The Woodstock Mayapple Writers’ Retreat is almost upon us. Every year the participants in the Retreat participate in Public Readings around the area. Here is the list of events and readers for 2013:
Wednesday, July 31, 7:30 pm at New World Home Cooking in the back room. Readers are poets Wendy Taylor Carlisle, Diane Sautter Cole, Vincent O. Cooper and Judith Lechner.
Thursday, August 1, at 7:30 p.m, at the main room of the Villetta Inn at Byrdcliffe (next to the Byrdcliffe Theater on Upper Byrdcliffe Road). Patricia Harkins-Pierre and Vincent O. Cooper, both faculty at the University of the Virgin Islands, will present a talk on Caribbean poetry. In addition, a workshop will be offered; local poets are welcome to bring a poem for critique.
Friday, August 2, at 5 p.m., at the Outdated Antiques Café, 314 Wall St., Kingston. Readers are Sandra Ebner, Leslie Gerber, and Patricia Harkins-Pierre.
Saturday, August 3, at 5 p.m., at the Woodstock Library, part of their regular spoken word series. Readers are Judith Kerman, Joyce Kessel, and Robert McDonough. (Donations benefit the Library.)
Sunday, August 4, at 3 p.m., at the Inquiring Minds Bookstore, 65 Partition St., Saugerties. Readers are Patricia McMillen, Maril Nowak, and Helen Ruggieri.
All of the listed Woodstock Mayapple Writers’ Retreat events are open to the public; donations are appreciated and help defray expenses.
Participant Bios:
Wednesday, July 31, 7:30 p.m., New World Home Cooking
Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of two books, Reading Berryman to the Dog, and Discount Fireworks, and two chapbooks of poetry. For more info: www.wendytaylorcarisle.com
Diane Sautter Cole is a professor at Northern Michigan University. She published a chapbook, Why Heron is Blue with March St. Press in 2006. She is presently submitting a book of poems titled Pack Ice to various presses, and hard at work on a book of poems concerning images of women titled The Culling.
Vincent O. Cooper, who teaches English at the University of the Virgin Islands, has published his original poetry in several international journals such as Kunapipi, Journal of Caribbean Studies, The Caribbean Writer, and many others. He has co authored poetry collections, including, Three Islands, Tremors, and Tigers in Paradise.
Thursday, August 1, at 7:30 p.m, Villetta Inn, Byrdcliffe, Woodstock
Workshop and presentation by Patricia Harkins-Pierre and Vincent O. Cooper
Friday, August 2, 5:00 p.m., Outdated Antiques Café, 314 Wall St., Kingston
Sandra Bishop Ebner‘s poems have appeared in various literary journals. Her first book, The Space Between, was published by Hanover Press in 2000. Her work also appears in The Poetry of Nursing: Poems and Commentaries of Leading Nurse Poets, published by Kent State University Press, 2006, and in Unlocking The Poem by Ottone M. Riccio and Ellen Beth Siegel.
Leslie Gerber is a long-time resident of Woodstock. A member of the Goat Hill Poets, he has taken workshops with Sharon Olds and Billy Collins. He is music critic for the Woodstock Times.
Patricia Harkins-Pierre earned her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Southern Mississippi in 1989. She has been teaching at the University of the Virgin Islands since Fall 1989. Her creative work includes both poetry and fiction; she was a featured creative writer, representing the US Virgin Islands at the Pre-Olympic 2012 World Poetry Festival sponsored by Parnassus Press..
Saturday, August 3, 5:00 p.m., Woodstock Library
Judith Kerman, publisher of Mayapple Press in Woodstock and coordinator of the Woodstock Mayapple Writers’ Retreat, is the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently Galvanic Response (March Street Press), and 2 books of translations of Spanish Caribbean poetry. She is often a featured reader at Hudson Valley poetry venues. She was a Fulbright Scholar translating Dominican women’s poetry in 2002.
Joyce Kessel’s poetry has appeared in The Healing Muse, WNY Poets Waging Words for Peace, cell2 soul, spitballmag.org, Nickel City Nights anthology, and kind of a hurricane press’ anthologies: Backlit Barbie and Point Mass. A member of Earth’s Daughters, she teaches literature, writing, and interdisciplinary courses at Villa Maria College.
Robert E. McDonough taught English at Cuyahoga Community College for more than forty years. He has published one book, No Other World (Cleveland State University Poetry Center), and one chapbook, Greatest Hits (Pudding House), and has been named one of the forty most important Cleveland poets since 1945 in the book Cleveland Poetry Scenes.
Sunday, August 4, 3:00 p.m., Inquiring Minds Bookstore, 55 Partition Street, Saugerties
Patricia McMillen is an Illinois writer, musician, and community activist. Her poems, essays and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. In 2006, her chapbook Knife Lake Anthology—a collection of seventeen poems depicting the human costs of capital punishment—was published by Puddinghouse Publications (Columbus, OH).
Maril Nowak is a Finger Lakes New York poet , organic gardener, and locavore. She is actively involved in the anti-hydrofracturing initiative in the Finger Lakes, and maintains organic gardens and hummingbird feeders. In the 1970s she milked 14 Nubian and Alpine dairy goats. Her latest manuscript, From Rural Life, was a finalist in a recent contest from a US small press.
Helen Ruggieri taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Bradford, PA and in the Arts in Education Programs in Cattaraugus, Allegany and Chautauqua counties. She spent a semester teaching in Yokohama, Japan. Her poetry has appeared in many small press publications. Her most recent book is The Kingdom Where Everybody Sings Off Key from Aldrich Press.