Labor is increasingly militant after years of inaction. Moonstone’s Labor Day Anthology for 2023 builds on this momentum with over 70 poets sharing their experiences, memories, and hopes for the labor movement. The accompanying anthology includes photos taken by Frank Espada and poetry written by his son, the author and people’s attorney, Martín Espada.
Diane Sahms, a native Philadelphian, is author of six poetry collections, most recently City of Shadow & Light (Philadelphia), 2022, with her latest chapbook, Luna, the lesser light available from Moonstone Press, 2023. Winner of several poetry awards, including the Partisan Press Award, and recipient of an AEVentures Foundation Grant for Poetry. Former high school English teacher, she works full time for the government and is poetry editor of North of Oxford.
Live poetry reading in collaboration with E-Verse Equinox Reading Series. Kathleen Ossip’s books include July, one of NPR’s best books of 2021; The Do-Over, a New York Times Editors’ Choice; The Cold War, one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2011; The Search Engine, selected by Derek Walcott for the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize; and two chapbooks, Cinephrastics and Little Poems. Her poems have appeared widely in such publications as The Washington Post, The Best American Poetry, The Best American Magazine Writing, and The New York Review of Books. She teaches at The New School and at Princeton University, and she has been a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute. Robyn Schiff is the author of four collections of poetry, including the volume Information Desk: An Epic, out from Penguin in August of 2023 and A Woman of Property (Penguin, 2016), which was named a best book of the year by The New Yorker and the Chicago Tribune. Schiff is an honorary member of Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard, a co-editor of Canarium Books, and is the recipient of the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize. She recently joined the faculty of the University of Chicago. Open Reading Follows
Live Poetry reading at Fergie’s Pub. Jane-Rebecca Cannarella (she/her) is a writer, editor, and salt enthusiast living in Philadelphia. She is the editor of HOOT Review and Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit, and a former genre editor at Lunch Ticket. Josh Dale is a native Pennsylvanian and the author of the novella, The Light to Never Be Snuffed (Alien Buddha Press, 2022,) and the poetry collection, Duality Lies Beneath (Thirty West Publishing, 2016.) Shannon Frost Greenstein (she/her) resides in Philadelphia with her children and soulmate. She is the author of “Pray for Us Sinners,” a fiction collection with Alien Buddha Press, and “An Oral History of One Day in Guyana,” a chapbook forthcoming from Bullsh*t Lit. Shannon is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy and a multi-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. Christina Rosso-Schneider (she/they) is a writer, educator, and bookstore owner living outside of Philadelphia with her bearded husband and rescue pups. She is the author of CREOLE CONJURE (Maudlin House, 2021) and SHE IS A BEAST (APEP Publications, 2020). Currently, she teaches in the humanities department at Moore College of Art and through Rosemont College’s MFA Writer’s Studio.
New Books from Moonstone Press, Virtual Reading on September 26, 2023
H. Alonzo Jennings and Dave Worrell
Wednesday, September 27th @ 7PM
Live at Fergie’s Pub @ 1214 Sansom Street
On Zoom (Registration required):
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEscO-opz4iHdP1mAGNBQfnceJ-5eKT_Olc
Alonzo Jennings is an artist, photographer, poet, jazz aficionado and raconteur. He is a graduate of Montclair State University and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. Alonzo has written four volumes of poetry, the latest titled ON ECHO, JOY AND ENCOUNTERS WITH GOD. His poetry addresses themes of love, social consciousness, individual responsibility and the joy of being. Alonzo is author of THIS WAS JAZZ, a book containing 160 of his photographs of legendary jazz musicians, along with his original jazz poems and commentary on music, art and the creative process. He hosts the award-winning Philadelphia based radio program Jazz From An Eclectic Mind on WPPM. Alonzo is available for presentations of his photography and poetry.
Dave Worrell’s verse memoir “Runnemede Boy” was published by Parnilis Media in 2023. His chapbook “We Who Were Bound” was published in August 2012 by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. His limited-edition ekphrastic collection “Close to Home” appeared in 2015, featuring paintings by Catherine Kuzma. Dave’s poems have appeared in Slant, Canary, Shot Glass Journal, Painted Bride Quarterly, Schuylkill Valley Journal, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Exit 13 and elsewhere. He has performed his music-backed poems at Chris’ Jazz Café in Philadelphia and The Cornelia Street Café in New York.
Pablo Neruda (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973) was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. Neruda occupied many diplomatic positions in various countries during his lifetime and served a term as a Senator for the Chilean Communist Party. He was a close advisor to Chile’s socialist President Salvador Allende, and, when he got back to Chile after accepting his Nobel Prize in Stockholm, Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people. Join us as poets remember and praise him.
Philly Loves Poetry Interview and Readings Series Featuring Doris Ferleger, PhD Tuesday October 3, 2023 – 6:30pm VIRTUAL Can be viewed on the Phillycam website or Cable 66/966HD/967 or Verizon FIOS, 29/30 in Philadelphia. Doris Ferleger, PhD, is the author of Big Silences in a Year of Rain, As the Moon Has Breath, […]
Lisa Grunberger, Diane Sahms, Dr Patrick James Errington, and Joseph Thomas Makoviecki
Wednesday October 4 @ 7pm
Live at Fergie’s Pub @ 1214 Sansom Street
On Zoom (Registration required):
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEpc-ivqTovGdfkOKx4qhufU6xfFHUmLv_p
Lisa Grunberger has published two books – a collection of poetry, Born Knowing and Yiddish Yoga: Ruthie’s Adventures in Love, Loss and the Lotus Position, which she is adapting as a stage performance called Yiddish Yoga: The Musical. She is a widely published poet in such journals as Mudfish, The Drunken Boat, Bridges, Philadelphia Poets, Paroles des Jours, and Dialogi. Her poems have also been translated into Russian and Yiddish. Her one-woman show, A Prayer Collector, premiered at the Makor Center for the Arts/92 St Y.
Diane Sahms, a native Philadelphian, is the author of six poetry collections: Images of Being (Stone Garden Publishing, 2011), Lights Battered Edge (Anaphora Literary Press, 2015), and Night Sweat (Red Dashboard Press, 2016), Handheld Mirror of the Mind, (Kelsay Books, 2018); Covid 19 2020 – A Poetic Journal (Moonstone Press, 2021); most recently City of Shadow & Light (Philadelphia) – Alien Buddha Press. Her poems have appeared in a number of online and print publications. Diane is the Poetry Editor at North of Oxford and works as a purchasing agent.
Dr Patrick James Errington is a poet, translator, critic, editor, and academic from the prairies of Alberta, Canada. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks Glean (ignitionpress, 2018) and Field Studies (Clutag Press, 2019) and the poetry collection the swailing (McGill-Queens University Press). He is a Lecturer in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh, where he teaches literature and creative writing and is also the primary and co-investigator on several interdisciplinary research projects.
Joseph Thomas Makoviecki is a poet and the singer-songwriter in the indie folk band Jackson Pines. Born in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, Joseph has lived in New York City and Philadelphia while traveling America, the UK, and Ireland performing as a musician. hornpipe & other poems was written as a recipient of the 2021 Tory Dent Research Scholarship at New York University. His work has appeared in The Rational Creature, Soupcan Magazine, Oddball Magazine, and more.
Jared Harél, Vasiliki Katsarou, and Martin Wiley
Wednesday October 11, 2023 @ 7pm -LIVE
Live at Fergie’s Pub @ 1214 Sansom Street
On Zoom (Registration required):
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIocOutqzwqE9w5cBXchawlmvcizTnhmYqD
Jared Harél is the author of Let Our Bodies Change the Subject, winner of the 2022 Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in and Go Because I Love You. He’s been awarded the ‘Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize’ from American Poetry Review, as well as the ‘William Matthews Poetry Prize’ from Asheville Poetry Review. Harél’s poems have recently appeared in such journals as 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Electric Literature, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, The Southern Review and The Sun. He teaches writing, plays drums, and lives in Westchester, NY with his wife and two kids.
Vasiliki Katsarou is a Greek and American poet, editor, independent curator, and sometime filmmaker. She is the author of Memento Tsunami, Three Sea Stones, and The Second Home. Her award-winning 35mm short film Fruitlands 1843 was screened at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Harvard Film Archive, and the Drama International Film Festival in Greece. She is a Teaching Artist at Hunterdon Art Museum and has collaborated with many arts organizations in New Jersey including the Dodge Poetry Festival, Hopewell Theater, ArtYard, Panoply Books, Ellarslie Museum, and the Princeton Humanities Council.
Martin Wiley author of Just/More and When Did We Stop Being Cute?, grew up confronting and embracing a world as mixed and confused as he was, surrounded by beautiful words one minute and screamed at with hate the next. A long- time activist, spoken-word artist, and slam poet, he had begun to see himself as a “recovering poet” but his children’s growing love of words dragged him, mostly happily, off the wagon. His work has appeared in journals like Apiary, Philadelphia Stories, The Northern Virginia Review, The Northridge Review, Conspire, and others.
Larry Robin Hosts, Open Reading Follows
