Moonstone Arts Center

Sunday, May 3 - LIVE AND VIRTUAL - 3pm
2026-05-03 15:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Remembering Hal Sirowitz
Sunday May 3, 2026 – LIVE at Fergie’s Pub AND Virtual
Hal Sirowitz (March 6, 1949- October 17, 2025) was an American and internationally known poet, who first began to attract attention at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe where he was a frequent competitor in their Friday Night Poetry Slam. He eventually made the 1993 Nuyorican Poetry Slam team and competed in the 1993 National Poetry Slam along with his Nuyorican teammates Maggie Estep, Tracie Morris, and Regie Cabico.
He would later perform his poetry on stages across the country, and on television programs such as MTV’s Spoken Word: Unplugged and PBS’s The United States of Poetry. He wrote five books of poetry: Mother Said, My Therapist Said, Father Said, During and After, and Stray Cat Blues. He was the best-selling translated poet in Norway, where Mother Said has been adapted for the stage and turned into a series of animated cartoons. He has been translated into thirteen languages.
Sirowitz was a 1994 recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Poetry and was the Poet Laureate of Queens. He worked as a special education teacher in the New York public school system for 23 years and was married to the writer Minter Krotzer, who will be attending.
Tom Devaney and Jeff Lee as Hosts

Purchase the anthology featuring over 30 poets honoring Hal and his legacy.
Register Here for Virtual

Wednesday May 6, 2026 - 7pm – LIVE
2026-05-06 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday May 6, 2026 – 7pm – LIVE at Fergie’s Pub
Featuring: Dilruba (Ruba) Ahmed, Barbara Siegel Carlson, Raina J. León, ariel rosé
Dilruba (Ruba) Ahmed is the author of Bring Now the Angels (Pitt Poetry), with poems featured in New York Times Magazine, The Slowdown, and Poetry Unbound. Her poems have appeared in Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly Review. Her work has also been anthologized in Best American Poetry; Halal If You Hear Me; New Moons: Contemporary Writing by North American Muslims; They Rise Like A Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets; and elsewhere.
Barbara Siegel Carlson is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Current published by Lily Poetry Review Books, 2026. Her poetry and translations have appeared in Verse Daily, Cortland Review, Mid-American Review, Salamander, 2River, The Poetry Porch and others. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Carlson is a Poetry in Translation Editor of Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices.
Raina J. León, PhD, 2026-2027 Philadelphia Poet Laureate, is a Black, Afro-Boricua poet, writer, and educator from southwest Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). Her work is grounded in collective action and community engagement, centering storytelling, memory, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education across poetry, visual art, and archival practice. She is the author of black god mother this body, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and several chapbooks, and is the founding editor of The Acentos Review, an international journal dedicated to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts.
ariel rosé is a trans gender / androgynous / queer poet, essayist, and illustrator originally from Poland, resident of Norway, a nomad. Ariel is coming to the United States to read from Both Sides Face East. Durable Words, that they edited: well as their latest poetry collection, morze nocą jest mięśniem serca (the sea at night is a muscle of the heart) nominated for the Orfeusz Award, and Północ. They were for the Most Beautiful Book Award for their illustrations for Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s Kocia Książka (Cat Book).

Tuesday May 12 - PhillyCAM - Philly Loves Poetry
2026-05-12 18:30 - 19:30 | PA
Tuesday May 12, 2026 @ 6:30pm – LIVE BROADCAST
Moonstone Poetry @ PhillyCAM
Can be viewed on the Phillycam website
Or Cable 66/966HD/967 or Verizon FIOS, 29/30
In Philadelphia.
Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Readings Series
Sean Hanrahan (he, him, his) is a Philadelphian poet originally hailing from Dale City, Virginia. He is the author of Headless (Collapse Press), the full-length collections Safer Behind Popcorn (2019 Cajun Mutt) and Ghost Signs (2023 Alien Buddha), and the chapbooks Hardened Eyes on the Scan (2018 Moonstone) and Gay Cake (2020 Toho). His work has also been included in various anthologies and journals. He has taught classes titled A Chapbook in 49 Days, Ekphrastic Poetry, Poetry Embodied, and has hosted and read at poetry events throughout Philadelphia. He can be found on Instagram as gaycakepoet. Sean Hanrahan, author of Headless, Safer Behind Popcorn and Ghost Signs, Hardened Eyes on the Scan and Gay Cake. His work has also been included in various anthologies and journals..
Charles S. Carr, Host

Wednesday May 13, 2026 - LIVE @ 7pm
2026-05-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday May 13, 2026 – 7pm
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom
Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War
Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War offers a groundbreaking and vital perspective on war’s destruction of the natural world—the creatures, plants, soil, water, and atmosphere of Earth. In poems and contextual comments, 61 contemporary poets focus on military damages to the ecosystems on six continents and the moon. This compelling anthology alerts readers to environmental degradation of our planet while affirming nature’s resilience and regeneration.
Contributors: Ninety poems, each paired with an Author’s Note, by U. S. and international poets, including John Balaban, Gillian Clarke, Camille T. Dungy, Ferida Duraković, W.D. Ehrhart, Willian Heyen, Cynthia Hogue, Denise Low, Craig Santos Perez, Eric Paul Shaffer, Jillian Sullivan, Brian Turner, Pamela Uschuk, and Mai Der Vang.
“Bringing light to a dark place, these geographically and historically wide-reaching poems illuminate how war pulls, from under our feet, the earth on which we stand and pollutes even the air we breathe. Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War is unique in its scope and its focus on how war’s intolerable human cost is inseparable from the devastation of nature and its non-human animals—war against life itself. Though, like green shoots from a charred root, here, too, are poems of eloquent witness to nature’s humbling power of resilience and restoration.” —Eleanor Wilner – Chancellor, Academy of American Poets

C. Todd, co-editor of Convergence: Poetry on the Environmental Impacts of War. Her most recent books are Beyond Repair and the bilingual English–Lithuanian What Kept Me Awake? / Kas neleido užmigti?. A former Pew Fellow, she has poems in American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, Pedestal.

D. Ehrhart is a Marine Corps veteran of both the American War in Vietnam and Vietnam Veterans Against the War. His most recent books are Smart Fish Don’t Bite and Getting Shot At: Essays on War, Conflict, and Culture Clash.
Vernita Hall, author of Where William Walked: Poems About Philadelphia and Its People of Color. Poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, African American Review, Barrow Street, and elsewhere.
Rick Kearns is a writer of Puerto Rican and European heritage. His poems have appeared in over 70 publications and six anthologies in the US and Argentina. He was Poet Laureate of Harrisburg. Rick and the Con Alma Quartet blended his poetry with established jazz tunes. A freelance journalist for over 35 years, he writes mostly about Latin American and Indigenous issues.
MaryAnn L. Miller is a poet, printmaker, and book artist. Miller has been thrice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared in the anthologies Illness as a Form of Existence, Welcome to the Resistance, and Stained.
Michelle Servellon is a Salvadoran-American writer and graduate of Stockton University. She lives in South Jersey with her family—whose joy, grief, and anger often become the subject of her pieces. She now dedicates her time at the Long Branch Free Public Library working as a Technology Assistant.

Live Reading: Featured Poets 2025
2026-05-16 14:00 - 16:00 | The Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine Street, 1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Saturday, May 16 2026 – 2pm ET
Philadelphia Central Library, Literature Department – 1901 Vine Street
Featured Poets from 2025
Moonstone presents over 100 poetry readings a year, creates a book with some of the presenters poems, and has a live and virtual reading. This is it.
Featured Poets (not all poets will be reading):

Nathalie
Anderson

Peter
Baroth

Grace
Bauer

Nilufer
Bektas

Phoebe
Brown

Christopher
Brown

Sarah
Browning

Sydney
Coffin

Marion
Cohen

Robert
Coles

C.M.
Crockford

CRAIG
CZURY

Eileen
D’Angelo

Bill
Ehrhart

Shannon
Frost Greenstein

Thalia
Geiger

Jenny
Grassl

Julia
Gwiazdowski

Brian
Harper

Faleeha
Hassan

Alison
Hicks

Dennis
Hinrichsen

Ditta Baron
Hoeber

Jones
Irwin

Mackenzie
Lerario

Lynn
Levin

Cameron
MacKenzie

Marjorie
Maddox

Emiliano
Martin

MJ
McGinn

Carol
Metellus

David
Milley

Jane Edna
Mohler

Nader
Rahimi

Sultana
Raza

Don
Riggs

Lynda Gene
Rymond

Amy
Small-McKinney

Karamo Muchuri
Sulieman

Mark
Svenvold

Tara
Tamburello

Elaine
Terranova

Bill
Van Buskirk

BJ
Ward

Bernardine
Watson

Von
Wise

Alexis
Young

Robert
Zaller

Wednesday May 20, 2026 @7pm - LIVE
2026-05-20 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday May 20, 2026 @7pm – LIVE at Fergie’s
Featuring: Chris Darrah, Olga Livshin, David Milley, Elijah B Pringle, III, and Sean Hanrahan as Host
Chris Darrah – Unwashed heathen wordsmith. Published several times in area zines. Member of the New Hope Beats. “Heretic Vicar” nome de plume.
Olga Livshin grew up in Ukraine and Russia. Her poetry appears in POETRY, The New York Times, Ploughshares and other journals.
David Milley’s recent work appears in 3rd Wednesdya, Bay Windows, RFD Magazine, Neologism Poetry Journal, and Last Syllable. His collection of poems, Tiller and Shears, will appear under the Aldrich Press imprint in fall 2026.
Elijah B Pringle, III has to credit his experience in Radio, TV, Stage and FIlm, has worked as a dancer, choreographer, actor, director, and vocalist. Facilitator for writing and Performance, Mr. Pringle has been published in almost fifty anthologies, journals, and books.
Sean Hanrahan Host – Open Reading Follows

Wednesday May 27, 2026 – 7pm LIVE
2026-05-27 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday May 27, 2026 – 7pm LIVE @ FERGIES
Featuring: Alexander Khan, Dustin Wright, and Mac Chandler as host
Alexander Khan is a poet, he is also a member of a big family in a small house, and a pharmacy staff for children. His work reflects these places and the different person he becomes in each of them.
Dustin Wright hails from somewhere between the Mississippi River delta and the North Mississippi hill country. He moved to West Philadelphia in 2023, but his poetry can only come from Mississippi.
Mac Chandler Host – Open Reading Follows

Live Broadcast: Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Readings Series Presents Diane Sahms
2026-06-09 18:30 - 21:30 | Moonstone Arts Center
Diane Sahms is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently,– of an octopus: an archite|x| tural awareness of words. She was awarded first place in Judith Stark’s Poetry Contest; Partisan Press’s Working People’s Poetry Contest; and recieved a poetry grant from AEVentures Foundation. Published in North American Review, Northern Virginia Review, Brushfire Literature & Arts Journal, Valley Voices, Sequestrum Literary Journal, The New Verse News, Ranger Magazine, Amsterdam Review & elsewhere. She’s Poetry Editor at North & Oxford. Charles S. Carr, Host

Live Poetry: Dan Kraines, Amy Saul-Zerby, & Rocky Wilson
2026-06-10 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry: Dan Kraines, Amy Saul-Zerby & Rocky Wilson
Wednesday, June 10th @ 7pm
Live at Fergies Pub
Dan Kraines is a queer poet of Viennese, Bolivian, and Ukrainian heritage. Strap is his first full length book. Dan works at the writers residency Hawthornden Brooklyn on weekends, and for the poet Sharon Olds during the week. ” Dan Kraines is one of the most gifted literary minds that I have ever taught… daring, surprising, unconventional, a refreshment because everything he does proceeds from an original relation to his material.”– Frank Bidart, Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Half-light: Collected Poems.
Amy Saul-Zerby is the author of Paper Flowers, Imaginary Birds, Deep Camouflage, and Choose Your Own Beginning. Her poems have appeared in The Rumpus, The Chicago Review of Books, American Poetry Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and elsewhere. She edits Voicemail Poems. Her newest poetry collection, If I Cannot Fly, is available through Serotonin Press in July, 2026.
Rocky Wilson is a poet, performance artist, and teacher who lives near the Delaware River in Camden. Rocky has been interpreting Whitman in schools and libraries, and for historial groups and at the Philly Fringe Festival. Rocky has , for the last 25 years, hosted Pizza and Poetry at A Slice of New York in Camden. It is one of the longest running poetry series in New Jersey.
Sean Lynch Host- Open Reading Follows

Live Poetry: Indran Amirthanayagam, Claudia Gary & Mike Jurkovic
2026-06-21 08:00 - 17:00 | PA
Live Poetry: Indran Amirthanayagam, Claudia Gary & Mike Jurkovic
Wednesday July 8, 2026 – 7pm – LIVE
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Indran Amirthanayagam is a poet, editor, publisher, translator, youtube host and diplomat. He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole and is the author of 30 books and translations. He edits the Beltway Poetry Quarterly, writes a weekly poem for Haiti en Marche and El Acento; has received fellowships from the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The US/Mexico Fund for Culture and the Macdowell Colony. He is the 2025 Matwaala Poet of Honor. His first book The Elephants of Reckoning won the 1994 Paterson Poetry Prize in the United States and is the 2025 Poet of Honor for Matwaala and IFLAC’s 2022 World Poet/Poeta Mundial. Indran comments on poetry at indranmx.substack.com
Claudia Gary’s new poetry book, Time and Other Solvents, is a story of healing. She lives near Washington DC and teaches workshops on Sonnets, Villanelles, Natural Meter, Persona Poems, Poetry vs. Trauma, etc. at The Writer’s Center (writer.org). She is also the author of Humor Me and chapbooks, and is an advisory editor for New Verse Review, health/science writer, visual artist, and composer of tonal art songs and chamber music.
Mike Jurkovic is 2025-2027 Ulster County Poet Laureate. Published globally. Little reportable income. Collections: Circling Planes, Buckshot Reckoning, mooncussers, AmericanMental, 2016 Pushcart nominee. President Calling All Poets Series. Co-chair of the Music Fan Film Series, Rosendale Theatre, Rosendale, NY. CD reviews online All About Jazz and lightwoodpress.com Host of NuJazzXcursions, Mondays, 9-11a WVKR-FM 91.3 Vassar College. He loves Emily most of all.
Liz Allen Host – Open Reading Follows

Live Poetry: Vasiliki Argyris & William Lessard
2026-06-24 19:00 - 22:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Vasiliki Argyris looks for the threads that bind history, poetry, and walking the earth. Her work can be found in Voicemail Poems, Pamphilet, and Works & Days. William Lessard writing has appeared in American Poetry Review, McSweeney’s, and others, he is the Poetry & Hybrids editor at Heavy Feather Review.

Live Poetry: Michael J. Ivory Jr., Matthew Kosinski, & Mattie Phrances McDonald
2026-07-01 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry: Michael J. Ivory Jr., Matthew Kosinski, & Mattie Phrances McDonald
Wednesday July 1, 2026 – 7pm – LIVE
Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Michael J. Ivory, Jr. is a Worker of the Word — in other words, a writer. A Miami, FL-native, he currently lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As the queer son of Pentecostal preachers, Michael lives out his sacred mission to affirm the inherent divinity of all people, but most especially Black queer “outcasts” like himself. He does this through his writing, which can be found on his Substack, as well as in his work with O, Miami Press, Iansá Mag, Duke Magazine, and Oxford American. He is currently working on his debut novel.
Matthew Kosinski is a poet, socialist and occultist from Philadelphia. His books include Alone in the White Marble City (NDR, 2020), Your Human Shape (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and Year of the Inverted Star (Broken Sleep Books, 2026).
Mattie Phrances McDonald (they/she/bun) is an engineer, musician, and writer. Along with their solo project Betty’s Eyes, she is the guitarist/vocalist in Booklegger, creates art and circuits for Electrofoods, Ultd., and co-founded the queer- and trans-centered sandlot baseball team the Quaker City Cryptids. Bun lives in their adoptive home of Philadelphia with two of her partners and two kitties. Their work can be found at booklegger.bandcamp.com, electrofoods.space, and on instagram at @bettys.eyes and @cryptidsbaseball
Warren Longmire Host – Open Reading Follows

Freedom 250? - Virtual Poetry Event
2026-07-05 14:00 - 16:00 | Virtual
The United States is a federal republic whose people benefit from a vibrant political system, a strong rule-of-law tradition, robust freedoms of expression and religious belief, and a wide array of other civil liberties.
However, in recent years its democratic institutions have suffered erosion, as reflected in rising political polarization and extremism, partisan pressure on the electoral process, mistreatment and dysfunction in the criminal justice and immigration systems, and growing disparities in wealth, economic opportunity, and political influence.

Link to Register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/f7cHnTsGSLGnHbzv4dA2jQ

Live Poetry: Indran Amirthanayagam, Claudia Gary, & Mike Jurkovic
2026-07-08 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Wednesday July 8, 2026 – 7pm – LIVE
Indran Amirthanayagam is a poet, editor, publisher, translator, youtube host and diplomat. He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole and is the author of 30 books and translations. He edits the Beltway Poetry Quarterly, writes a weekly poem for Haiti en Marche and El Acento; has received fellowships from the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The US/Mexico Fund for Culture and the Macdowell Colony. He is the 2025 Matwaala Poet of Honor. His first book The Elephants of Reckoning won the 1994 Paterson Poetry Prize in the United States and is the 2025 Poet of Honor for Matwaala and IFLAC’s 2022 World Poet/Poeta Mundial. Indran comments on poetry at indranmx.substack.com
Claudia Gary’s new poetry book, Time and Other Solvents, is a story of healing. She lives near Washington DC and teaches workshops on Sonnets, Villanelles, Natural Meter, Persona Poems, Poetry vs. Trauma, etc. at The Writer’s Center (writer.org). She is also the author of Humor Me and chapbooks, and is an advisory editor for New Verse Review, health/science writer, visual artist, and composer of tonal art songs and chamber music.
Mike Jurkovic is 2025-2027 Ulster County Poet Laureate. Published globally. Little reportable income. Collections: Circling Planes, Buckshot Reckoning, mooncussers, AmericanMental, 2016 Pushcart nominee. President Calling All Poets Series. Co-chair of the Music Fan Film Series, Rosendale Theatre, Rosendale, NY. CD reviews online All About Jazz and lightwoodpress.com Host of NuJazzXcursions, Mondays, 9-11a WVKR-FM 91.3 Vassar College. He loves Emily most of all.
Liz Allen Host – Open Reading Follows

Painting in the Dark: An Artistic Collaboration
2026-07-11 16:00 - 19:00 | City Arts Salon, 5838 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA, 19144, United States
Saturday, July 11th, 2026 – 4 to 7 pm
City Arts Salon, 5838 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19144
Painting in the Dark interrogates the hideousness of war, addiction, and delusion with the consolation concluding poet John Lavin’s final poem, –but that’s all we have is each other. Illustrators Gregorio Torres, III and Janelle Robinson have joined Lavin in mapping the extreme pain and pleasure inherent in this collection’s narrative arc: a journey from darkness to light. Just such solidarity is engrained in this book’s search within the darkness imposed by a king’s tyranny (“Goya Under House Arrest”) and elaborated in erotic euphoria, colonial oppression, exile, and erasure. John Lavin was Gregorio’s drama teacher and ten years after Greg’s graduation Lavin attended an exhibition of Torres and his partner, Janelle Robinson’s art in New York (2023) where they began the conversation that inspired this collection. Event will combine reading from Collection of Poems, Musical Performance and Reflection.

Philly Loves Poetry: Jim Timpane
2026-07-14 18:30 - 19:30 | PA
Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Readings Series with Jim Timpane
Moonstone Poetry @ PhillyCAM
Watch on the PhillyCAM website
Or Cable 66/966HD/967 or Verizon FIOS, 29/30 in Philadelphia.
John Timpane was a professor and lecturer in English, first at Rutgers University and later at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. In 1997 The Philadelphia Inquirer, hired him as Opinion Page Editor, and later the Books Editor and Theater Critic. He retired from The Inquirer in 2019. Since The Inquirer, John has freelanced fulltime. He specializes in ghostwriting autobiographies; arts reviewing, especially in poetry and theater; and writing seminars. He keeps working at the craft of versemaking.
Charles S. Carr, Host

Live Poetry: Jessica Buten, Caroline Furr, Ben Saff, Abby Minor & Amy Thatcher
2026-07-15 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry: Jessica Buten, Caroline Furr, Ben Saff, Abby Minor & Amy Thatcher
Wednesday July 15, 2026 – 7pm
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Jessica Buten is a poet from Bucks County.
Caroline Furr has a decades long history in painting, sculpture, interior and surface design, gallery and museum work. At this less distracting time of life she has turned to her accumulation of written work as inspiration for new words.
Ben Saff is a technologist by trade and a creative when the moon comes knocking at his window, asking for a poem. He lives in Philadelphia with his cat, Simba.
Abby Minor lives in the ridges and valleys of central Pennsylvania, where she works on poems, essays, gardens, collages, and projects exploring regional and reproductive politics. Her poems and essays have appeared in Fence, the American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, Bombay Gin, Sixth Finch, Harvard Review, Feminist Studies, and elsewhere.
Amy Thatcher is a native Philadelphian. Her poems have been published in Denver Quarterly, Split LIp, The Journal, Copper Nickel, Salt Hill and other journals. Her first manuscript, Weird Girl, won the 2025 Charles B Wheeler Prize and will be published by the Ohio State University Press in February 2027.
Anne-Adele Wight Host – Open Reading Follows

Censorship: A Panel Discussion with Larry Robin, Ernest Hilbert & Keith Kopka
2026-07-18 14:00 - 16:00 | The Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine Street, 1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, United States
Censorship: A Panel Discussion with Larry Robin, Ernest Hilbert, & Keith Kopka
Sat, July 18, 2026 @ 2:00 P.M.
Rare Book Department at Parkway Central Library
Cost: FREEElkins Library, 3rd FloorA discussion on censorship with Larry Robin, Director of Moonstone Arts Center and former owner of Robin’s Book Store, which was the Philadelphia defendant in the Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller) pornography case in 1961. Larry will be joined by poet and rare book dealer Ernest Hilbert, and Keith Kopka, Writers Resist and Senior Editor at Narrative Magazine and Poetry Editor at Philadelphia Stories.This program is presented in association with Book Complaints and the Defense of Intellectual Freedom, an exhibition from Special Collections and will take place in the Rare Book Department’s Elkins Library.
The views expressed by the authors and moderators are strictly their own and do not represent the opinions of the Free Library of Philadelphia or its employees.

Live Poetry: Jane-Rebecca Cannarella, Nycir Keen, & Charles O’Hay
2026-07-22 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry: Jane-Rebecca Cannarella, Nycir Keen, & Charles O’Hay
Wednesday July 22, 2026 – 7pm – LIVE
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Jane-Rebecca Cannarella is the author of Better Bones and Marrow; as well as an editor at HOOT Review, a former genre editor at Lunch Ticket, and a sometimes contributor at SSG Music. She likes: playing toy instruments, the ocean, symbolic use of bathtubs, and hanging out with her cats. Feed her candy and validation to receive her eternal gratitude. She loves Philadelphia
Nycir Keen is a Philly based poet and playwright with roots in slam poetry. A member of the Collective Mic as well as House Poet and a former performer for the Gullah Traveling Theater. Founder of the Day Trolley, a writing circle and yearly open mic in west philly, Nycir has a passion for facilitating creative and safe spaces for writers. In 2024, Nycir wrote and directed his first short screenplay, “Renaissance///Addiction”. Today he is still active in the poetry scene, moving between Beaufort South Carolina and the Philadelphia area to cultivate his own work and find new writers to work with, share with and create with.
Charles O’Hay is a Philly-based poet whose work has appeared in over 250 publications including the New York Quarterly, Mudfish, and Gargoyle. His collections include Far from Luck and Smoking in Elevators. His third collection, The Flame Orchard, is due for release from Rose Violet Publishers in 2026
Anne-Adele Wight Host – Open Reading Follows

House Poet Presents: Juniper Danger & Thalia Geiger
2026-07-29 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
House Poet Presents: Juniper Danger & Thalia Geiger
Wednesday July 29, 2026 – 7pm – LIVE
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Juniper Danger is a Philly based queer poet and science teacher. She loves filling her house with people and those people with soup. You can find her work in Collide Zine and Voicemail Poems, and her Instagram is @androjunous
Thalia Geiger is a poet and fiction writer, author of the chapbook Wild Like a Woman, and her debut poetry collection, Red Death, Purple Dark, is forthcoming from Thirty West Publishing. She is the winner of Black Fox Literary’s 2025 Summer Fox Tales Contest, and her work has been featured in New York Quarterly, Allegory Ridge, Coffin Bell, Grim & Gilded and more. She hails from Philadelphia, where she works in journal publishing. You can find her on Instagram and BlueSky @thalierr, and on Substack at thalierr.substack.com
Warren C. Longmire – Host – Open Reading Follows

Philly Loves Poetry: David Livewell
2026-08-04 18:30 - 19:30 | PhillyCAM, 699 Ranstead Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19106, United States
Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Readings Series with David Livewell
Tuesday, August 4, 2026
6:30pm – Live Broadcast
Watch live on the Phillycam website
Or Cable 66/966HD/967 or Verizon FIOS, 29/30
David Livewell was raised in the Kensington section of North Philadelphia. He won the 2012 T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize for his first book, Shackamaxon. His poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, The Threepenny Review, Dark Horse, Poetry, The Yale Review, American Life in Poetry, The Hopkins Review, and other journals. He received a 2025 fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and lives with his family just outside Philadelphia. His latest collection, Pass and Stow, is out now from Paul Dry Books.
Charles S. Carr, Host

Live Poetry: Stevie Edwards, Mike Jurkovic and Joe Roarty
2026-08-05 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Live Poetry: Stevie Edwards, Mike Jurkovic and Joe Roarty
Wednesday August 5, 2026 – 7pm – LIVE
Live at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Stevie Edwards is an Assistant Professor at Clemson University and Poetry Editor of The South Carolina Review.
Mike Jurkovic, 2025-2027 Ulster County Poet Laureate. Published globally. President Calling All Poets Series. Co-chair of the Music Fan Film Series.

Joe Roarty – Anyone who has seen local legend, Joe Roarty, perform at Fergie’s Pub or other venues around Philadelphia knows to expect poetry that is original, explosive, humorous, and, literally, percussive.
Aaren Perry – Host – Open Reading Follows

VIRTUAL EVENT - National Book Lovers Day
2026-08-09 14:00 - 16:00 | Virtual
VIRTUAL EVENT – National Book Lovers Day
Book Lovers Day is celebrated on the 9th of August every year. This is an unofficial holiday observed to encourage bibliophiles to celebrate reading and literature. People are advised to put away their smartphones and every possible technological distraction and pick up a book to read. Book Lovers Day is widely recognized on global scale yet its origin and creator remain unknown to date.
Link to Register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/f7cHnTsGSLGnHbzv4dA2jQ

Recent Publications: Regina Dilgen, Wendell Hawken, Beth Konkoski, & Sophia Pinto Thomas
2026-08-16 14:00 - 16:00 | Virtual
Recent Poetry Books from Moonstone Press: Regina Dilgen, Wendell Hawken, Beth Konkoski, & Sophia Pinto Thomas
Sunday August 16, 2pm ET – VIRTUAL
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/3i7OYv8sRwqh_OHp-K-cAQ
Regina’s new book is Back from the River, $11.00
Regina Dilgen was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York. She served as Professor of English and Department Chair at Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth, Florida, and she holds a Ph.D. from Florida Atlantic University. Her poetry has been published in Chameleon Chimera: An Anthology of Florida Poets, Poetry South, Blueline, redrosethorns, Earth’s Daughters, Quartler(ly), The Dewdrop, Persimmon Tree, Passager, and Apollo’s Lute. Regina attended the Breadloaf Writers Conference in Sicily, and she was a featured poet at a Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches reading.
Wendell’s new book is Slinky on the Bottom, $11.00

Wendell Hawken (she/her) earned her MFA from Warren Wilson College’s Program for Writers. Publications include four chapbooks and six full collections. Hawkens was named the inaugural Post Laureate of Millwood VA, an unincorporated quirky village in the northern Shenandoah Valley where she lives.
Beth’s new book is Hold Near the Middle, $11.00
Beth Konkoski is a writer and high school English teacher living in Virginia where she spends as much time as possible listening to the sounds of a pen across the page and water across rocks. Her poetry has been published in journals such as: The American Journal of Poetry, Mid-Atlantic Review, and The Potomac Review. She is the author of A Drawn & Papered Heart, a collection of short and flash fiction that won the 2023 Acacia Prize for Short Fiction and was published by Kallisto Gaia Press in 2024.
Sophia’s new book is Floodings, $11.00
Sophia Pinto Thomas is a poet from Boston, Massachusetts. She enjoys experimenting with the possibilities of rhyme, learning from thetrials of young adulthood, and observing the wonders of the natural world. Sophia is an eco-poet, world-maker, and eternal student. Her first poetry book, “Alchemies, Arrivals”, was published with QuillKeepers press in 2025.
