the context of global inequality. She is author of Assuming Voices, Where My Birthmark Dances and Praise Song for the Gravediggers. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Rigorous, For Harriet, Raising Lilly Ledbetter; Women Poets Occupy the Workplace.

Sojourner Ahebee was born in Cote d’Ivoire to an American mother and Ivoirien father, Sojourner Ahebee writes stories about African diaspora identities and the eternal question of home and belonging. She served as a National Student Poet, the nation’s highest honor for young poets presenting original work and was invited to the White House by former First Lady, Michelle Obama, to garner her award.

Charles S. Carr, Host

Interview and Reading
2020-02-05 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Chidi E. O. Ezeobi, author of Remind the World, was born in Nigeria and migrated to the United States in 1996. Chidi Ezeobi was recently released after serving 11 years in prison. He resides in Newark New Jersey while working on his second book
Sean Lynch, Host, Open Reading Follows

Poetry And Music
2020-02-12 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Peter Baroth, an award-winning poet and visual artist, is also a bassist who, along with his band the Party Crashers, has had the original song “Roy Head” streamed on Sirius XM Satellite Radio’s Goldie’s Garage.
Elliott Levin is a Philadelphia jazz legend plays the saxophone and the flute and he’s also an abstract poet and often combines poetry and music during his performances.
Joe Roarty is a poet who moves his work along a steady line of the hand drum he often uses to accentuate, drive, and punctuate his readings.

Larry Robin, Host, Open Reading Follows

Blanche Brown & Terra Oliveira
2020-02-19 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Blanche Brown operates a crisis hotline and collaborates with arts and community-based organizations. She is the 2019 winner of the Diagram/New Michigan Press chapbook contest. Her writing has appeared in West Branch, Scalawag, Indy Weekly, Welter, and elsewhere.
Terra Oliveira is an after-school program facilitator at the Free Library, an organizer for the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the founder and editor of Recenter Press. Their work has been featured in Prolit Magazine, Hooligan Magazine, and others.

Ryan Eckes, Host, Open Reading Follows

On Toni: She Was A Friend of My Mind
2020-02-23 13:00 - 15:30 | African American Museum, 701 Arch Sreet, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Tickets to this event are SOLD OUT.
Event Overview
The African American Museum in Philadelphia, alongside the Moonstone Arts Center and the Scribe Video Center, is hosting a three-part event in tribute to the award-winning novelist and poet who brought forth the prominent issues on race and identity into the american literary mainstream. The event will first begin with a showing of “The Foreigner’s Home” which then moving onto a conversation between Sonia Sanchez and Louis Massiah. The event ends with a reading of Moonstone’s newest anthology, “Remembering Toni Morrison,” which focuses read by various collaborators of the chapbook.
Toni Morrison was a novelist, essayist, children’s writer, and an English professor. Song of Solomon won the National Book Critics Circle Award and Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In 1993, she received the Nobel Prize in Literature, making her the first woman of African descent to win the prize.
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”

The Foreigner’s Home explores Toni Morrison’s artistic and intellectual vision through “The Foreigner’s Home,” her 2006 exhibition at the Louvre Museum in Paris. Through exclusive footage we observe Morrison in dialogue with artists, most prominently, writer Edwidge Danticat, as the discussion of “foreignness” extends beyond the urgent questions of migration in the Americas, Europe, and in the Middle East, and explores art’s crucial role in comprehending the human problems that surround such questions. The film features extensive archival still and motion pictures of American and international topics and events basic to Morrison’s vision—from slavery to the blues, from Hurricane Katrina to the current migration crisis in the Middle East and Europe.

Speakers:
Sonia Sanchez is a poet, activist, scholar; the Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Temple University; recipient of both the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry and Langston Hughes Poetry Award; one of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement; the author of sixteen books including Like the Singing Coming off the Drums, Does Your House Have Lions?, Wounded in the House of a Friend, and Shake Loose My Skin.
Louis Massiah is an independent filmmaker who explores historical and political subjects. Massiah is a graduate of Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving a degree in documentary film-maker. His producing and directing credits include Trash (1985), Louise Alone Thompson Patterson: In Her Own Words (2002), and more. He also produced two films for the PBS series, Eyes on the Prize II (1990). In addition to his film work, Massiah founded the Scribe Video Center, a West Philadelphia-based media arts organization that provides training and equipment access to emerging filmmakers and community organizations.

Remembering Toni Morrison is an anthology published by Moonstone Arts Center in remembrance of her life and legacy to overcoming adversity and raising awareness for issues and cultures mainstream media had once ignored. A collection of poetry written by poets and authors all around the nation, Remembering Toni Morrison is a testament to her reach and sheer presence as both a writer and public figure for black literature.
The Book will be available for sale during the event for $10.

"The Child I Was" with Martin Jude Farawell
2020-02-26 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Poet and playwright Martin Jude Farawell is the author of Odd Boy and Genesis: A Sequence of Poems.” His work has appeared in a wide range of journals and anthologies, and his plays have been performed off-off-Broadway and by regional, college and community theaters from South Africa to Los Angeles. He directs the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.
Ona Gritz’s poetry collection Geode was a finalist for the 2013 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. Together with her husband Daniel Simpson, she is co-author of Border Songs: A Conversation in Poems and co-editor of More Challenges For the Delusional. Ona’s poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Catamaran Literary Reader, Bellevue Literary Review, Seneca Review, and elsewhere.
Alina Macneal & Jennifer Hook, Hosts, Open Reading Follows

PhillyCAM: Irish Poetry
2020-03-03 18:30 | PhillyCAM, 699 Ranstead Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19106, United States
Comcast Cable 66/966HD/967 or Verizon FIOS 29/30 in Philadelphia.
Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Readings Series on PhillyCAM
After Boston, Philly and its immediate suburbs have the largest concentration of Irish Americans. The Irish take great pride in their rich culture of literature and poetry—claiming some of the greatest poets and writers in the world including Yeats, Heaney, Joyce, Becket, Boland and Muldoon to name a few. This program will explore Irish poetry from the perspective of America and Ireland.

Sean Lynch’s poems have been published in various journals and he is the author of four chapbooks, he’s the Managing Editor of Thirty West Publishing House and hosts poetry readings for Moonstone Arts Center.

Bernadette McBride serves as poetry editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal and is author of four poetry collections, she is an adjunct English professor as well as a presenter of community writing workshops and programs.

Charles S. Carr, Host

Adriann Bautista, Jamarr Hall, Elijah B. Pringle III
2020-03-04 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Adriann Bautista is author of “Ballad of a Beautiful Brown King”, “Sister Strength” and “Sanctuary of Snow” and is also in various anthologies.
Jamarr Hall is an International Poetry Slam Champion of Brave New Voices and he is a singer, composer as well as an accomplished painter.
Elijah B Pringle III is a Philadelphia based writer/director/actor/choreographer whose words have been published on every continent except for South American and Antarctica. He has recently completed his first full length play and his most recent publication is Lamda Lancer a collection of LGBT inspired poetry

2019 Featured Poets Anthology Reading
2020-03-08 13:00 | The Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine Street, 1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Moonstone Arts Center presented 85 poetry readings in 2019, including featured poets and large events with many presenting poets. All told over 500 poets read at Moonstone events, over 150 being featured. 82 poets responded to our call for the 2019 featured Poets Anthology and about 30 are expected to read at this event.
Please join us for an afternoon of poetry.

James Arthur, George David Clark, Trapeta B. Mayson
2020-03-11 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
James Arthur, a Canadian-American poet, is the author of The Suicide’s Son and Charms Against Lightning. Arthur lives in Baltimore, where he teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
George David Clark’s Reveille received the 2015 Miller Williams Prize, he teaches creative writing at Washington & Jefferson College and lives in western Pennsylvania.
Trapeta B. Mayson is the City of Philadelphia’s current Poet Laureate. She is the author of She Was Once Herself and a chapbook, Mocha Melodies.
An Equinox Reading. John Wall Barger, Host, Open Reading Follow

BLACK LIVES MATTER: Virtual Poetry Reading
2020-08-05 19:00 | PA
Zoom Meeting ID: 821 6127 0135 – Zoom Passcode: [REDACTED] – Phone: 1-646-9923
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82161270135?pwd=[REDACTED]
Sandra Turner-Barnes is an author, poet, and jazz lover and vocalist. Her first book of poetry Always A Lady has sold over 7,000 copies. In 1996, Sandra won the EBONY MAGAZINE Literary Competition for Short Fiction, and in 1997, Sandra re-created the concept of “Jazz-Oetry” and began singing Jazz. In 2000, Sandra’s live jazz vocals’ video performance, with pianist Barry Sames, was selected for National & International airing on BET’s syndicated show “Jazz Discoveries.”
Theodore A. Harris is a collagist, poet, and founder and director of The Institute for Advanced Study in Black Aesthetics. He has co-authored books with Amiri Baraka, such as Our Flesh of Flames, Malcolm X as Ideology, and TRIPTYCH: Text by Amiri Baraka and Jack Hirschman, as well as i ran from it and was still in it with Fred Moten. “Posed against an eerily iridescent orange sky,” as quoted from Our Flesh Of Flames, Harris’ collaged landscapes are filled with urban dystopia. Upside down capitols and distorted banknotes pose the reality of a society fettered by the cash nexus. Controversial critic and poet Amiri Baraka provides lyrical assault through his captions with his trademark humor and biting social commentary.
Lamont B. Steptoe is an award-winning poet, photographer, founder of Whirlwind Press, and Vietnam veteran, born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has published sixteen collections of poems and is the winner of an American Book Award, a Pew Fellow in the Arts, and two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts awards, as well as induction into the International Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent by the Gwendolyn Brooks Center in Chicago. Steptoe’s work appears in over one hundred anthologies, the most recent being Waging Peace in Vietnam. His most recent titles are Crowns & Halos, Oracular Rumblings & Stilt Walking, Meditations in Congo Square, and Beyond the White Stone Lions.
M. Nzadi Keita is a native Philadelphian. Her most recent collection, Brief Evidence of Heaven, sheds light on Anna Murray Douglass, Frederick Douglass’ first wife. Poet Lore journal, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, and other publications have featured her work. Keita received a 2017 Pew Fellowship for Poetry. She is an associate professor of English, Creative Writing, and African-American/Africana Studies at Ursinus College.
Kirwyn Sutherland is a Clinical Research Professional and poet who makes poems centering the black experience in America. He is a Watering Hole fellow and has attended workshops/residencies at Cave Canem, Winter Tangerine, Poets House, Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, and Pearlstein Art Gallery at Drexel University. Kirwyn was a member of the 2015 Philadelphia Pigeon Slam and the 2016 Philadelphia Fuze Poetry Slam Team. Kirwyn’s work has been published in American Poetry Review, Blueshift Journal, APIARY Magazine, FOLDER, The Wanderer, and elsewhere. He has served as Editor of Lists/Book Reviewer for WusGood magazine and poetry editor for APIARY Magazine and teaches Spoken Word/Poetry Performance at the University of the Arts.
Lamont B. Steptoe, Host

On the Verge: Poets of the Palisades with Dave Worrell
2020-08-16 14:00 | PA
Zoom Meeting ID: 818 3720 4326, Zoom Passcode: [REDACTED] Phone: 1-646-9923
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81837204326?pwd=[REDACTED]
On the Verge: Poets of the Palisades III is an anthology that consists of 80 contributors in the Tri-State who were featured over a four-year period from both series that are sponsored by the North Jersey Literary Community and hosted by Denise La Neve and Paul Nash.
Norma Ketzis Bernstock‘s poetry has appeared in many print and online journals, including Napalm and Novacaine, Stillwater Review, Exit 13, US 1 Worksheets, Connecticut River Review, and Paterson Literary Review.
Theresa Burns is author of Two Train Town, Pushcart Prize nominee, and founder and curator of Watershed Literary Events in New Jersey. Her poetry, reviews, and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, Prairie Schooner, New Ohio Review, JAMA, America Magazine, The Cortland Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere.
Deborah Gerris is the author of three books of poems, Light in Light (2017), The Language of Paisley, and the chapbook The Language of Rain. Her poems appear in many anthologies and journals.
Anton Yakovlev‘s latest poetry chapbook Chronos Dines Alone (SurVision Books, 2018) won the James Tate Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Criterion, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere.
Paul Nash works at AMNH, conducting laboratory and field research on ancient organisms preserved in amber and sedimentary rock. He authors scientific articles, poetry, fiction, and satire. He has been both an editor and contributor for three Poets of the Palisades anthologies, an editor for Roy Lucianna’s posthumous poetry collection Neptune on High, and founded and co-hosts two reading series (with his wife Denise).
Denise La Neve writes both poetry and fiction. She was a contributor and editor for the 2010 and 2016 Poets of the Palisades anthologies Beyond the Rift and META-LAND. She co-hosts two poetry series under the umbrella of the North Jersey Literary Community (The Poets of the Palisades in Teaneck and The High Mountain Meadow in Wayne).
John J. Trause, Director of Oradell Public Library, is the author of six books of poetry and one of parody, Latter-Day Litany (Éditions élastiques, 1996), the latter staged Off-Broadway. Marymark Press has published his visual poetry and art as broadsides and sheets. He is a founder of the William Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative in Rutherford, N. J., and the former host and curator of its monthly reading series.
Dave Worrell is author of We Who Were Bound and the ekphrastic collection Close to Home features paintings by Catherine Kuzma. Dave’s poems have appeared in Slant, Canary, Shot Glass Journal, Painted Bride Quarterly, Schuylkill Valley Journal, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Exit 13, and elsewhere. He has performed his music-backed poems at Chris’ Jazz Café in Philadelphia.
Dave Worrell, Host

M. Nzadi Keita, JC Todd, Alina Macneal, Jennifer Hook
2020-08-26 19:00 | PA
Zoom Meeting ID: 849 0497 4839, Passcode: [REDACTED] Phone: +1 646-876-9923
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84904974839?pwd=[REDACTED]
Nzadi Keita, a Philly-born writer, editor, and scholar, is a 2017 Pew Fellow for the Arts in Poetry. Her book of persona poems, BRIEF EVIDENCE OF HEAVEN, gives voice to abolitionist Anna Murray Douglass, first wife of Frederick Douglass. Cited by Yale historian David Blight, the book was also a finalist for the Phillis Wheatley Prize from the Quarterly Black Book Review. Keita is an alumna of Cave Canem, whose poems have appeared in journals such as Poet Lore and anthologies including A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. Fellowships from Yaddo, the Fine Arts Work Center, and Leeway Foundation have supported Keita’s writing and community work. She has collaborated with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Project, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and WHYY. Keita is an associate professor at Ursinus College.
J. C. Todd is author of five books of poetry; most recent are Beyond Repair, runner-up in the 2020 Able Muse Press Contest (forthcoming in 2020), and The Damages of Morning (Moonstone Press), a 2019 Eric Hoffer Award finalist. Winner of the Rita Dove Prize and twice a finalist for Poetry Society of America awards, she holds fellowships from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and has poems in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Paris Review, and Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.
Alina Macneal & Jennifer Hook, Hosts
You can sign up for the open reading at 7PM!

Serotonin Poetry Project
2020-09-05 14:00 | PA
Zoom Meeting ID: 851 0353 5295, Passcode: [REDACTED] Phone: +1 646-876-9923
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85103535295?pwd=[REDACTED]
Cynthia Arrieu-King teaches creative writing, literature, and general studies. Her poetry books include People are Tiny in Paintings of China, Manifest, and Futureless Languages. Her poetry book Continuity is forthcoming from Octopus Books and her book of experimental memoir The Betweens is forthcoming from Noemi in 2021.
Praise Osawaru is a Nigerian writer, (performance) poet, & wannabe entrepreneur studying at the University of Benin, Nigeria. His works have appeared/forthcoming in African Writer, Kreative Diadem, Ibua Journal, Ngiga Review, Perhappened Magazine, Praxis Magazine & elsewhere. He was longlisted for African Writers Award 2019 and shortlisted in the 2019 Kreative Diadem Creative Writing Contest. He’s openly a film fanatic & overall art enthusiast/lover. Say hello on Instagram/Twitter: @wordsmithpraise
Amber Renee, she/her, 26, writes from her home in suburban Bucks County, PA. A fool hopelessly in love with the pursuit of psycheverse knowledge, she often writes autobiographically. “Thoughts on This Most Recent Episode” was her 2016 full length collection of self-published poetry ruminating on her thoughts & illnesses. As recently as January 2020 she published a Poetry Picture book “i feel like i’m nothing” available online. Find her on social media @amberreneepoet
Sean Lynch, Host

2020 Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Reading Series on PhillyCAM
2020-09-08 18:30 | PA
699 Ranstead Street. Comcast Cable 66/966HD/967 or Verizon FIOS 29/30 in Philadelphia
2020-2021 Philadelphia Poet Laureate on the role of the Laureate in promoting the love of poetry in the City and communities.
Trapeta B. Mayson is the 2020-2021 Philadelphia Poet Laureate. She is a recipient of a Pew Fellowship in Literature, Leeway Transformation Award, Leeway Art and Change Grant and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Grants. Her work was also nominated for a 2016 Pushcart Prize. Mayson is a Cave Canem and Callaloo Fellow and a 2019 Aspen Words Emerging Writers Fellow with the Aspen Institute. She is the author of She Was Once Herself and Mocha Melodies. Mayson also released two music and poetry projects, SCAT and This Is How We Get Through, in collaboration with internationally acclaimed jazz guitarist, Monnette Sudler. Her other publications include submissions in The American Poetry Review, Epiphany Literary Journal, Aesthetica Magazine, Margie: The American Journal of Poetry among others. Mayson is a native of Liberia. She is a graduate of Temple University, Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research and Villanova University School of Business. Currently working in the social services field, Mayson is a member of several local organizations where she uses the arts to mobilize, build community and create change. trapetamayson.com
Charles S. Carr, Host

2019 Chapbook Contest Winners
2020-09-09 19:00 | PA
Zoom Meeting ID: 824 4272 1486, Passcode: [REDACTED] Phone: +1 646-876-9923
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82442721486?pwd=[REDACTED]
Book of Micah – Kenneth Pobo
Kenneth Pobo teaches Creative Writing and English at Widener University near Philadelphia. He and his husband live in Media. He began writing poetry in 1970 at the age of fifteen. He likes doing character studies in poetry form. His poems are often concerned with issues related to the LGBTQ community as well as the environment.
Help Me to Fall – Emma Wynn
Emma Wynn received her masters degree from Harvard Divinity School and teaches Philosophy & Religion at a boarding school in rural Connecticut, where she lives with her partner and two children. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Coffin Bell Journal, Sky Island Journal (which nominated her poem for the Pushcart Prize), Prime Number Magazine, Apricity Press, and West Trade Review.
letters in the dirt – Rosie DeSantis
Rosie DeSantis is a theater-maker, poet, facilitator, native Detroiter, and local community organizer. Their poetry has been featured in a number of local, national, and international publications, including Rabbit Catastrophe Press as a 2017 finalist in their Real Good Poem competition. Letters in the Dirt earned them a spot on No Proscenium’s 2018 list of 25 Immersive Companies & Creators to Watch in New York and was nominated for three awards by the New York Innovative Theatre Foundation.
Larry Robin, Host
Open reading follows event

Virtual Poetry Reading: Antonio Lopez, Chukwuma Ndulue, Ewuare Osayande, with Elijah Pringle
2020-09-16 19:00 | PA
Zoom Meeting ID: 836 1745 1559, Passcode: [REDACTED] Phone: +1 646-876-9923
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83617451559?pwd=[REDACTED]
Antonio López received a double B.A. in Global Cultural Studies and African & African-American studies from Duke University, scholarships to attend the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Tin House, the Vermont Studio Center, and Bread Loaf. He is a proud member of the Macondo Writers Workshop and a CantoMundo Fellow. His nonfiction has been featured or is forthcoming in PEN/America, Jacket2, and Insider Higher Education, and his poetry in The New Republic, Tin House, and elsewhere. He received his Masters in Fine Arts (poetry) at Rutgers-Newark and a Masters in Philosophy in Modern Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University. His debut collection, Gentefication, was selected by Gregory Pardlo as the winner of the 2019 Levis Prize in Poetry to be published through Four Way Books.
Chukwuma Ndulue is the author of the chapbook Boys Quarter (Ugly Duckling Presse). His work has appeared in BOAAT, Muse/A Journal, Tinderbox, PANK, Brooklyn Poets and other publications. He has been the recipient of fellowships from Columbia University and Kenyon College.
Ewuare X. Osayande is a poet and publisher. He is the founder of FreedomSeed Press, established in 2002. The author of several books including Whose America?: New and Selected Poems, his latest book is entitled Black Phoenix Uprising published by Africa World Press. Poet icon Amiri Baraka has said that “Ewuare Osayande is one of the United States’ most important poets of this generation.” Learn more about his work at Osayande.org.
Elijah Pringle, Host
Open reading follows event

Take Five: Laura Baird, Deborah Brown, Barbara Siegel Carlson, Richard Jackson, Susan Thomas, with Dave Worrell
2020-09-20 14:00 | PA
Zoom Meeting ID: 828 6011 8796 Passcode: [REDACTED] Phone: +1 646-876-9923
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82860118796?pwd=[REDACTED]
Generous, empathetic, and deftly observant, these poems leave an afterglow, each one small candle guiding us through the forest of so much we don’t know. – Leslie Ullman, author of Library Of Small Happiness and Progress on the Subject of Immensity
Laura (Behr) Baird has published in The Cortland Review, Numero Cinq, Canyon Voices, vox poetica, among others. Laura lives in Montgomery, Alabama. As a psychotherapist, she has been in private practice for 25 year
Deborah Brown’s new book, The Human Half was published from BOA Editions in 2019. Her first book Walking the Dog’s Shadow, was a winner of the A. J. Poulin Jr. Award and of a New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry. The title poem of the collection was awarded a Pushcart Prize. She co-edited Lofty Dogmas: Poets on Poetics and co-translated the poems in Last Voyage: Selected Poems of Giovanni Pascoli. She lives in Warner, NH.
Barbara Siegel Carlson is the author of poetry books Once in Every Language and Fire Road, co-translator of Open: Selected Poems and Thoughts of of Srečko Kosovel (2018) and Look Back, Look Ahead, Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel and co-editor of A Bridge of Voices: Contemporary Slovene Poetry and Perspectives. Carlson serves as Poetry in Translation Editor for Solstice and teaches in Boston.
Richard Jackson has published twenty-five books including fifteen books of poems, most recently Broken Horizons. He was awarded the Order of Freedom Medal for literary and humanitarian work in the Balkans by the President of Slovenia for his work with the Slovene-based Peace and Sarajevo Committees of PEN International. He has received Guggenheim, NEA, NEH, and two Witter-Bynner fellowships, five Pushcart Prizes and has appeared in Best American Poems ‘97 as well as many other anthologies. In 2009 he won the AWP George Garret Award for teaching and writing.
Susan Thomas is author of State of Blessed Gluttony which won the Benjamin Saltman prize, The Empty Notebook Interrogates Itself and In the Sadness. She has also published two chapbooks, a collection of short stories, Among Angelic Orders, and is co-translator of Last Voyage, a collection of Giovanni Pascoli’s selected poems. . She has also won first prizes for poetry from the Iowa Poetry Review, USC, Spoon River Review and Mississippi Review.
Dave Worrell, Host

The E-Verse Equinox Reading Series: Indran Amirthanayagam, James Arthur, Leonard Gontarek, with John Wall Barger
2020-09-22 19:00 | PA
Zoom Meeting ID: 884 1011 7845, Passcode: [REDACTED] Phone: +1 646-876-9923
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88410117845?pwd=[REDACTED]
Indran Amirthanayagam, writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole, has published 19 poetry collections and recorded a spoken word album Rankont Dout, edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly. He has won the Paterson Poetry Prize. His new books are The Migrant States, Sur l’île nostalgique and Lírica a Tiempo
(Editorial Mesa Redonda, Lima, 2020). Signed copies of these new books are available from the author. Contact: indranmx@gmail.com. Twitter: @indranmx. Instagram: @Indran1960. Facebook: Indran Amirthanayagam

Canadian-American poet James Arthur is the author of The Suicide’s Son (Véhicule Press 2019) and Charms Against Lightning (Copper Canyon Press, 2012.) His poems have also appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New York Review of Books, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, and The London Review of Books. He has received the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, a Hodder Fellowship, a Stegner Fellowship, a Discovery/The Nation Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship to Northern Ireland, and a Visiting Fellowship at Exeter College, Oxford. Arthur lives in Baltimore, where he teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

Leonard Gontarek coordinates Peace/Works, Poetry In Common, Philly Poetry Day, hosts The Green Line Reading & Interview Series, is Poetry Consultant for Whitman at 200: Art and Democracy and contributing editor for The American Poetry Review. He is the author of six books of poems, most recently Take Your Hand Out of My Pocket, Shiva. His poems have appeared in Field, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, Fence, Poetry Northwest, and The Best American Poetry. He has twice received poetry fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on The Arts. He conducts poetry workshops in venues including, The Kelly Writers House, Free Library of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership, and weekly workshops from his home in West Philadelphia.
John Wall Barger, Host
Open reading to follow

New Voices: Lex Bakey, Matilda Bray, Zillah Elcin, Rachel Haas-Gutin, Devon James, Cooper Kidd, Sam Lyons, Kelly McGeehan, Cecelia McKinney, Isabella Piacentino, Aimee Schwartz, Hoa-Angel Tran, Maya Workowski, Darian Zenouzi, with Krisann Janowitz
2020-09-26 15:00 | PA
Zoom Meeting ID: 867 1393 7746, Passcode: [REDACTED] Phone: +1 646-876-9923
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86713937746?pwd=[REDACTED]
New Voices feature poets under the age of 25 who have much to say and we believe they should be heard. We are excited to be a part of this community of young writers through readings and publications.
I think it’s fair to say 2020 has been a weird year. Given the scale of COVID Moonstone was forced to close for over three months Meaning projects, like New Voices, were put on hold.
While we’d like to say things are completely back to normal, they’re not. Still, we’re back and we’ve made some adjustments!
The reading on September 26 features some of the poets from 2020 in a zoom presentation with an eBook on our website. We are continuing to solicit poems and plan on having another event and book in December. Please joins us to hear these poets and send us your work.
Readers may include (not everyone is reading)
Lex Bakey, Matilda Bray, Zillah Elcin, Rachel Haas-Gutin, Devon James, Cooper Kidd, Sam Lyons, Kelly McGeehan, Cecelia McKinney, Isabella Piacentino, Aimee Schwartz, Hoa-Angel Tran, Maya Workowski, Darian Zenouzi
Krisann Janowitz, Host

Virtual Poetry Reading: Sarah Browning, Kathleen O'Toole, with Larry Robin
2020-09-30 19:00 | PA
Zoom Meeting ID: 824 3734 5103, Passcode: [REDACTED] Phone: +1 646-876-9923
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82437345103?pwd=[REDACTED]
Sarah Browning is the author of Killing Summer and Whiskey in the Garden of Eden. She is co-founder and for 10 years was Executive Director of Split This Rock: Poems of Provocation & Witness. She is recipient of the Lillian E. Smith Writer-in-Service Award as well as of fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, Yaddo, Mesa Refuge, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been guest editor or co-edited special issues of Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Delaware Poetry Review, and three issues of POETRY magazine. She’s currently pursuing an MFA in poetry and creative non-fiction at Rutgers Camden. For more info: www.sarahbrowning.net
Kathleen O’Toole is the author of This Far: Poems
“The poetic and personal journey that has led me to the threshold of This Far braids a long professional life in community organizing with poetry − both writing and teaching. My creativity was nurtured in a family of actors in Wilmington Delaware. After earning a BA in French at Catholic University in DC, and a year of graduate Divinity studies, I poured most of my energy into my public vocation for decades. But poetry and the pull of more contemplative pursuits remained strong. In 1991, I received an MA in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University, and subsequently taught writing at Hopkins and at the Maryland Institute College of Art.”
Larry Robin, Host
Open reading to follow

Serotonin: Ejiro Elizabeth Edward, Adam Grabowski, and Maria S. Picone, with Sean Lynch
2020-10-03 14:00 | PA
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85477143675?pwd=[REDACTED]
Zoom Meeting ID: 854 7714 3675, Passcode: [REDACTED] Phone: +1 646-876-9923
Ejiro Elizabeth Edward is a writer from Nigeria. A passionate lover of the arts, she has been published on Inverse journal, stone of madness, Fortunate traveler and has been shortlisted for the dark juices anthology. She loves to travel and read when she’s not been frustrated by the school system.
Adam Grabowski holds an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and is the recipient of a 2020 Parent-Writer Fellowship from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. His poems have been featured or are forthcoming in such journals as Hobart, jubilat, and Sixth Finch, as well as the anthologies What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Rage in the Age of Trump and Alongside We Travel: Contemporary Poets on Autism. Adam currently lives a life of stern comfort, alongside his wife and two daughters, in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
Maria S. Picone (she/her/hers) writes, paints, and teaches from her home in South Carolina. Her writing has been published in Kissing Dynamite, Ligeia, and Q/A Poetry, among others. A Korean adoptee, Maria often explores themes of identity, exile, and social issues facing Asian Americans. She received an MFA in fiction from Goddard College and holds degrees in philosophy and political science. You can find more on her website, mariaspicone.com, or Twitter @mspicone.
Sean Lynch, Host

Philly Loves Poetry, Poetry & Jazz @ PhillyCAM: Aaren Perry and Sandra Turner-Barnes, with Charles S. Carr
2020-10-06 18:30 | PA
Moonstone Poetry @ PhillyCAM, 699 Ranstead Street Comcast Cable 66/966HD/967 or Verizon FIOS 29/30 in Philadelphia.
“For seventy-five years, poets have listened to jazz and assimilated certain relationships between the two arts-not merely the issue of language but also the connection between jazz improvisation and poetic narratives as journeys.” (Preface of The Second Set by Sasha Feinstein & Yusef Kommunyakaa).
On this broadcast we explore that connection.

Aaren Perry taught writing workshops to all ages at schools, colleges and festivals on the East Coast and in the Midwest for over 20 years. He has performed his poems at the Nuyorican Cafe, Bower Poetry Club, Kimmel Center, World Café, Fringe Festival, and Philadelphia Writers Conference along with stages and classrooms. His work appears in magazines on NPR and on regional television. He produced and directed Page2Stage, a long-running, all-poetry TV show on Cable. As Production Director at the Painted Bride Art Center, he worked with 100’s of the top poets and jazz musicians between 1986 and 2000. Bilingual with an MFA from Vermont College, he received a PA Council on the Arts Grant. His collections include Open Fire (CWhirlwind); Poetry Across the Curriculum: An Action Guide for Teachers (Pearson); a spokenword recording, Mercury Calling (MelodyVision), and a poetry collection called “Shipping and Receiving” forthcoming in 2021.

Sandra Turner-Barnes, Author, Poet, Jazz vocalist, Sandra Turner-Barnes was born as Sandra J. Farmer, in Lawnside, New Jersey. She was educated in the City of Camden, New Jersey, and graduated with a degree in Business Management from Pierce College of Philadelphia. Sandra is primarily the published author of poetry, fiction and song lyrics, but also loves Jazz. Her first book of poetry, “Always A Lady”, originally self-published in 1986, was published for the third time in April of 1995, and to date, over 7,000 copies have been sold. In 1996, Sandra won the EBONY MAGAZINE Literary Competition for Short Fiction, and in 1997, Sandra re-created the concept of “Jazz-Oetry” and began singing Jazz. In 2000, Sandra’s live jazz vocals’ video performance, with pianist Barry Sames, was selected for National & International airing on BET’s syndicated show, “Jazz Discoveries.”
Charles S. Carr, Host

Not Our President 2020
2020-10-11 14:00 | PA
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83733936968?pwd=[REDACTED]
Zoom Meeting ID: 837 3393 6968, Passcode: [REDACTED] Phone: +1 646-876-9923
“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.” Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
In 2017 Moonstone published, Philadelphia Says Not Our President. Here it is 2020 and another election.
What do poets have to say?
Join us as poets read their submission to this Moonstone Anthology
Available at our website for $10

Virtual Poetry Reading: Dr. Neal Hall and Krisann Janowitz, with Aaren Perry
2020-10-14 19:00 | PA
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82437345103?pwd=[REDACTED]
Zoom Meeting ID: 824 3734 5103, Passcode: [REDACTED] Phone: +1 646-876-9923
Dr. Neal Hall is a medical-surgical eye physician, an internationally acclaimed poet, who has performed poetry readings throughout the United States and internationally. Dr. Hall is an award-winning author of Nigger For Life, Winter’s A’ Coming Still, Where Do I Sit, and Appalling Silence. The intellectual and philosopher Cornel West, Ph.D., said of Dr. Hall “ [he] is a warrior of the spirit, a warrior of the mind, an activist, a poet. I sense Dr. Hall’s hypersensitivity to suffering – Martin, Malcolm and Jesus all had this hypersensitivity. Both sides of his soul have prophetic leanings. His poetry has the capacity to change ordinary people’s philosophy on social and racial issues.”
Krisann Janowitz has always had a passion for poetry and words (since elementary school– if you count all the song lyrics about bubblegum). She was Editor-in-Chief of the St. Joseph’s University literary magazine, The Avenue and her poems have been published by streetcake magazine, The Avenue, Cliterature Journal and Z Publishing. Along with her chapbook Home(less): A Sampling of Poems on Home & Homelessness published by Moonstone Press, Krisann is host of Moonstone’s New Voices.
Aaren Perry, Host
Open reading follows event

Long Story Short Poetry Project (ekphrastic poems, in a way): Virtual Reading with Mr. Fish
2020-10-21 19:00 | PA
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84270491773?pwd=[REDACTED]
Zoom Meeting ID: 842 7049 1773, Passcode: [REDACTED] Phone: +1 646-876-9923
An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning.
Classic works spectacularly distilled by Mr. Fish and a very talented group of painters, illustrators, graphic designers, and political cartoonists into succinct snapshots that are at times funny, sad, inspiring, rude, crude, beautiful, profound, stomach-turning, and mind-blowing. Contributors to the Moonstone anthology will read their poems. The anthology is available on our website for $10.

The Red Brick Poet: A Tribute to Peter Krok
2020-10-25 18:00 | PA
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83446748712?pwd=[REDACTED]
Zoom Meeting ID: 834 4674 8712, Passcode: [REDACTED] Phone: +1 646-876-9923
Please join us as poets pay tribute to Peter Krok, the editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal and the Humanities Director of the Manayunk Roxborough Art Center where he has been coordinating a literary series since 1990. His poem “10PM at Philadelphia Recreation Center” was included in Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania.
Contributing poets include:
Courtney Bambrick, John Wall Barger, Lisa Alexander Baron, Peter Baroth, Leonard Belasco, Chris Bursk, Bill Van Buskirk, Rosemary Cappello, Joe Chelius, Mike Cohen, Greg Coleman, W.D. Ehrhart, Brian Fanelli, Eric Greinke, Hanoch Guy, Alison Hicks, Ernest Hilbert, Ron Howard, Carolynn Kingyens, David Kozinski, Antoinette Libro, Marjorie Maddox, Dan MaGuire, Lew Maltby, Emiliano Marin, Suzanne Marinell, Bernadette McBride, Fran Metzman, Ann E. Michael, A.E. Milford, Eileen Moeller, Mike Muir, Prabha Prabhu, Gloria Parker, Tree Riesener, Don Riggs, Hayden Saunier, Nancy Scott, Fereshteh Sholevar, Amy Small-McKinney, Luke Stromberg, Joe Tyson, Kelley Jean White, Bill Wunder, Robert Zaller.

Virtual Poetry Reading + Interview: Lynn Levin and Barbara Sabol, with Alina Macneal & Jennifer Hook
2020-10-28 19:00 | PA
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82437345103?pwd=[REDACTED]
Zoom Meeting ID: 824 3734 5103, Passcode: [REDACTED] Phone: +1 646-876-9923
Lynn Levin’s most recent poetry collection, The Minor Virtues (Ragged Sky, 2020) is listed as one of Spring 2020’s best books by The Philadelphia Inquirer. Poet Ross Gay calls the book “a lovely honoring of the small, the minor sweetnesses that a life is made of.” Her previous collections include Miss Plastique, Fair Creatures of an Hour, and Imaginarium. She is the translator, from the Spanish, of Birds on the Kiswar Tree by Odi Gonzales and co-author of Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets. Her poems have appeared in Boulevard, Artful Dodge, Rattle, on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, and other places. She teaches at Drexel University. Her website is lynnlevinpoet.com
Barbara Sabol’s second full-length book, Imagine a Town, was awarded the 2019 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions poetry manuscript prize. She is the author of Solitary Spin (Main Street Rag Press) and two chapbooks. Barbara’s poetry has appeared widely in journals and anthologies. Barbara’s awards include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council and the Mary Jean Irion Poetry Prize. She contributes book reviews to the Poetry Matters blog and the Ohioana Quarterly. Barbara lives in Akron, OH with her husband and wonder dogs.
Alina Macneal & Jennifer Hook, Hosts
Open reading follows

Virtual Poetry Reading: Morri Creech, Joseph Harrison, & Dora Malech
2020-11-04 19:00 | PA
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82437345103?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 824 3734 5103, Passcode: [REDACTED] Phone: +1 646-876-9923
Morri Creech is the author of three collections of poetry, Paper Cathedrals, Field Knowledge, which received the Anthony Hecht Poetry prize and was nominated for both the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Poet’s Prize, and The Sleep of Reason, a 2014 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book is Blue Rooms published by Waywiser Press in 2018. A recipient of NEA and Ruth Lilly Fellowships, as well as grants from the North Carolina and Louisiana Arts councils, he is the Writer in Residence at Queens University of Charlotte, where he teaches courses in both the undergraduate creative writing program and in the low residency M.F.A. program. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with his wife and two children.
Joseph Harrison is the author of six books of poetry, including Someone Else’s Name, Identity Theft, Shakespeare’s Horse, and, most recently, Sometimes I Dream That I Am Not Walt Whitman. Someone Else’s Name was named one of five poetry books of the year by The Washington Post and was a finalist for the Poets’ Prize; Shakespeare’s Horse was also a finalist for the Poets’ Prize. He has received a Guggenheim fellowship in poetry and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among other honors. Mr. Harrison has directed the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize since its inception in 2006. He edited The Hecht Prize Anthology and, with Damiano Abeni, Un mondo che non può essere migliore, a selection from the poetry of John Ashbery that won a Special Prize from the Premio Napoli. He lives in Baltimore, where he teaches privately and works as an editor.
Dora Malech is the author of Flourish, Stet, Say So, and Shore Ordered Ocean. She has been the recipient of an Amy Clampitt Residency Award, a Mary Sawyers Baker Prize, a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, and a Writing Residency Fellowship from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and she has been the Distinguished Poet-in-Residence at Saint Mary’s College and a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. She is a co-founder and former director of the arts engagement organization the Iowa Youth Writing Project. She is an assistant professor in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, where she has received a Crenson-Hertz Award for Community Based Learning, two Arts Innovation Grants, a Dean’s Award for Excellence in Service, and a Catalyst Award. She serves on the advisory board of Writers in Baltimore Schools and as an associate editor of The Waywiser Press and Tupelo Quarterly.
Larry Robin, Host
Open reading follows

Virtual Poetry in Collaboration with Serotonin: Fizza Abbas, Jane-Rebecca Cannarella, & Leah Holbrook Sackett, with Sean Lynch
2020-11-07 14:00 | PA
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85662820989?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 856 6282 0989, Passcode: [REDACTED]
Fizza Abbas is a Freelance Content Writer based in Karachi, Pakistan. She is fond of poetry and music. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in quite a few journals including Poetry Village, The Daily Drunk, Indiana Voice Journal, London Grip and Poetry Pacific.

Jane-Rebecca Cannarella is a writer and editor living in Philadelphia. She is the editor of HOOT Review and Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit, as well as the author of Better Bones and Marrow, both published by Thirty West Publishing House, and The Guessing Game published by BA Press. She occasionally drinks wine out of a mug that has a smug poodle on it; she believes that the poodle is the reincarnated spirit of the television show Parker Lewis Can’t Lose.
Leah Holbrook Sackett is an adjunct lecturer in the English department at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, where she also earned her M.F.A. Leah’s stories explore journeys toward autonomy and the boundaries placed on the individual by society, family, and self. Learn about her published fiction at LeahHolbrookSackett.com
Sean Lynch, Host
