Moonstone Arts Center

Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie's Pub
2018-01-03 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Angelo Colavira, author of Heroines, lives and writes in Philadelphia, where he hosts Oxford Coma, a nihilist poetry reading series. His work has appeared in Apiary Magazine, The Philadelphia Citizen, Mad House, and elsewhere.
Penelope Gristelfink’s first novel will be published by Propertius Press in 2017. Her poems and fiction have appeared or will appear in Loch Raven Review, The Potomac, Eclectica Magazine, Foliate Oak, and The Seattle Review.
An open mic will follow the featured readers. The event is free and 21+. Sean Lynch, host

Debs of December - Moonstone Poetry @ Toast Café
2017-12-20 19:00 - 21:00 | Toast Café, 1201 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Deborah Burnham, author of Anna and the Steel Mill, Still and a volume ofpoetry, is the Associate Undergraduate Chair of the English Department and teaches poetry and poetry writing, with a particular interest in formal poems and in the history of women’s poetry at UPENN. Deborah Fox found her love for poetry as a result of a 5th grade homework assignment and has been writing poetry ever since. She is author of Treasures in Darkness and In the Stillness. Deborah Fries is a poet and non-fiction writer whose work reflects her interest in environmental, medical and social issues. She is the author of two books of poetry and her recent poems and essays appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Grit, Gravity & Grace, 0-Dark-Thirty, Philadelphia Stories, Terrain.org, Narrative Matters and Poet Lore. Debra Leigh Scott is a multi-disciplined artist – a singer, writer, playwright, documentary filmmaker as well as an activist whose work focuses largely in areas of education rights and economic justice. She is the Founding Director of Hidden River Arts and her fiction has appeared in such literary journals as The Oxford American, The Chattahoochee Review, River City, Words of Wisdom, TPQ, The Abiko Quarterly (Japan), Purnev (Portugal) and The Ashen Eye (Thailand)
An open mic will follow the featured readers, Suzan Jivan, Host.

Moonstone Poetry @ Toast Café
2017-12-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Toast Café, 1201 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Sarah Blake is the author of two poetry collections, Let’s Not Live on Earth and Mr. West. An illustrated workbook accompanies her chapbook, Named After Death. In 2013, she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her debut novel, Naamah is forthcoming. Nomi Stone’s second collection of poems, Kill Class is forthcoming, based on two years of fieldwork she conducted within war trainings in mock Middle Eastern villages erected by the US military across America. Stone has a PhD in Anthropology, and MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson, and teaches at Princeton University.
An open mic will follow the featured readers, Dave Worrell, host.

2017 Anthology of Featured Poets @ Fergie's Pub
2017-12-10 14:00 - 16:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Join us for an afternoon of poetry and camaraderie. The 2017 Anthology of Featured Poets includes 50 of the over 100 featured poets who read for Moonstone in 2017, many of whom will read on December 10.
A listing of the poets included in the anthology is on our website www.moonstoneartscenter.com, which includes some of the best poets reading in Philadelphia today. That makes this a terrific book to give to poetry lovers and to use in poetry classes since readers can go hear the poets as well as read their work.

Philly Loves Poet Laureates @PhillyCAM
2017-12-05 18:30 - 20:30 | PhillyCAM, 699 Ranstead Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19106, United States
2017 Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Readings Series at PhillyCAM

Sonia Sanchez, Philadelphia’s First Poet Laureate, Yolanda Wisher is the 2016-17 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, Husnaa Hashim is the current Youth PoetLaureate, David Jones is a former Youth Poet Laureate.
Host: Charles S. Carr

Home(less) @ PhillyCAM
2017-12-01 19:00 - 21:00
Join our live studio audience for Home(less): An evening of poetry, photography and video on the themes of home and homelessness. Featuring poems by Krisann Janowitz; creative writing by One Step Away vendor and writer, Richard Ramson “Ram”; photos by Harvey Finkle; video by Karen Walker.
PhillyCAM, 699 Ranstead Street, (267) 639-5481, info@phillycam.org
Doors open at 6:30 PM.
The taping is FREE and open to the public.

Moonstone Poetry @Toast Café
2017-11-29 19:00 - 21:00 | Toast Café, 1201 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Angel Murray-Kelly is a singer/songwriter, LGBTQ+ youth advocate, vegetarian, & local Philly youth poet. David Jones is a Philadelphia native, poet, writer, performer, Temple University student, and Youth Poet Laureate Emeritus of Philadelphia. Christian Warrick is a Philadelphia-born Maori-American poet and story writer. He’s a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in English and minoring in Education. An open mic will follow the featured readers. Alina Macneal& Jennifer Hook, hosts

Moonstone Gold @ Fergie’s Pub Presents Afaa M. Weaver Interviewed by Earnest Hilbert
2017-11-19 14:00 - 17:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Tickets $15.00, Students with ID – $7.50 – available at Square.com
In 2014, Weaver completed his Plum Flower Trilogy with the publication of his 14th collection of poetry, City of Eternal Spring. A Los Angeles Times review of the trilogy echoed previous critical evaluations of his oeuvre to date: “Compared to Whitman by the poet Michael Harper and critic Arnold Rampersad, Weaver brings in new voices and experiences to American poetry, and like Whitman he sings and celebrates himself. … poems written in the black vernacular … with their short, crisp lines, and with great attention to detail and with great compassion, take us to inner city Baltimore, to his mother’s kitchen and his grandmother’s bedside, to the basketball court, the factory, and the front stoop to show the different experiences, voices, histories that are part of his own unique development.”
In Spirit Boxing ($15.95, Pitt Poetry Series), Weaver revisits his working class core. The veteran of fifteen years as a factory worker in his native Baltimore, he mines his own experience to build a wellspring of craft in poems that extend from his life to the lives that inhabit the whole landscape of the American working class. He writes with an intimacy that is unique in American poetry, and echoes previous comparisons of his oeuvre to that of Walt Whitman. The singularity of his voice resonates here through the prism of his realization of self through a lifelong project of the integration of American and Chinese culture. The work is Daoist in influence and structure as it echoes both a harmonic realization of context and the intuitive and transcendent dance of body, mind, and spirit. Books will be available for purchase and to be autographed.

Moonstone Poetry @Toast Café, 1201 Spruce Street
2017-11-17 19:00 - 21:00 | Toast Café, 1201 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
April Lynn James & Madison Hatta
Dr. April Lynn James, award-winning performer, scholar, and Librarian-in-Training rolls in with her muse/guardian angel Madison Hatta, Sonneteer. Madison, a Mirth-Maker Extraordinaire, composes and declaims whimsical sonnets on such themes as madness, Time, career & family dysFUNction, and the importance of drinking tea. The wordplay and imagery are drawn from daily life, from Alice in Wonderland, and from Other Sources Unknowable. Extra-Ordinary Poetic Fun!

Moonstone Poetry @Toast Café, 1201 Spruce Street
2017-11-16 19:00 - 21:00 | Toast Café, 1201 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
John Oliver Mason, author of All of the Above
“Like every writer, I have tried to find a place to publish my material-what better motivation to write than to find some place to write for? I read an article in The Writer which had an essay about how writers should have their own e-mail newsletter; so I started one. Now, ten years later, The Mason Missile still goes on as my platform for my beliefs and causes, as well as the milestones and incidents of my life. All of the Above is a collection of my poems and of the Mason Missile.

Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
2017-11-15 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Brandon H. Blake has been an artist throughout his life, eventually studying Fine Arts at Millersville University. Primarily, he has been writing haikus as well as exploring other traditional forms of poetry throughout the last ten to fifteen years.

Poet and lyricist Beulah Gordon-Skinner has featured at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, the Women’s Writing and Spoken Word Series, the Black Women’s Art Festival and Lady Fest Philly. Her poetry has appeared in small press poetry journals and the Chesapeake Bay Poets Anthology. An open mic will follow the featured readers.

An open mic will follow the featured readers. Suzan Jivan, host

Release Party for Home(less) @ Brandywine Workshop, 728 S Broad Street
2017-11-12 14:00 - 17:00 | Brandywine Workshop, 728 S. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19146, United States
Poetry by Krisann Janowitz, Photography by Harvey Finkle

Krisann Janowitz – “I wanted to show my readers that those we label as “bums”, “hobos”, “beggars”, etc are just people, like you and me. That is what I have experienced through befriending members of a tent city in Bucks County and that is what all too many of us forget when we walk by men and women laying on our city’s sidewalks, asking for money.”

Harvey Finkle – “In the beginning, I walked streets and eventually would end up on Skid Row, Philly’s Bowery, and meet those living on the street or 25cent a night rooming houses. It was enlightening to learn this was not a group monolithically depicted as alcoholics or disturbed individuals. Their reasons for dropping out were much more varied than our conventional wisdoms. For months, I photographed these casualties, motivated by the same feelings conveyed in these powerful poems.”

Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie’s Pub featuring Emari DiGiorgio & Raena Shirali
2017-11-08 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Emari DiGiorgio is the author of Girl Torpedo (Agape, 2018), the winner of the 2017 Numinous Orison, Luminous Origin Literary Award, and The Things a Body Might Become (Five Oaks Press, 2017). She’s the recipient of the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, the Ellen La Forge Poetry Prize, the Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, RHINO’s Founder’s Prize, the Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award, and a poetry fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She’s received residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, Sundress Academy of the Arts, and Rivendell Writers’ Colony. She teaches at Stockton University, is a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Poet, and hosts World Above, a monthly reading series in Atlantic City, NJ.
Indian American poet Raena Shirali is the author of GILT (YesYes Books, 2017), an experimental collection grappling with standards created by an invisible system and enforced by family, relationships, and violations of women’s rights in a reckoning of intersectional identity. She has performed at such venues as: the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center in NYC, Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab, Slam Free or Die, College of Charleston, & many more. As an educator & when she isn’t teaching at the college level, Shirali gives craft talks on the political weight of poetic endings, highlighting voices of color & immigrant & contemporary voices. Most recently, she was the Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University’s Stadler Center for Poetry. Shirali now lives in Philadelphia, where she freelances as an editor & serves as a poetry reader for Muzzle Magazine.

Dave Worrell, host
An open mic will follow the featured readers. The event is free and 21+.

Moonstone Poetry @ PhillyCAM
2017-11-07 18:30 - 20:30 | PhillyCAM, 699 Ranstead Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19106, United States
2017 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.

Tuesday November 7, 2017 -6:30pm
On January 15, 2017, Alicia Askenase joined writers Stephanie Feldman and Nathaniel Popkin in curating Philadelphia’s iteration of the Pen America Writers Resist international day of readings of resistance. Writers Resist Philadelphia was a standing room only event held at the National Museum of American Jewish History. The group continues with meetings of Philadelphia area writers in their efforts to affect change and resistance through writing. WRPHL also has a Facebook page as a forum for writers, and will hold another reading in the near future. On November 7, Ms. Askenase, along with fellow poets of resistance, Ahmad Almallah, Herman Beavers, and Alina MacNeal, will continue on this path, discussing what writing and resistance mean to them and their writing practices, and read from their own work.
Alicia Askenase is an educator who has taught English and creative writing, co-organizer of Philadelphia Writers Resist, founding co-editor of the poetry journal 6ix, and Director of Literary Programs at the Walt Whitman Center in New Jersey for many years. She is the author of the chapbooks Cover, Suspect, The Luxury of Pathos, and Shirley Shirley. Her poems have appeared in literary journals and anthologies including Feminist Studies, Review Revista Inter- Americana, 5trope, sonaweb, texture, Chain, Black Mountain Review II, aerial, The World, 100 Days, and New Works by Philadelphia Poets.
Ahmad Almallah is a poet, scholar and translator of Arabic literature with a PhD in Arabic literature and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. He grew up in Bethlehem, Palestine and moved to the U.S. when he was 18. His set of poems “Recourse,” won the 2017 Blanche Colton Williams Fellowship from Hunter College. His poems have appeared in Jacket2, Track//Four, All Roads will lead You Home, and forthcoming in Apiary, Supplement and Making Mirrors: Righting/Writing by Refugees.
Herman Beavers is Professor of English and Africana Studies at theUniversity of Pennsylvania. His most recent poems have either appeared in The Langston Hughes Colloquy, MELUS, and Versadelphia, Cleaver Magazine, The American Arts Quarterly, and Supplement. Herman is author of Obsidian Blues and Geography and the Political Imaginary in the Novels of Toni Morrison. He serves as an advisory editor for The African American Review, The Black Scholar, The Journal of Black Studies, and Modern Fiction Studies.
Alina Macneal is a Philadelphia-based educator/writer/poet/translator/and co-host of the Fourth Wednesday Moonstone poetry series at Fergie’s. Her poems have appeared in Apiary, Poems for the Writing, and The World to Come, and in 2015 she was a finalists for the Raynes poetry prize. This August two of her political poems were published in Poetry24. She has been a faculty member at Drexel University for 19 years.

Host: Charles S. Carr

Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie's Pub Presents Philadelphia Says: Not Our President
2017-11-05 14:00 - 17:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
This is a reading for our new chapbook, “Philadelphia Says: Not Our President,” which we are still accepting submissions for here, if you would like to participate.
Participants will get the opportunity to read their work at the Philadelphia Says: Not Our President event (this event) on November 5, 2017 at 2pm, two days before this year’s election.
While it is not produced in affiliation, our purpose is to celebrate the release of Not Our President, the new book from Third World Press by Haki R. Madhubuti (Editor), Lasana D. Kazembe (Editor).

Remembering Gwendolyn Brooks
2017-10-29 14:00 - 17:00 | African American Museum, 701 Arch Sreet, Philadelphia, PA, United States
African American Museum in Philadelphia, 701 Arch St, Philadelphia, PA 19106
Free with Reduced Museum Admission of $5.00
Poet, educator, and social activist Gwendolyn Brooks was a singular force in American culture. The first black woman to be named United States poet laureate, Brook’s poetry, fiction, and social commentary shed light on the beauty of humanity, the distinct qualities of black life and community, and the destructive effects of racism, sexism, and class inequality.
An informal discussion honoring Gwendolyn Brooks on her centennial with Herman Beavers, Margo Natalie Crawford, Sonia Sanchez, and Lamont Steptoe.
“But each time I read Miss Brooks, each time I revisit her poems, they climb up on my knees and sit in tight contentment. They speak to me of form and color, patterns and dawns. They talk of myths: they tell me where flesh lives, where a troop of young heroes and sheroes lean back in chairs. “beautiful. Imprudent. Ready for life’ Where the young ‘Live not for battles won. /Live not for the-end-of-the-song/Live in the along’” -Sonia Sanchez
“If a person from another planet continent or culture wishes to gain insight into the inner working, the comings and goings of black people in America, an excellent place to begin a formal or informal education is with the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks.”-Haki R. Madubuti

HERMAN BEAVERS is Professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, he has been teaching African American Literature and Creative Writing since 1989. His poems have appeared in Whiskey Island, Cross Connect, Black American Literature Forum (presently titled The African American Review), Dark Phrases, The Cincinnati Poetry Review, Peregrine, The Painted Bride Quarterly, Callaloo, MELUS, The Langston Hughes Colloquy, Versadelphia, Cleaver Magazine, and American Arts Quarterly, as well as the anthology, Gathering Ground: A Cave Canem Reader. His chapbook, A Neighborhood of Feeling won first prize in the Doris Press Chapbook competition. His poems have been nominated for The Best American Poetry series, The Best of the Web, and nominated three times for The Pushcart Prize in Poetry. He has been a finalist for the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award, the Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize, and the Lena Miles Wever Poetry Prize. Dr. Beavers has recently completed work on a chapbook of poems, The Vernell Poems an d a full length poetry manuscript. His chapbook, Obsidian Blues, is forthcoming from Agape Editions as part of its Morning House Chapbook Series.
MARGO NATALIE CRAWFORD is the author of Dilution Anxiety and the Black Phallus (Ohio State University Press, 2008) and the coeditor, with Lisa Gail Collins, of New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement (Rutgers University Press, 2006). Her essays appear in a wide range of books and journals, including American Literature, Want to Start a Revolution?, The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Since 1945, The Modernist Party, Callaloo, Black Camera, NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Black Renaissance Noire, and James Baldwin: Go Tell It on the Mountain; Historical and Critical Essays. She is on the editorial board of the Society for Textual Scholarship, the James Baldwin Review, and the Wiley Blackwell Anthology of African American Literature. She is now completing “Black Post-Blackness: the 1960s and 70s Roots of 21st Century Black Aesthetics.” Margo has participated in programs with Gwendolyn Brooks in Chicago in the past. She was the faculty director of Cornell’s Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research program, and now works as an English professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
SONIA SANCHEZ is an African-American poet most often associated with the Black Arts Movement. She has authored over a dozen books of poetry, as well as short stories, critical essays, plays, and children’s books. She was a recipient of 1993 Pew Fellowships in the Arts, the Lucretia Mott Award for 1984, the Outstanding Arts Award from the Pennsylvania Coalition of 100 Black Women, and the Community Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators. In 2001, Sanchez was the recipient of the Robert Frost Medal for her poetry (one of the highest honors awarded to a nationally recognized poet), the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Humanities for 1988, the Peace and Freedom Award from the Women International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award for 1999. She has lectured at over 500 universities and colleges in the United States and has traveled extensively, reading her poetry in Africa, Cuba, England, the Caribbean, Australia, Europe, Nicaragua, the People’s Republic of China, Norway, and Canada. She has been influential to other African-American female poets, including Krista Franklin.
LAMONT STEPTOE is a poet, activist, Vietnam Veteran, photographer and founder/publisher of Whirlwind Press. He is a graduate of Temple University’s School of Communications and Theater, where he majored in Radio, Television, and Film. Steptoe has a clear, direct and matter-of-fact approach to his socio-cultural subject matter and his language is rich and revealing. He is the author of fourteen books of poetry and is the editor of two collections of poems by South African poet, Dennis Brutus. He has performed his work at the Library of Congress, the National Library of Nicaragua, the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, Shakespeare & Co. in Paris, the Knitting Factory, the Schomburg Center for Black Culture, and various colleges and universities throughout the United States. He was awarded the Life-time Achievement Award by the Kuntu Writers Workshop from the University of Pittsburgh in 2002, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Literary Fellowship in 1996 and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Steptoe was awarded the American Book Award in 2005.

Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie’s Pub featuring Eliza Callard, Lucy Bell Sellers, and Fritz Ward
2017-10-25 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Eliza Callard is a Philly gal, and still lives in the Germantown rowhouse she grew up in. She likes to run in the Wissahickon and kayak in the Schuylkill, she has been published widely. Lucy Bell Sellers lives in Germantown, taught theatre at Germantown Friends and at College of the Atlantic. She has written poetry since she was little, but never very much.
Fritz Ward is the author of Tsunami Diorama and the Doppelganged. The recipient of the Cecil Hemley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America, his poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. He works at Swarthmore College and lives just outside of Philadelphia. Open Reading Follows, Jennifer Hook and Alina Macneal Hosts

Moonstone Poetry @ Toast Café featuring John Amen and Amy Small-McKinney
2017-10-19 19:00 - 21:00 | Toast Café, 1201 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
John Amen is the author of several collections of poetry, the latest of which is Illusion of an Overwhelm. strange theater was a finalist for the 2016 Brockman-Campbell Award and work from which was chosen as a finalist for the 2016 Dana Award. His poetry, fiction, reviews, and essays have appeared in journals nationally and internationally he is a Staff Reviewer for No Depression and founded and conti nues to edit The Pedestal Magazine. Amy Small-McKinney won The Kithara Book Prize 2016 for her second full-length collection of poems, Walking Toward Cranes. Small-McKinney was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She was the 2011 Montgomery County Poet Laureate, judged by poet, Chris Bursk. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, She facilitates poetry workshops in Philadelphia.

Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie’s Pub featuring Shevaun Brannigan, Jamie J. Brunson, and Joyce Meyers
2017-10-18 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Shevaun Brannigan is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, as well as The Jimenez-Porter Writers’ House at The University of Maryland. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as Best New Poets 2012, Rhino, Washington Square Review, and Crab Orchard Review. Jamie J. Brunson has brought storytelling to the stage within different spheres of the arts and cultural community for over 16 years. She served as managing director of New Freedom Theatre and the Providence Black Repertory Company, an accomplished playwright, Brunson is a four-time Delaware Division of the Arts/NEA grantee for. Joyce Meyers has been to every continent except Antarctica. Many of her travel experiences find their way into her writing. Her numerous publications include Atlanta Review, The Comstock Review, Iodine Poetry Journal, Slant, and Com-mon Ground Review. She has received several poetry prizes from Atlanta Review, including First Prize in the Atlanta Review 2014 International Poetry Competition.
Open Reading Follows, Suzan Jivan Host

Moonstone Poetry @ Toast Café featuring Christopher Bernard and . Luke Stromberg
2017-10-17 19:00 - 21:00 | Toast Café, 1201 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Christopher Bernard is author of A Spy in the Ruins, Voyage to a Phantom City, Dangerous Stories for Boys and others. He is co-editor of Caveat Lector and a regular contributor to Synchronized Chaos. Bernard writes fiction, poetry, essays, plays, and criticism.. He lives in San Francisco. Luke Stromberg has published work in Rotary Dial, Victorian Violet Journal, Tower Journal, Shot Glass Journal, Lucid Rhythms, Philadelphia Stories, Think Journal, Mid-America Poetry Review, and on Ernest Hilbert’s blog E-Verse Radio.

Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie’s Pub presenting Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse
2017-10-15 14:00 - 17:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse by Grace Bauer, Editor ($24.00, Lost Horse Press) Poets reading include Grace Bauer, Kim Bridgeford, Emari DiGiorgio, Corie Feiner, Ona Gritz, Harriet Levin, Lynn Levin, Carolina Morales & Nancy Reddy –
Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse is an anthology of poems from women who proudly celebrate their own nastiness and that of other women who have served as nasty role models; poems by and about women defying limitations and lady-like expectations; women refusing to be “nice girls;” women embracing their inner bitch when the situation demands it; women being formidable and funny; women speaking to power and singing for the good of their souls; women being strong, sexy, strident, super-smart, and stupendous; women who want to encourage little girls to keep dreaming.
This timely collection of poems speaks not just to the current political climate and the man who is responsible for its title, but to the stereotypes and expectations women have faced dating back to Eve, and to the long history of women resisting those limitations. The nasty women poets included here talk back to the men who created those limitations, honor foremothers who offered models of resistance and survival, rewrite myths, celebrate their own sexuality and bodies, and the girlhoods they survived. They sing, swear, swagger, and celebrate, and stake claim to life and art on their own terms.
Each participant will read her own poem and at least one poem by another contributor not in attendance. Books will be available for purchase.
About the readers/ poets:

GRACE BAUER’s history of resistance began when a nun told her thatthe greatest thing a girl could grow up to be was a virgin. Having failed at that particular life goal, she became a poet instead. She hates being called Miss, Ma’am, or Little Lady, but these days, takes nasty as a compliment. The idea for this anthology came to her in the shower. Her books include MEAN/TIME, The Women at the Well, Nowhere All At Once, Retreats & Recognitions. Her work has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Arts & Letters, the Colorado Review, Poetry, Rattle, and the Southern Poetry Review. Her awards include an Academy of American Poets Prize, Individual Artist’s Grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the Nebraska Arts Council, and fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. Bauer is currently a senior book prize reader for Prairie Schooner and teaches at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
KIM BRIDGFORD is an award-winning poet, editor, college professor, fiction writer, and critic. She writes primarily in traditional forms, of which the sonnet is her form of choice. She is the director of Poetry by the Sea: A Global Conference. She is editor-in-chief at Mezzo Cammin, a journal of poetry by women and was formerly the editor of Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose. She received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry and a poetry fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Her book In the Extreme: Sonnets about World Records received the 2007 Donald Justice Poetry Award.
EMARI DIGIORGIO is the author of Girl Torpedo (Agape, 2018), the winner of the 2017 Numinous Orison, Luminous Origin Literary Award, and The Things a Body Might Become (Five Oaks Press, 2017). She’s the recipient of the Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, and a poetry fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She’s received residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, Sundress Academy of the Arts, and Rivendell Writers’ Colony. She teaches at Stockton University, is a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Poet, and hosts World Above, a monthly reading series in Atlantic City, NJ.
ONA GRITZ is the author of the poetry collections, Geode, (Main Street Rag 2014), and Left Standing, (Finishing Line Press, 2005). Together with her husband Daniel Simpson, she is co-author of Border Songs: A Conversation in Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and co-editor of More Challenges For the Delusional: Prompts, Poetry, and Prose Celebrating 25 Years of Murphy Writing Workshops (forthcoming, Diode Editions). She is also an essayist, memoirist and children’s author. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Ploughshares, and elsewhere.
COROE FEINER is an award-winning poet, performer, and educator. Called, “wonderful” by
The New York Times, and “stunning,” by Backstage Magazine, she is the author of the
poetry collection, Radishes into Roses, and the children’s book, Who Was Born at Home?
Corie is the former poetry editor of The Washington Square Review, and the esteemed
Bellevue Literary Review. She was the 2011 Poet Laureate of Bucks County, PA..
HARRIET LEVIN is the author of Girl in Cap and Gown, which was a National Poetry Series finalist, and The Christmas Show, which was chosen for the Barnard New Women Poets Prize. She is coeditor of Creativity and Writing Pedagogy: Linking Creative Writers, Researchers and Teachers. Levin’s honors include the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Catagnola Award, the Ellen La Forge Memorial Poetry Prize, the Pablo Neruda Prize, and a PEW Fellowship in the. She currently teaches and directs the Certificate Program in Writing and Publishing at Drexel University. Her debut novel, How Fast Can You Run is an IPPY and Living Now Awards winner.
LYNN LEVIN is a poet, writer, translator, and the author of six books. Her most recent collection of poems is Miss Plastique, a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in poetry. She is the co-author of Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets, a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in education/academic. Levin has received 13 Pushcart Prize nominations, two grants from the Leeway Foundation, and is a Bucks County, Pennsylvania poet laureate. She teaches at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania.
CAROLINA MORALES is the author of four chapbooks of poetry, Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman (2015), Dear Monster (2012), In Nancy Drew’s Shadow (2010), Bride of Frankenstein and other poems (2008) each published by Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in the Journal of New Jersey Poets, Nimrod, Paterson Literary Review, Poet Lore, Presence, Spoon River Poetry Review and other journals. Awards include scholarships from the summer program at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA along with honorable mentions for an Allen Ginsberg Award and a Mill Wills Fellowship. Her one-act plays have been produced/staged in California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
NANCY REDDY is the author of Double Jinx, selected by Alex Lemon for the National Poetry Series and her chapbook Acadiana won the Black River Chapbook. Her poems have appeared in Linebreak, Memorious, Best New Poets, Poetry Daily, Smartish Pace, and elsewhere. She has been awarded a Promise Award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, a Walter E Dakin Fellowship to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and a New Jersey Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship. She is Assistant Professor of Writing and First Year Studies at Stockton University in southern New Jersey.

Moonstone @ Communally Presents Kill It to Save It: An Autopsy of Capitalism's Triumph over Democracy
2017-10-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Communally, 1128 Walnut Street, 2nd Floor, Philadelphia, 19107, United States
Kill It to Save It: An Autopsy of Capitalism’s Triumph over Democracy
by Corey Dolgon ($34.95 -University of Chicago Press) Books will be available to purchase and be autographed
“To understand the popularity of Italian Fascism in the ’30s, we needed Antonio Gramsci. To understand the popular malaise among the US middle class in the ’50s, we needed C. Wright Mills. And to understand the popularity of Donald J. Trump and the prevailing logic that turns billionaires into job creators, unions into job destroyers, and climate scientists into godless Communists, we need Corey Dolgon. Clear-eyed and perceptive, Dolgon reveals that the new ‘common sense’ upholding privatization, deregulation, wealth concentration, and the erosion of democracy and civil liberties as the only path to prosperity was not the handiwork of Fox News and wily neocons but the outcome of a deeper ideological and cultural shift. Kill It to Save It is mandatory reading if we are to replace the neoliberal ‘common sense’ with the radical possibilities of ‘good sense.’” Jim Hightower, author, radio commentator, and editor of “The Hightower Lowdown.”

Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie’s Pub featuring Megan Gillespie and Aubrey Rehab
2017-10-11 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Megan Gillespie is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her work has appeared in The Florida Review, New Delta Review and Cimarron Review. Aubrey Rehab is the founder of South Jersey Poets Collective and hosts ‘World Above: Free Poetry Nights’ at Dante Hall in Atlantic City on a monthly basis. She has most recently been published in the Seneca Review’s Beyond Category. Dave Worrell, host

Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie’s Pub featuring Panio Gianopoulos, Henry Israeli, Eugenia Leigh & Megan Staffel
2017-10-11 08:00 - 17:00
Panio Gianopoulos is the author of the story collection, How to Get into Our House and Where We Keep the Money and the novella, A Familiar Beast. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Tin House, Northwest Review, Salon, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Big Fiction, and elsewhere. A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for nonfiction literature, he has been included in the anthologies The Bastard on the Couch, Cooking and Stealing: The Tin House Non-Fiction Reader, and The Encyclopedia of Exes. He lives in New York, where he is the Editorial Director of Heleo.

Henry Israeli’s books include New Messiahs, Praying to the Black and god’s breath hovering over the waters; and, in translation, Fresco: the Selected Poetry of Luljeta Lleshanaku: Child of Nature, and Haywire: New and Selected Poems. He has been awarded fellowship grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Canada Council on the Arts, and elsewhere. His poetry and translations have appeared in numerous journals including American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, and Tin House, as well as several anthologies. Henry Israeli is also the founder and editor of Saturnalia Books.

Eugenia Leigh is a Korean American poet and the author of Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows, winner of the 2015 Debut-litzer Prize in Poetry and finalist for both the National Poetry Series and the Yale Series of Younger Poets. The recipient of fellowships and awards from Poets & Writers Magazine, Kundiman, The Frost Place, Rattle, and the Asian American Literary Review, Eugenia’s poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications including The Rumpus, North American Review, and the Best New Poets 2010 anthology. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and serves as the Poetry Editor of Hyphen.

Megan Staffel is an American fiction writer and essayist. She is the author of two novels, The Notebook of Lost Things and She Wanted Something Else, and three story collections, A Length of Wire and Other Stories, Lessons In Another Language and The Exit Coach. Her story collection, Lessons in Another Language, was awarded the 2011 IPPY AWARD for Bronze Medal Winner in the Short Story and the 2011 Foreword Review’s Book of the Year Award for Silver Medal Winner in the Short Story. Her stories have appeared in numerous journals, including Ploughshares and New England Review. Her essays on the craft of fiction appear in A Kite in the Wind, edited by Andrea Barrett and Peter Turchi, and Letters to a F iction Writer, edited by Frederick Busch. She teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Sean Lynch, host – An open mic will follow the featured readers. The event is free and 21+.

Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie’s Pub Featuring Savannah Cooper-Ramsey, Lillian Dunn, and Gabriel Ojeda-Sague
2017-10-04 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Savannah Cooper-Ramsey, a fitful Philadelphian who likes to make things (often poems), is the author of “The Self, it’s nothing personal”, the first of two chapbook projects forthcoming with Waterhouse Ltd. Her work has also been published in Whirlwind Magazine Lillian Dunn studied community literary projects in Argentina as a Fulbright scholar before moving to Philadelphia and co-founding APIARY and runs the SPACES Artist in Residence Program at the Village of Arts and Humanities. She writes poetry with the Rogue Workshop. Gabriel Ojeda-Sague is a Miami -> Philly, Latino, gay Leo. His first collection, Oil and Candle, is a set of writings on Santería, war, and the precarity of Latino-American lives. He is also the author of 4 chapbooks, most recently Where Everything is in Halves. His work can be found at ojedasague.com. Host: Sean Lynch

PHILLY LOVES HAIKU - Host: Charles S. Carr
2017-10-03 18:30 - 19:00 | PhillyCAM, 699 Ranstead Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19106, United States
2017 Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Readings Series on PhillyCAM, 699 Ranstead Street
Did you know that there are over 50 organizations that promote poetry in the Philadelphia area? They represent every poetry form, every ethnic background, every age, gender and community. This series ll consist of an interview with the directors of these groups followed by a reading by group members. The program will be broadcast live on the first Tuesday of each month. The program is free and open to everyone. Please join us.

Henry Brann is the roving ambassador of the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association, where he has served on the board for twenty five years in various roles including Board President. Robin Pally currently is the Secretary of the board of the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association and is administrator of the Annual Haiku Competition for seventh through twelfth grades. Lamont Steptoe is the author of fourteen collections of poetry while also serving as editor for two books b y the late South African poet, Dennis Brutus. Steptoe is the winner of an American Book Award, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts and is founder of Whirlwind Press.

Moonstone Poetry at Brandywine Workshop and Archive, 728 S. Broad Street
2017-10-02 19:00 - 21:00 | Brandywine Workshop, 728 S. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19146, United States
Shevaun Brannigan is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, as well as The Jimenez-Porter Writers’ House. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Best New Poets, Rhino, Washington Square Review, and Crab Orchard Review. Tim Lynch has published with Mead, War, Literature, and the Arts, HEArt Online, Whirlwind, & Radius. He was awarded a 2015 Piper Global Writing Residency in Southeast Asia. Trapeta B. Mayson is a dynamic poet, workshop leader and educator who has received numerous literary awards and fellowships including a Pew Fellowship, PCA Grant and a Leeway Award. Trapeta is a Cave Canem and Callaloo Fellow. Anne-Adele Wight is the author of The Age of Greenhouses, Opera House Arterial, and Sidestep Catapult, her work has appeared in journal including American Writing, Philadelphia Poets, Mad Poets Review, Apiary, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Bedfellows

Moonstone Poetry at Fergie's Pub: Featuring Alicia Askenase, Julia Blumenrich, and Nina Schafer
2017-09-27 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Alicia Askenase is a poet and educator who has taught in Puerto Rico, Spain and the US, is the author of the chapbooks Cover, Suspect, The Luxury of Pathos and Shirley Shirley. Her poems have appeared in literary journals and anthologies including Review Revista Americana, 5trope, sonaweb, texture, Chain, Black and New Works by Philadelphia Poets. She was a founding co-editor of the poetry journal 6ix and Literary Program Director at the Walt Whitman Center.
Julia Blumenreich is a poet, recipient of a PCA grant and a finalist for the 2016 Brittany Noakes Poetry Award. She has read her work in various venues including the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, and Muse House in Philadelphia. Her recent work has been published in “The Whirlwind Review, and “An Anthology of Philadelphia Poets,” and has published two chapbooks:Meeting Tessie and Artificial Memory.
Nina Schafer is a poet based in Philadelphia and a member of Leonard Gontarek’s Workshop and the 34th Street Poets. She created the Unexpected Poetry Project through which she distributes 12,000 poems a year, one-by-one, to unsuspecting people waiting in grocery store lines, at the gas station, in the elevator, or browsing IKEA on Delaware Avenue. The responses have been unexpected. Open Reading Follows, Jennifer Hook & Alina Macneal Hosts

Moonstone Poetry at Fergie's Pub: Featuring Richard Bank, Ryan Eckes, and Al Tacconelli
2017-09-20 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Richard Bank’s poetry has appeared in numerous small press poetry journals. He has conducted a poetry reading series for the Mad Poets Society in the Philadelphia area. Bank has conducted Continuing Legal Education courses on jury techniques, and serves as an adjunct professor at Villanova Law School.
Ryan Eckes’ narrative-driven poetry is, in his words, “a possible form of history:” a way to document the voices and conditions of urban life. In his latest book, Valu-Plus, Eckes continues his examination of Philadelphia, as he imaginatively makes use of corporate language, workplace correspondence, and other non-poetic texts, “in search of free expression and experience,” he says.
Poet and artist, Al Tacconelli has read at Robin’s Bookstore, The Free Library Of Philadelphia, and Hofstra University. Al’s poems have appeared in The Endicott Review, and Mad Poets Review. His chapbooks are; Two Countries, One Heart, and The Laurenzi Poem. An open mic will follow the featured readers. The event is free and 21+. Suzan Jivan, Host

2017 Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Readings Series on PhillyCAM, 699 Ranstead Street
2017-09-20 18:30 - 2017-10-02 19:00
Did you know that there are over 50 organizations that promote poetry in the Philadelphia area? They represent every poetry form, every ethnic background, every age, gender and community. This series will consist of an interview with the directors of these groups followed by a reading by group members. The program will be broadcast live on the first Tuesday of each month. The program is free and open to everyone. Please join us.
