Moonstone Arts Center

Moonstone Presents: New Voices
2018-11-19 18:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | 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.

Featured Readers: Julia Blumenreich & Therése Halscheid
2018-05-09 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie’s Pub
1214 Sansom Street
Wednesday May 9, 2018 – 7pm
Julia Blumenreich & Therése Halscheid
Julia Blumenreich is a recipient of a Pennsylvania Arts Council grant for her poetry. She is a founding member of 6ix: a literary journal devoted to cutting edge work, edited by six Philadelphia area women. She was 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. In 2012, she collaborated with the visual artist, Wendy Osterweil, on ‘Reforesting: An Homage to Gil Ott’ a poetry/ sculptural installation/print show at The Painted Bride Art Center. Four of her poems have been set to music composed by Kyle Smith and were performed as part of “Lyric Fest” in 2014. Her recent work has been published in “The Whirlwind Review, “Philadelphia Stories,” and in “An Anthology of Philadelphia Poets,” edited by Valerie Fox and translated into Romanian by Daniel Dragomirescu. She has published three chapbooks: Meeting Tessie and Artificial Memory and most recently, Blue Angel of a Day.
Therése Halscheid’s latest poetry collection Frozen Latitudes (Press 53) received an Eric Hoffer Book Award. Other collections include Uncommon Geography, Without Home, Powertalk, and a chapbook award by Pudding House Publications. Her poetry and lyric essays have appeared in such magazines as Gettysburg Review, Tampa Review, Sou’wester, Natural Bridge. Recent contest awards include Welcome Table Press’s Essaying the Body contest. She is an itinerant writer by way of house-sitting. Her photography chronicles her nomadic lifestyle. She teaches for Atlantic Cape Community College and also in unusual locales, such as Eskimo village in northern Alaska, and the Ural Mountains of Russia. www.ThereseHalscheid.com
Dave Worrell , Host
An open mic will follow the featured readers. The event is free and 21+.

The Atheist in the Attic
2018-05-06 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 6, 2018, 2pm
Samuel R. Delany

The Atheist in the Attic
$14.00, Books will be available to purchase and autographed

“A talent very close to time travel—or magic.” —Locus
“The most remarkable prose stylist to have emerged from the culture of American science fiction.” —William Gibson
“I consider Delany not only one of the most important science fiction writ- ers of the present generation, but a fascinating writer in general who has invented a new style.” —Umberto Eco

The title novella, “The Atheist in the Attic,” appearing here in book form for the first time, is a suspenseful and vivid historical narrative, recreating the top-secret meeting between the mathematical genius Leibniz and the philosopher Spinoza caught between the horrors of the cannibalistic Dutch Rampjaar and the brilliant “big bang” of the Enlightenment.
Plus: equal parts history, confession, complaint, gossip, and personal tri- umph, Delany’s “Racism and Science Fiction” combines scholarly research and personal experience in the unique true story of the first major African American author in the genre. And featuring: a bibliography, an author biography, and our candid, uncompromising, and customary Outspoken Interview.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born into a distinguished Harlem family, Samuel R. Delany was a success at nineteen, changing the tone, the content, and the very shape of modern science fiction with his acclaimed novels and stories that bridged the ap- parent gap between science and fantasy to explore gay sexuality, racial and class consciousness, and the limits of imagination and memory. His vast body of work includes memoir, comics, space adventure, mainstream novels, homosexual erotica, and literary criticism of a high order. Until his recent retirement he was a professor of English and creative writing at Temple University.

The 22nd Annual Poetry Ink: 100 Poets Reading
2018-04-29 12:00 - 18:00 | 1199C Hospital Workers Union Headquarters, 1319 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Welcome to The 22nd Annual Poetry Ink:
100 Poets Reading
Sunday April 29, 2018
1199C Hospital Workers Union Headquarters, 1319 Locust Street
All Reading Times are Approximate
Come to hear your favorite poet, stay to hear others – Conversation & Comradery Galore
This is a pot luck affair, so bring something good to eat or drink to share
12:00
Richard Bank
Peter Baroth
Benjamin Bass
Adriann Bautista
Herman Beaver
Michele Belluomini
Brandon Blake
12:30
Julia Blumenreich
Eugene Brown
Steve Burke
Eliza Callard
Charles Carr
Ronald Carter
Jose Cedillos
1:00
Marion Cohen
LaDeva Davis
Ashini Desai
Pheralyn Dove
RuNett Ebo
Greg Francis
Michael Franz
Deborah Fries
1:30
Linda Goss
Sandy Green
hanoch guy
Sean Hanrahan
Nate Henty
Alison Hicks
Ditta Baron Hoeber
2:00
Jennifer Hook
Leah “Lyric” Jackson
Krisann Janowitz
H. Alonso Jennings
Irving Jones
Bea Joyner
K.I.R.A.A.T.
2:30
B.E. Kahn
Chris Kaiser
Aziza Kebe
M. Nzadi Keita
Justin Kohn
Catherine Kuzma
Cynthia Lee
3:00
Hazel Lee
Elliott Levin
Warren Longmire
Sean Lynch
Lynette
Alina MacNeal
Angel Martinez
3:30
John Mason
Lia Mastropolo
Octavia McBride-Ahebee
Jerri McDermott
David Mayers
MaryAnn Miller
Gail Mitchell
4:00
Amanda Nies
Stu O’Connor
Claire Owen
George Park IV
Aaren Perry
Prabha Prabhu
Elijah Pringle
4:30
Don Riggs
Stuart Roberts
Kat Robertson
Gloria Rohlfs
Juanita Maria Blanding
Pamela Lynn Blanding-Godbolt
Tyrone Maurice Roosevelt
Colleen Winn
5:00
Tonya Ryva
Fereshteh Sholevar
Mbarek Sryfi
Lamont B. Steptoe
Jeanne Sutton
Ira Tucker
Sandra Turner-Barnes
5:30
Lenore Uddyback-Fortson
Bill VanBuskirk
Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon
Eleanor Wilner
Donna Wolf-Palacio
Martin Woodside
David Worrell
Robert Zaller

Readings by Xander Fraum, Marryann Helferty, John Oliver Mason, and Joe Roarty
2018-03-28 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Xander Fraum is a new poet to Philadelphia’s circles.

Maryann Helferty explores the natural world and reports out her findings in poems and photography.

John Oliver Mason has written for newspapers, magazines, and blogs about community and national issues for over 25 years.

Joe Roarty, author of Moritat (2015 Moonstone Chapbook winner) is poetry of high octane energy, passionate intelligence, supercharged, insistent blues, jazz and heightened speech rhythms.
Open Reading Follows
Hosts: Jennifer Hook and Alina Macneal

Readings by Jacob Russell, Paul Siegell, and Anne-Adele Wight
2018-03-21 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
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. In recent years, their collective has 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, 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.

Anne-Adele Wight is the author of The Age of Greenhouses, Opera House Arterial, and Sidestep Catapult (2011), all from BlazeVOX. Her work has appeared in American Writing, Philadelphia Poets, Mad Poets Review, Apiary, Fairies in America, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Host: Suzan Jivan

Readings by Autumn Konopka and Lorraine Henrie Lins
2018-03-14 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Autumn Konopka, born and raised in the Philadelphia area, has an M.F.A. in creative writing from Antioch University and a B.A. in English writing and communications from the University of Pittsburgh. Autumn has published work in several journals, and she is deeply interested in the relationship between the arts and socioeconomic class. Autumn has hosted the Mad Poets monthly reading series in Bryn Mawr, PA, for about five years and has read her poetry at World Café Live and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

Lorraine Henrie Lins is a Pennsylvania county Poet Laureate and the author of four books of poetry. She serves as the Director of New and Emerging Poets with Tekpoet and has had her work appear in numerous publications. Born and raised in the suburbs of Central New Jersey, the self-professed Jersey Girl now resides outside of Philadelphia with her family and several dogs where she has learned to pump her own gas.

Host: Dave Worrell

Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie's Pub, 1214 Sansom Street
2018-03-11 14:00
#MeToo spread virally in October 2017 and has been used on social media to help demonstrate the widespread prevalence of sexual assault and harassment. Social activist and community organizer Tarana Burke created the phrase “Me Too” on Myspace in 2006 as part of a grassroots campaign to promote “empowerment through empathy” among women of color who have experienced sexual abuse, particularly within underprivileged communities. Burke—who is creating a documentary titled Me Too—has said she was inspired to use the phrase after being unable to respond to a 13-year-old girl who confided in her that she had been sexually assaulted. She later wished she had simply told the girl, “me too.”
Host: Larry Robin

Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie's Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Wednesday February 28th, 2018 - 7pm
2018-02-28 19:00
Ahmad Almallah grew up in Bethlehem, Palestine and moved to the U.S. when he was 18 years old. He is a poet, scholar, and translator of Arabic literature. His set of poems “Recourse,” won the 2017 Blanche Colton Williams Fellowship. His poems have appeared in Jacket 2, Track//Four, All Roads Will Lead You Home, Apiary and forthcoming in Making Mirrors: Righting/Writing by Refugees and Supplement.

Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of Salvage and Nomad of Salt and Hard Water. A three-time Pushcart Prize Nominee, her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Guernica, Black Renaissance Noire, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. She has served as a Poetry Mentor for the Blueshift Journal’s Speakeasy Project, and is the creator of Sanctuary: A Migrant Poetry Workshop for immigrant poets in Philadelphia.
An open reading will follow the featured readers. The event is free and 21+.
Hosts: Jennifer Hook and Alina Macneal

Moonstone Poetry @ Toast Cafe, 1201 Spruce Street, Wednesday February 21st, 2018 - 7pm
2018-02-21 19:00
Romance, with Courtney K. Bambrick. She is poetry editor of Philadelphia Stories and her work has appeared in print or online in Apiary, Certain Circuits, Dirty Napkin, Philadelphia Poets, Mad Poets Review, and Schuylkill Valley Journal. Courtney has taught composition, creative writing, and literature at a number of colleges and universities in the Philadelphia area.

Peter Baroth is a writer, visual artist, musician, and sometimes editor. He’s recently published his first full-length book of poetry, Lost Autographs, with Moonstone Press. His poetry, short stories, and artwork have appeared in a variety of print and online journals including Philadelphia Poets, Mad Poets Review, Apiary, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and elsewhere.

An open mic will follow the featured readers. The event is free and 21+.
Host: Suzan Jivan

Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie's Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Wednesday February 14th, 2018 - 7pm
2018-02-14 19:00
Savannah Cooper-Ramsey is a poet and a member of Philly’s Art Dept Collective. Her conceptual chapbook projects, Not Fit For Print: Forthcoming Titles and The Self and Other Jokes, will be released by Waterhouse Ltd Press in Spring 2018. Her poems have appeared in Whirlwind Magazine, the 2017 Moonstone Anthology, and elsewhere. She is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University and teaches at Drexel.

Lynn Hoffmn is a master of moments, stacking them together like photographs to make a coherent statement about the need for sex and love to cohere. He writes, “Sometimes the lack is half the joy.” He’s a lyrical poet, creating music through the repetition of lines. The language has a rock and roll bounce; I see him as a modern Yeats, taking on the discordance of love and sex, transforming them into poetry that remains breath-taking and heart-wrenching. —Hal Sirowitz, Author of Mother Said, Former Poet Laureate of Queens, Winner of the Nebraska Book Award.
An open mic will follow the featured readers. The event is free and 21+.
Host: Dave Worrel

Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie's Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Wednesday February 7th, 2018 - 7pm
2018-02-07 19:00
Lamont B. Steptoe is a poet, activist, Vietnam Veteran, photographer and founder/publisher of Whirlwind Press. Steptoe has a clear, direct and matter-of-fact approach and his language is rich and revealing to his socio-cultural subject matter. He is the author of fourteen books of poetry, 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. An open mic will follow the featured readers. The event is free and 21+.
Host: Sean Lynch

Moonstone Poetry @ PhillyCAM, 699 Ranstead Street, Tuesday February 6th, 2018 - 6:30pm
2018-02-06 18:30
Poetry as a Home for the Homeless: Host: Charles S. Carr, Poetry from One Step Away, featuring Richard “Ram” Ramson*, Tammy Mitchell* and Joseph Albater*
There are over 50 organizations that promote poetry in the Philadelphia are. They represent every form of poetry, ethnic background, age, gender and community. This series consists of a panel of guest poets and artists discussing the opportunities 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 over Comcast Cable 66/966 HD/967 and Verizon FIOS 29/30. The program is free and open to everyone. Please join us!
One Step Away, a nonprofit organization that produces a monthly street paper, raises awareness while creating jobs for people experiencing homelessness and poverty.
“One Step Away is a fantastic organization giving real opportunities to the homeless or those on the verge of being homeless. The program gives its vendors the opportunity to earn an income with a low barrier to entry. The work is by no means easy. The vendors are on their feet all day and have to learn a surprisingly large amount about entrepreneurship–budgeting, inventory management, customer service, and business planning to name a few. One Step Away makes a real in hard working peoples’ lives as they climb out of the troubles any of us could one day face. Please consider helping to expand the program and be sure to visit your local vendors!” – Erik Hudzik, October 4, 2016
*One Step Away Vendors and poets

Moonstone Poetry @ Fergie's Pub
2018-01-31 19:00 - 21:00 | Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Continuing our Wednesday night readings at Fergie’s and sending us into the second month of 2018 will be a few familiar faces in Nathelie Anderson, Alicia Askenase, and Herman Beavers!
More details tba
