Moonstone Arts Center

Painting in the Dark: An Artistic Collaboration
2026-07-11 16:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | 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
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.
