Moonstone Arts Center

2018 Moonstone Featured Poets Book Release & Poetry Reading *See Above*
2019-02-24 14:00 (America/New_York) | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie’s Pub
2018 Moonstone Featured Poets Anthology Book Release and Poetry Reading
Sunday, February 24, 2019 — 2pm

Join us for an afternoon of poetry and camaraderie. The 2018 Anthology of Featured Poets includes over 30 of the featured poets who read for Moonstone in 2018, many of whom will read on February 24. Poets included in this year’s anthology are:

Steve Burke
Joe Costal
Liz Chang
Aaron Graham
Bill Van Buskirk
Peter Baroth
Ahmad Almallah
Joe Roarty
John Wojtowicz
Ryan Eckes
W.D. Ehrhart
Angel Hogan
Brandon Blake

Charlie O’Hay
Levi Bentley
Eileen D’Angelo
Silvino Alexander
Sydney Coffin
Steve Nolan
James Feichthaler
Catherine Bancroft
Sean Hanrahan
Chad Frame
Antoinette Libro
Hayden Saunier
Don Riggs

Mike Miller
Candida Rodriguez
Thom Nichols
Joan Roberta Ryan
Bela Aznar
Donna Wolf-Palacio
Lamont Steptoe
Joel Dias-Porter
Mbarek Syfri
Charles Carr—host
Jennifer Hook—host
Sean Lynch—host
Alina Macneal-host

Michelle Belluomini & Ditta Baron Hoeber Poetry, Open Reading to follow
2019-02-20 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Michele Belluomini is author of Crazy Mary and Signposts for Sleepwalkers, her poetry has been published in American Poetry, Philadelphia Poets, Beltway, The Mad Poets Review and Apiary.

Ditta Baron Hoeber is an artist and a poet. Her work has appeared in Contemporary American Voices, the American Journal of Poetry, the American Poetry Review, Construction Magazine, New American Writing, Window Cat and Per Contra along with a suite of her photographs. In 2018 she received a nomination for the Pushcart Prize.

Open Reading follows – Larry Robin, Host

Moonstone Presents: Bondhus & Evans Poetry, Open Reading to follow
2019-02-13 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Charlie Bondhus is author Divining Bones and All the Heat We Could Carry, winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. His work has appeared in Poetry, The Missouri Review, Columbia Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Nimrod, and Copper Nickel.

R.G. Evans is the author of Overtipping the Ferryman, his poems, fiction, and reviews have appeared in Rattle, The Literary Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Paterson Literary Review, Lips, MARGIE, The Best of Pif Magazine (Offline), ​and Weird Tales, among other publications.

Open Reading follows – Dave Worrell, Host

Moonstone Presents: Rodriguez & Dr. Williams-Witherspoon Poetry, Open Reading to follow
2019-02-06 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Edythe Rodriguez is a senior at Temple University studying Creative Writing and Africology. She will be anthologized this year in The Dreamers Anthology: Writing Inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Anne Frank and FEMME: Literati Mixtape.

Dr. Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon, PhD (Cultural Anthropology), MA (Anthropology), MFA (Theater), Graduate Certificate) Women’s Studies, BA (Journalism); is an Associate Professor of Urban Theater and Community Engagement. She has had over twenty-three of her plays produced. Her stage credits include thirteen productions and she is a contributing poet to twenty-six poetry anthologies.

Open Reading follows – Sean Lynch, Host

Moonstone Presents: Philly Loves Poetry - Interviews and Readings
2019-02-05 18:30 | PhillyCAM, 699 Ranstead Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19106, United States
2019 Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Readings Series at PhillyCAM
Join us as the poets who Moonstone has published discus poetry and read their poems
“From Across the Waters: Jewish Refugees from the Former Soviet Union.”

In the wake of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, three Jewish refugee poets from the former Soviet Union read and discuss their work. They spotlight the enduring lives of their community, as well as complexities of their identity.

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach is the author of The Many Names for Mother, winner of the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry prize, and The Bear Who Ate the Stars. Her poems appear in POETRY, Best New Poets, American Poetry Review, others.

Olga Livshin’s poetry, essays, and translations from Russian appear in Writers Resist, the Kenyon Review, Poetry International, Jacket, and others.

Natalie Lyalin is the author of Blood Makes Me Faint, but I Go for It, Pink & Hot Pink Habitat, and Try A Little Time Travel.

Host: Charles S. Carr

To be Broadcast Live: Comcast 66/966 & Verizon 29/30

Moonstone Presents: Cuba, 2019 - Poetry & Information
2019-02-03 14:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Presenters include:

Steve Halpern was a member of the UAW and has been working as a housekeeper in Philadelphia area hospitals.

Enrique Sacerio-Garí, born in Cuba, professor at Bryn Mawr College known for his work on Jorge Luis Borges, and is author of Comunión (a concrete poem), Poemas interreales, Para llegar a La Habana and El mercado de la memoria.

John Staggs, Socialist Workers Party Candidate for Philadelphia City Council, a Walmart worker, Staggs participated in the “Dairy Farm Crisis Hearing” and joined the teacher’s picket lines in West Virginia.

International Volunteer Work Brigade to Cuba 2019 will take place April 21 – May 5.
Brigade members will participate in the May Day celebration in Havana. These tours are sponsored by the Cuban organization ICAP.
For more information: ICanGoToCuba@nnoc.info.
Applications are due by March 29.

Moonstone & Apiary Magazine Present: HIVE NIGHT
2019-01-30 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
HIVE NIGHT is Apiary Magazine’s showcase and open mic celebrating every stripe of literary artist the city has to offer. Come to hear voices from Philadelphia writing tribes old and new, spanning Apiary’s decade-long history. Stay to share your own work in a laid back, inclusive space, whatever the form, genre or mood, to a crowd hungry for diverse voices.
Featuring:

Michael O’Hara is the author of The Year With No Holidays and The Fine Art of Selling Out.

Nicole Steinberg is the author of Glass Actress, Getting Lucky, and several chapbooks, including Fat Dreams.

Sekai’afua Zankel is author of Behind These Eyes /Optical Poems, won the Frank Moore Poetry Prize 2008 and the Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant. Her poems have been published In the CAP literary magazine, Poetry Ink, and in Apiary.

This Reading Includes an Open Mic (Hosted by the staff of Apiary Magazine)

Moonstone Presents: A Tribute to J.C. Todd, Chapbook Release Party
2019-01-27 14:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
For some strange reason we tend to wait until someone dies before we express our gratitude for what they have done. We have memorials where people get up and say how important the person was to them and what they had accomplished. Why wait? Why not have a party honoring the person with praise poems while they are still alive and can enjoy it? Join us in honoring J.C. Todd.

J.C. Todd is a Fellow of the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and winner of the Rita Dove Poetry Prize. Author of The Damages of Morning, What Space This Body and co-author of the artist books, On Foot/By Hand and FUBAR, she has received fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Leeway Foundation, The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, The Hambidge Center, Ragdale, Ucross and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has taught in the MFA Program at Rosemont College and the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr College and holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Contributors will read their poems from the Chapbook
A Tribute to J. C. Todd
($10, The Moonstone Press)

Moonstone Presents: Relationships and Other Conflicts, Poetry Reading
2019-01-23 19:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Jennifer Anolik is an educator and writer. Her poetry has appeared in Infinite Rust, Apiary Online, BlazeVox, The Prompt Literary Magazine. When she is not writing poetry, she writes curriculum.

Amy Barone is author of We Became Summer, Kamikaze Dance and Views from the Driveway. Her poetry has appeared in Café Review, Standpoint (UK), Paterson Literary Review, Philadelphia Poets and Sensitive Skin, among other publications.

Open Reading Follows, Jennifer Hook and Alina Macneal Hosts

Moonstone Presents: Aaren Perry, Don Riggs & Lamont Steptoe
2018-12-05 08:00 - 17:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Aaren Perry is a Philadelphia-based writer who teaches poetry and writing He is the recipient of a 1990 Writing Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and is Poet-in-Residence at a number of educational institutions.

Don Riggs is author of Bilateral Asymmetry, his poetry has appeared in many publications and he teaches several courses for the Department of English and Philosophy at Drexel University.

Lamont B. Steptoe is a poet, activist, Vietnam Veteran, photographer and founder/publisher of Whirlwind Press. He is the author of fourteen books of poetry and 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.

Sean Lynch, host – An open mic will follow the featured readers.

Moonstone Presents: New Voices with Bela Azar & Vision
2018-12-04 18:00 - 20:30 | South Philadelphia Free Library, 1700 S. Broad Street (Morris Street), Philadelphia, PA, 19145, United States
Perry “Vision” DiVirgilio is a poet, activist and youth poetry educator. A graduate of Dickinson College, Vision’s work focuses on racial identity, identity politics, healing, and dismantling toxic masculinity. Vision’s poetry and poetry workshops were featured on CNN’s “Black in America 5,” the highest rated documentary in CNN history. He’s performed in over 30 international cities, 40 universities, as well as on TVOne’s Verses and Flow.
He currently co-coaches the Philadelphia Youth Poetry Team and is author of three collections of poetry, “Surviving Saturn’s Return,” “Heal On Purpose,” and “About Her.”

Host: Charles S. Carr

Moonstone Presents: Lynn Levin & Joan Roberta Ryan
2018-11-28 19:00 - 22:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Lynn Levin is a poet, writer, translator, and teacher, author of six books, most recently a poetry collection, Miss Plastique; a translation from the Spanish, Birds on the Kiswar Tree by Peruvian Andean poet Odi Gonzales; and, as co-author, the textbook Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets. The recipient of fourteen Pushcart Prize nominations, Levin has published poems, stories, essays, and translations in Ploughshares, Boulevard, The Hopkins Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Connecticut Review, Rattle, and Verse Daily.

Joan Roberta Ryan lives in Taos New Mexico where she indulges her passions for skiing, mushroom hunting, Mediterranean cooking—and above all—reading and writing poetry. Her work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Calyx, Nimrod, The Sow’s Ear Review, Spillway, Naugatuck River Review, Euphony, Ekphrasis, Crab Orchard Review and other journals. Joan’s poetry collection Dark Ladies & Other Avatars was published 2017.

Alina Macneal & Jennifer Hook, Host, A open mic will follow the featured readers.

Moonstone Presents: Hanoch Guy & Lisa Grunberger
2018-11-21 19:00 - 22:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Hanoch Guy is a bilingual poet who spent his younger years in Israel. An emeritus professor at Temple, he has published poetry in Genre Magazine, Poetry Newsletter, Tracks, the International Journal of Genocide Studies, Poetry Motel, Visions International and Poetica Magazine.

Lisa Grunberger, Temple University Professor and playwright, is also an award-winning poet whose work has appeared in The New York Times and in numerous literary publications. She is the author of Yiddish Yoga: Ruthie’s Adventures in Love, Loss and the Lotus Position and Born Knowing. Her poems have been translated into Hebrew, Slovenian, Russian, Polish, and Yiddish.

Warren Longmire, Host – An open mic will follow the featured readers

Moonstone Presents: New Voices
2018-11-19 18:00 - 20:30 | South Philadelphia Free Library, 1700 S. Broad Street (Morris Street), Philadelphia, PA, 19145, United States
New Voices: Philadelphia’s Emerging Poets
A Voice for Everyone: Listen, Share, Connect with Other Writers
Join us on the third Monday of each month for readings by emerging poets under the age of 25.
An open reading follows the featured poets.

Moonstone Presents: Krisann Janowitz & Thom Nickels
2018-11-18 14:00 - 17:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Homeless in Philadelphia
Krisann Janowitz, author of Home(less) began writing poetry at an early age (elementary school– if you count all the song lyrics about bubblegum). Her love for music and words has further driven her passion for poetry.

Thom Nickels is the author Learn To Do a Bad Thing Well: Looking for Johnny Bobbitt and 13 other books the latest of which is Philadelphia Mansions: Stories and Characters Behind the Walls.

Moonstone Presents: Barbara Siegel Carlson & Micellina & Joe McCullough
2018-11-14 19:00 - 22:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Barbara Siegel Carlson is the author of two poetry collections Fire Road and Once in Every Language. She is co-translator of Look Back, Look Ahead, Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel and is co-editor of A Bridge of Voices: Contemporary Slovene Poetry and Perspectives.

Micellina & Joe McCullough are a dynamic duo in the garden of mystic lovers. Their poetry is an open invitation to all creative spirits who wish to wander amongst the flowers of hope, healing, and joy-filled creative expression. This couple and their words are far from ordinary. Micellina and Joe’s writings have been published in Moonstone Press, Whirlwind Magazine, Soapbox Publishing as well as in artist Peter Kinney’s poetry art books.

Dave Worrell , host – An open mic will follow the featured readers.

Sounds & Words: A Fundraiser for The Moonstone Arts Center
2018-11-10 18:00 - 23:00 | 1199C Hospital Workers Union Headquarters, 1319 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Sounds & Words: A Fundraiser for the Moonstone Arts Center
with Music, Poetry, Food, Cash Bar, Exhibits, Book Sales
For 35 years, Moonstone Arts Center has brought Philadelphia the best in the performance and publication of poetry. To support this Philadelphia treasure, 11 poets and 2 bands will come together on one evening to remind you of why Moonstone is at the epicenter of the City’s literary scene.
Music with Bobby Zankel’s Wonderful Sound 4, featuring Sumi Tonooka and Richard Hill and Elliot Levin & Friends
Poetry by: Siduri Beckman, Jamar Hall, Ryan Eckes, Jeffrey Ethan Lee, Michelle Myers, Joe Roarty, Bethlehem Robertson, Sonia Sanchez, Kirwyn Sutherland, Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon, Sekai Afua Zankel
Emcees Warren Longmire & Elijah Pringle

Moonstone Presents: Candida Rodriguez & BJ Schwartz
2018-11-07 19:00 - 22:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Candida Rodriguez grew up in Puerto Rico where she developed a passion for reading and writing. When she turned 16 years old, she moved to Camden, where she joined her parents and two siblings. Her passion is in writing fantasy and science fiction, but has found a home in the lyricism of poetry and is a happy member of Brigid’s Writers House in Camden.

BJ Swartz, a retired science and medical librarian, has been writing since elementary school in Haddonfield, NJ. Her first published poem, “Mystery in the Swamp”, appeared in a 1966 thirty years later “Ode to My Gall Bladder”, her excuse for missing a writing class, was published in Stitches: The Journal of Medical Humor.

Sean Lynch, Host, An open mic will follow the featured readers.

Moonstone Presents: John Baky, Tom Garvey & Michael Miller
2018-11-06 19:00 - 22:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
John Baky (Army, 1969-1971, in Vietnam from 1970-1971) Baky spearheaded The Vietnam War Collection at La Salle and was specifically interested in how the trauma of the war played out in literature.

Tom Garvey, an Airborne, Ranger and Special Forces qualified officer, served as an A-Team Leader in Viet Nam in 1968 and returned home to mixed reviews about his stability and state of mind, he authored Many Beaucoups Magics, a novel.

Michael Miller is a Chester, PA native who served 15 years in the military. A poet himself, he wanted to focus on his diverse community and create change through the arts, he has performed around Philadelphia and new Jersey and at the Dodge Poetry Festival.

Host: Charles S. Carr

A Tribute to Sonia Sanchez
2018-09-16 12:30 - 17:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
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. We invite you to submit to this event. Submissions open from July 15, 2018 to September 2, 2018. Book Release Party and Reading will take place on Sunday September 16, 2018. Submissions for the book will be open until August 17, 2018.

12:30pm – Showing of the film BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez
2pm – Interview with Nzadi Keita
2:30pm – Reading by Sonia Sanchez
2:45 – Book contributors read
4:00pm – Book signing

Readings by WARREN C. LONGMIRE and LEVI BENTLEY
2018-08-01 19:00 - 22:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Levi Bentley organizes the reading series Housework and edits the journal Boneless Skinless, featuring work by Housework participants. A chapbook of poems “Bucolic Eclogue” was released from Lamehouse Press in July 2016. Levi has worked in publishing for a variety of clients including Copper Canyon, Ugly Duckling Presse, LUMA Foundation, and Jacket2 reissues at Kelly Writers House. They live in Philadelphia. Chapbooks “Obstacle, Particle, Spectacle”, “&parts”, and “Stub Wilderness” were released from 89plus Luma Foundation, Damask Press, and Well Greased Press, respectively. Vitrine released a tape of sounds labeled “Red Green Blue”. Poems have appeared in 491, Apiary, Bedfellows, BlazeVOX, Boog City, Elective Affinities, Fact-Simile, Gigantic Sequins, No Infinite, Maestra Vida, Magic Pictures, Painted Bride Quarterly, Small Po[r]tions, Stillwater Review, Tinge and Truck.
Warren C. Longmire is a Philly native, expert level whistler, pushcart nominee, former poetry editor at Apiary Magazine. He’s been published in Painted Bride Quarterly, Eleven Eleven and two chapbooks: Ripped Winters and Do.Until.True. He is currently splits his time between web programming, midi drumming and writing tumblr poems about the limit of 1/x. You can find his writings, essays, videos and sounds at dountiltrue.tumblr.com and soundcloud.com/wclongmire. Follow him on Instagram.

Readings by CLINTON SMITH and ELIJAH PRYOR
2018-07-25 19:00 - 22:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Elijah Pryor is a spoken word poet born and raised in Philadelphia. He feels blessed to be part of such a thriving and diverse arts scene in his home city and loves seeing people use creative expression to affect their world.
Clinton Smith is a poet, prose writer, and musician. As a guitarist, he has led various jazz music configurations that play widely in the tri-state area, and also worked with tabla player Bill Buchen in a group that focused on combining improvisational elements with various types of world music, particularly Arabic and Indian classical music. More recently, he has become interested in recording and performing ambient music through the layering of multiple levels of guitars, percussion instruments, and “field recordings”/sounds from found objects. A prolific poet, Clint has learned his craft through extensive reading and revision and workshops with poets such as Leonard Gontarek and Peter Balakian. His work has appeared most recently in Razor Lit and Confrontation.
Hosted by Dave Worrel
An open mic will follow the featured readers.

THE FUZE POETRY SLAM
2018-07-18 19:00 - 22:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Established in the Germantown neighborhood in 2008, the Fuze poetry slam is the longest running poetry slam in Philadelphia and currently the only venue participating as a part of NPS, the national poetry slam association of America. Over the course of the 10 years since, the Fuze served as host and home for a litany of performance poets across Philadelphia.

Join us for an interview with venue founder Sherrod Smallman and a performance by current team members David Gaines, Cynthia Jones, Talia Mingley.

All proceeds go towards supplementing the teams trip to this year’s national poetry slam in Chicago, IL.

A Shadow on Our Hearts: Solider-Poetry, Morality, and the American War in Vietnam
2018-06-24 14:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
The American War in Vietnam was one of the most morally contentious events of the twentieth century, and it produced an extraordinary outpouring of poetry. Yet the complex ethical terrain of the conflict is remarkably underexplored, and the prodigious poetic voice of its American participants remains largely unheard. In A Shadow on Our Hearts, Adam Gilbert rectifies these oversights by utilizing the vast body of soldier-poetry to examine the war’s core moral issues.
“This is the real deal – the big book on soldier-poetry of the Vietnam War that we have waited a half a century to get written.” – Phillip Beidler, author of American Literature and the Experience of Vietnam
Five veterans who lived through the war will be doing readings of their contributions to A Shadow on Our Hearts. From firsthand experiences, these pieces reflect on what it meant to be witnesses, victims, and perpetrators of the war’s violence.

Philadelphia Says: Haiku
2018-06-17 14:00 - 17:00
Presented by the Moonstone Arts Center & The Nick Virgilio Haiku Association
at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Sunday June 17, 2018 – 2pm
Philadelphia Says Haiku
Celebrating the release of
Philadelphia Says Haiku,
an Anthology of Haiku by Philadelphia Area Poets
($10, The Moonstone Press) with a reading by contributors.
Philadelphia is home to Sonia Sanchez, who writes a Haiku every morning and worked with Mural Arts on the Peace is a Haiku song mural, exploring haiku as a vehicle for peace and transformation. Sonia gives herself over with deep pleasure to the exacting beauty of haiku, a form she has cherished her entire writing life. Their brevity seems built for speed, but their lyricism and warmth inspire lingering, savoring, reading, and rereading, perhaps aloud. African-American novelist Richard Wright, in his final years, composed some 4,000 haiku, 817 of which are collected in the volume Haiku: This Other World. Wright hewed to a 5-7-5 syllabic structure for most of these pieces. In current English language haiku, most successful poems have fewer than fourteen syllables.

The Nick Virgilio Writers House opened in Camden on April 28, 2018, in honor of the city’s second best-known poet. Virgilio was one of America’s pre-eminent writers of haiku, known for his prolific work in the traditional Japanese short-poetry format and admired for upsetting its stringent rules. The Nick Virgilio Haiku Association was founded in 1990 to keep alive Nick Virgilio’s artistic legacy and to promote literacy and self-expression among young people through all forms of writing, especially haiku.
Mr. Virgilio is one of the acknowledged masters who in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s brought the delicate art of Japanese haiku into the English language. He died January 3, l989, while taping a segment of Nightwatch. At that time, according to Cor van den Heuvel, a Newsweek poetry editor and author of The Haiku Anthology, Virgilio “…. was on the verge of becoming American haiku’s first celebrity.”
A haiku in English is a very short poem, following to a greater or lesser extent the form and style of the Japanese haiku. A typical haiku is a three-line observation about a fleeting moment involving nature.

Hive Night: Open Mic, Featured Reading
2018-05-30 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Moonstone Poetry @ the Pub
Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Wednesday May 30, 2018 – 7pm
Hive Night @ Fergie’s Pub
HIVE NIGHT is Apiary Magazine’s showcase and open mic celebrating every stripe of literary artist the city has to offer. Come to hear voices from Philadelphia writing tribes old and new, spanning Apiary’s decade-long history. Stay to share your own work in a laidback, inclusive space, whatever the form, genre or mood, to a crowd hungry for diverse voices.
Meg Pendoley (Apiary 9) is a writer living in West Philadelphia. She is interested in queer homes (bodies, housers, neighborhoods), the boundaries they share, and how what happens here might be recorded, kept. Her work appears in Cleaver Magazine and on Tin House’s Open Bar.
Alex Smith (Apiary 8) is a queer black activist, poet, dj, actor, musician, afro punk/afro-futurist chronicler of the naughty universe. Smith’s work speaks to the edge, to the post-fringe dystopia slowly creeping upon us. Too cantankerous and flamboyant for the Saul Williams wanna-be/def poetry set, too tribal for academia, Smith paints viral inscriptions for an audience of armed pixie insurrectionists. He is the founder and curator of the queer-empowered Laser Life sci-fi reading series, where he met his co-conspirators in Metropolarity, a sci-fi/speculative arts collective that uses the genre’s tropes for activism and transformative, visionary art. It’s Alex’s flash fiction collection, “Gang Stalk Oprah“, with its lines hashed like an SAT-word injected SEPTA bus graffiti, and self-published sci-fi zine “Ark Dust” that will kidnap you, convert you, shoot you in the leg and then set you free.
Lamont B. Steptoe (Apiary 4) was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of fourteen collections of poetry while also serving as editor for two books by the late South African poet, Dennis Brutus. Steptoe is the winner of an American Book Award and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. He’s the founder and publisher of Whirlwind Press. His latest book of poetry, Beyond the White Stone Lions, was published by Radical Paper Press in the summer of 2017.
“There are places we dream, and places, often mass grave sits, that dream through us- if, like Lamont Steptoe, we are open to the restless spirits who abide there, denied voice in their time, and wishing now to catch history’s ear. “Turn up the silence loud,” he says, and the whispering dead are heard, as lost ancestors “call this place out of its name,” and Philly’s Washington Square Park becomes Congo Square, a restitution and a requiem.” Eleanor Wilner
Hosted by Warren C. Longmire and Alex Smith

Featured Readers: Angel Hogan & David Kertis
2018-05-23 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Moonstone Poetry @ the Pub
Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Wednesday May 23, 2018 – 7pm
Angel Hogan & David Kertis
Angel Hogan has performed as part of the Black Women’s Arts Festival, Literary Death Match, Moonstone Presents, First Person Arts and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Angel worked with ArtWell, was a Contributing Editor to Philadelphia Stories, and a review panelist for the Philadelphia Cultural Fund. As a teaching artist, Angel is most interested in initiatives that use storytelling as a vehicle for tolerance, peace, and community building. See more at: www.angelhogan.com
Photo by Anne Saint Peter
David Kertis was born in 1955 and grew up in northern New Jersey. He attended Oberlin College where he studied creative writing with David Young, and has lived in Philadelphia since 1978. He is married and works as a claims adjuster. In Philadelphia, he has studied with Leonard Gontarek and Eleanor Wilner. He has been published on line in Frigate and Apiary and given a number of readings in the Philadelphia area. His book, Word of the Day, has recently been published.
Hosts, Alina Macneal & Jennifer Hook
Open Reading follows

Remembering Lili Bita
2018-05-20 14:00 - 16:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Moonstone Poetry @ the Pub
Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
Sunday May 20, 2018, 2pm
Remembering Lili Bita
Lili Bita, of Bala Cynwyd, author, actress, and pianist, died February 12, 2018. An artist of international acclaim and a figure in Philadelphia cultural life for more than thirty years.
Born Angeliki Euterpe Bita in Zakynthos, Greece but universally known as Lili, she published the first of her twenty-one books of poetry, fiction, memoir, and translation at the age of nineteen, a work praised by the celebrated Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis for its “power and compassion.” Later admirers included Anais Nin, who said in her preface to Lili’s verse collection, Furies: “Her words are strong, body and soul in balance. Her vision is direct, unifying and complete.” Nin also noted Lili as “a full blossomed woman of beauty,” a beauty equally evident within and without to all who knew her.
Lili received degrees from the Greek Conservatory of Music and the Athens School of Drama. She also held a Master of Arts Degree in drama, summa cum laude, from the University of Miami. She taught at Villanova among several American universities, and was Artist in Residence and Cultural Affairs Coordinator at Drexel University. Lili began her stage career with leading roles from ancient drama, Shakespeare, Ibsen, O’Neill, and others. She emigrated to the United States in 1959 with her late son, Philip Rethis. In America, she toured with her one-woman shows, “The Greek Woman Through the Ages,” “Body Light,” and “Freedom or Death,” as well as adaptations from several of her books. With her husband and collaborator, Robert Zaller, she founded the Theater Cooperative in 1973, which for nearly two decades was a fixture of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. She was for three decades the cultural affairs correspondent of the Hellenic News of America, was a longtime member of the Greek Writers Association, and in 2014 was inducted into the oldest and most prestigious literary organization in Greece, the Hellenic Authors Society, in recognition of her lifetime achievements as an author, actress, and cultural ambassador. Her local honors included a Leeway Foundation grant, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts award for fiction, and the Amy Tritsch Needle and Gemini awards from Philadelphia Poets.
Among Lili’s score of books and half dozen plays, her love poetry, collected in Fleshfire, is best known, but she was also deeply imbued with a tragic sense of life that ran through much of her work in verse and fiction and in her two memoirs, Sister of Darkness and The Storm Rider. Notwithstanding this, she embraced life in all its dimensions.

Thinking Green with Jacob Russell, Paul Siegell & Anne-Adele Wight
2018-05-16 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie’s Pub
1214 Sansom Street
Wednesday May 16, 2018 – 7pm
Thinking Green with
Jacob Russell, Paul Siegell & Anne-Adele Wight
Jacob, Willard and Goby work together as a creative collective. Writing under the name, Jacob Russell, they have published three chapbooks, many poems, and have four books of poetry searching for publishers. He is also author of the novel Ari Figue’s Cat. Since 2012, they have been making visual art, signed with the name on their birth certificate—Willard. In recent years, Jacob, Willard and Goby (their most recent go-to name) have been writing serial poems, interconnected, but in no particular order, or rather—ordered to the mood of the occasion—as will be the case at this reading.
Paul Siegell is the author of Take Out Delivery (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018), as well as wild life rifle fire, jambandbootleg and Poemergency Room. He is a senior editor at Painted Bride Quarterly and has contributed to American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, Rattle, and many other fine journals. Kindly find more of his work – and concrete poetry t-shirts – at ReVeLeR @ eYeLeVeL (http://paulsiegell.blogspot.com) and @paulsiegell.
Anne-Adele Wight is the author of The Age of Greenhouses (2016), Opera House Arterial (2013), and Sidestep Catapult (2011), all from BlazeVOX. Her work has appeared in diverse publications including American Writing, Philadelphia Poets, Mad Poets Review, Apiary, Fairies in America, Jupiter 88, Luna Luna, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Bedfellows. Anne-Adele’s work has received awards from Philadelphia Poets Magazine, the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference, and the Sandy Crimmins Poetry Competition.
Host, Suzan Jivan
An open mic will follow the featured readers.

Soldier Poets--W.D. Ehrhart, Bill Wunder, & Members of Warrior Writers
2018-05-13 14:00 - 16:00 | South Philadelphia Free Library, 1700 S. Broad Street (Morris Street), Philadelphia, PA, 19145, United States
South Philadelphia Free Library
1700 S. Broad Street (Morris Street)
Sunday May 13, 2018 – 2pm
W.D. Ehrhart, Bill Wunder, &
Members of Warrior Writers
W. D. Ehrhart joined the US Marines in 1966 at the age of 17, serving three years including 13 months in Vietnam. He was wounded in combat, and earned the rank of sergeant and an honorable discharge. He is also a veteran of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and has received awards from both Vietnam Veterans of America and Veterans for Peace. A 1983 Bucks County Poet Laureate and a 1993 Pew Fellow in the Arts, he teaches English and history at the Haverford School in suburb Philadelphia. His most recent books are Praying at the Altar (Adastra Press) and W. D. Ehrhart in Conversation: Vietnam, America, and the Written Word (McFarland), both published in 2017.
Bill Wunder is the author of Pointing at the Moon, Hands Turning the Earth, and Kingdom of Heaven. In 2004, he was named Poet Laureate of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His poems have been widely published, and he has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in poetry. Bill has been a finalist for the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award. In 2010, he was nominated for a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. He has read and lectured in local schools, colleges, festivals, book stores, libraries, and on public television. Bill, a Vietnam veteran, serves as Poetry Editor of The Schuylkill Valley Journal, and lives with his two black labs in the wilds of Bucks County.
Warrior Writers is a national non-profit. Our mission is to create a culture that articulates veterans’ experiences, build a collaborative community for artistic expression, and bear witness to war and the full range of military experiences. We value Respect for ourselves, each other, our experiences, and our creative community; Honesty; Transformation; and Pride in our work and our experiences. Our goals include providing opportunities for veterans to engage in artistic expression, creating visibility for veteran artists and their work, supporting veterans in the discovery of the arts as a transformative tool, and tell the truths about veterans’ experiences.
