The Poetry Box LIVE – October Edition!

Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific)

3pm (Alaskan) / 5pm (Mountain) / 6pm (Central) / 7pm (Eastern)

Featuring:

• Lois Levinson (CO) – author of Field Notes from an Illusion
• Ginny Lowe Connors (CT) – author of White Sail at Midnight
• Fred Zirm (MD) – author of Rescue Dogs

Enjoy the Video from the Show:

About the Featured Poets:

Lois Levinson has had several careers: as a middle school teacher of French and English, as an attorney practicing commercial litigation in Denver, and, more recently, as a poet.  While she pursued each profession with passion and commitment, she has found true delight in writing poetry. A graduate of the Poetry Book Project, a two-year advanced program at Lighthouse Writers Workshop, she published a chapbook, Crane Dance, followed by a full-length book, Before it All Vanishes.  For the past nine years, she has met with her poetry group, the Wyrd Sisters, to study poetry and to workshop and rejoice in one another’s poems and publication successes. She lives in a suburb of Denver with her husband Mark, their adult son Daniel, a Goldendoodle named Molly, and an African Grey parrot who answers to Kiri.

You can learn more about Lois’s book HERE

Ginny Lowe Connors is the author of five previous poetry collections, the most recent of which is Without Goodbyes: From Puritan Deerfield to Mohawk Kahnawake (Turning Point, 2021). Among her awards are the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, Atlanta Review’s Grand Prize, and the Founders Award, sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. She was named “Poet of the Year” by NEATE (New England Association of Teachers of English). In 2018 she was named the winner of Passager’s annual Poetry Contest.  Essays and book reviews she’s written have appeared in such publications as the Hartford Courant, Baltimore Review, New York Journal of Books, Switchback, and North American Review. In 2023 Connors was Writer in Residence at Trail Wood, former home of naturalist Edwin Way Teale. She holds an MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. As publisher of her own press, Grayson Books, Connors has edited a number of poetry anthologies, including Forgotten Women: A Tribute in Poetry. A Board Member of the Connecticut Poetry Society, she is co-editor of Connecticut River Review.

You can learn more about Ginny’s book HERE

After earning a B.A. and M.A. in English from Michigan State and an M.F.A. from the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, Fred Zirm spent nearly 40 years teaching English and drama at an independent boys’ school in Maryland. Since his retirement, he has continued to direct plays at community theaters but has also focused on writing poetry and has become deeply involved with the Writers’ Center at the Chautauqua Institution. His work has been published in over a dozen small literary magazines and anthologies, including The Café Review, Still Crazy, cahoodadoodaling (Pushcart Prize nominee), Greek Fire, Poeming Pigeons, and Objects in the Rearview Mirror. His first poetry chapbook, Object Lessons (Main Street Rag), was published in January 2021.

You can learn more about Fred’s chapbook HERE

The Poetry Box LIVE – September Edition!

Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific)

3pm (Alaskan) / 5pm (Mountain) / 6pm (Central) / 7pm (Eastern)

Featuring:

• Sheila Sondik (WA) – author of Lighting Up the Duff
• Kim Peter Kovac (VA) – author of A Bit Left of Straight Ahead
• Sher Schwartz (OR) – author of The Beautiful One’s Ark

Enjoy the Video from the Show:

About the Featured Poets:

Sheila Sondik, poet and printmaker, explores moments in time and space that the casual observer might overlook. Both artforms are opportunities for her to work with the unexpected. Prints are always mirror images of the drawings on the printing plates and, in writing Golden Shovels, the poet knows the last word of a line before the rest of it is written. Sheila has always enjoyed word puzzles and has been a member of the National Puzzlers’ League since 2000. She lived in Berkeley, CA, with its lively literary scene centered in its world-famous bookstores, for over 30 years after graduating from Harvard. In 2008, she moved to Bellingham, Washington in search of new landscapes and was happy to find a welcoming community of prolific poets. Her first chapbook, Fishing a Familiar Pond: Found Poems from The Yearling, was published by Egress Studio Press in 2013. Her Western and Japanese style poetry appear in many journals and anthologies.

You can learn more about Sheila’s chapbook HERE

Kim Peter Kovac began writing poetry in 2012, toward the end of his career in national and international theater for young audiences (TYA), starting work on his first Poetry Barn asynchronous online workshop on the plane home from a festival in Okinawa, just barely beating a typhoon.

He has commissioned and produced 100+ new TYA plays and musicals as Artistic Director of Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences, including from Pulitzer Prize and Tony award winning playwrights and composers.

Kim co-founded and co-produced (with Deirdre Kelly Lavrakas) the Kennedy Center’s New Visions/New Voices, an award-winning program that assisted in the development of 111 new plays, musicals, and operas from 97 playwrights and 38 composers, working with 61 U.S. and 12 international theater companies. He spent 12 years on the governing board of ASSITEJ, the international TYA association, with national centers in 80+ countries, and currently works as part of the leadership team and webmaster for Write Local Play Global, the international network for writers of new work for young audiences, with members in 50+ countries.

Kim’s first poetry collection, Border Sounds: Poem & Dispatches from Other Timezones, was published in January 2021. He also has 150+ pieces in print and online in journals from Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, Ireland, Korea, Poland, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, and the USA.  He has a BA in Theatre from Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, an MFA in Theatre Directing from the University of Texas at Austin and is a Fellow of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre.

You can learn more about Kim’s book HERE

Sher A. Schwartz is a published essayist, poet, old time fiddle musician, singer, and retired professor. She was born in Georgia, raised in Virginia, and spent many summers in rural West Virginia with her mother’s family. Her vocal training, beginning at twelve, and later rhythm guitar playing in an old-time string band laid the foundation for the musicality in Schwartz’s poetry. Schwartz has written country and mountain folk songs and composed classical hymns. She lived for many years in a cabin on the beach in Alaska while teaching in the humanities department at the University of Alaska in Ketchikan. Her band Red Hoochie and the Tomcods played at festivals and events around Southeast Alaska.

In 2011, she retired from academic life and moved to Eastern Oregon, where she’s trained and competed with her hunting dogs, and helped restore two hundred acres on an old farm to native grasslands and pollinator plants. Schwartz has continued to perform with the old-timey Sugar Hill Band throughout the Columbia River Gorge though she writes more poetry these days than songs and essays.

You can learn more about Sher’s chapbook HERE

The Poetry Box LIVE – May Edition!

Saturday, May 11, 2024 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific)

3pm (Alaskan) / 5pm (Mountain) / 6pm (Central) / 7pm (Eastern)

Featuring:

• Laura Esther Sciortino (OR) – author of Remote Control
• Susan Landgraf (WA) – author of Journey of Trees
• Anara Guard (CA) – author of Kansas, Reimagined

Enjoy the Video from the Show:

About the Featured Poets:

At the age of nine, Anara Guard was hired to mind a corner news stand, where she read all the tabloid papers. Later, she worked as a small-town librarian, textbook fact-checker, and editor, among other jobs. A Midwesterner at heart, she writes from her home in northern California.

Anara’s poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and, improbably enough, won both a John Crowe Ransom prize and a Jack Kerouac prize. Kansas, Reimagined is her second poetry collection. She and her sister perform poetry and offer writing workshops together as Sibling Revelry. Anara’s novel, Like a Complete Unknown, won Book of the Year Honorable Mention from the Chicago Writers Association, as well as other accolades. It draws upon her memories of that city and the music that provided a soundtrack to the late 1960s.

You can learn more about Anara’s chapbook HERE

Laura Esther Sciortino writes poetry, fiction, and lyric essay. Her work has appeared in The Comstock Review, Muse/A Journal, great weather for MEDIA’s Escape Wheel Anthology, Dadakuku, The Flying Dodo, and Unleash Lit. Along with her husband, son, and their three affable cats, Laura lives in Portland, Oregon.

You can learn more about Laura’s chapbook HERE

Susan Landgraf received an Academy of American Poet Laureates grant, resulting in A Muckleshoot Poetry Anthology: At the Confluence of the Green and White Rivers, which she curated; Washington State University Press published it in early 2024. Her other books include Crossings (Ravenna Press), The Inspired Poet (Two Sylvias Press), What We Bury Changes the Ground (Tebot Bach), and Other Voices. More than 400 poems have appeared in Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Third Wednesday, and others. Landgraf served as Auburn’s Poet Laureate from 2018-2020. She has given more than 150 workshops in the US and abroad and is the recipient of a Theodore Morrison Scholar Poetry Award for Breadloaf and Artist Trust, Jack Straw, and King County Arts Commission grants. A former journalist, she taught at Highline College for 30 years and at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She loves epiphanies and believes poetry can save you.

You can learn more about Susan’s chapbook HERE

The Poetry Box LIVE – April Edition!

Saturday, April 13, 2024 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific)

3pm (Alaskan) / 5pm (Mountain) / 6pm (Central) / 7pm (Eastern)

Featuring:

• Carol Parris Krauss (Virginia) – author of The Old Folks Call It God’s Country
• Stephanie A. Marcellus (Nebraska) – author of How to Say
• Janet Steward (Washington) – author of Now Is What Matters

Enjoy a Video from the Show:

About the Featured Poets:

Carol Parris Krauss lives in an 83-year-old multi-generational home, that also includes many pets, in Virginia. This Clemson graduate is a high school English teacher. She enjoys employing place and nature as vehicles for her varied themes. She was honored to be recognized as a Best New Poet by UVA. In 2021 her book of poems, Just a Spit Down the Road, was published by Kelsay Books. Some venues where her work has been published include Louisiana Lit, One Art, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Story South, Highland Park Poetry, and Susurrus. Carol was selected for Ghost City Press’ 2023 Micro-Chap Summer Series.

You can learn more about Carol’s chapbook HERE

Stephanie A. Marcellus is a professor of English at Wayne State College. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Colorado State University and a PhD in Nineteenth-Century British Literature from The University of South Dakota. Her work has appeared in Plainsongs, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Alligator Juniper as well as two other chapbooks, All That I Thought Was Light and What Is Left Behind: Garden Elegies. She lives in Wayne, Nebraska with her husband, two cats, and dog. She enjoys spending time on the family farm, being out in nature, and finding time to read in her hammock.

You can learn more about Stephanie’s chapbook HERE

Janet Steward took advantage of retirement to write, learn Spanish, and collect memories with her husband, Larry. She decided she wasn’t destined for a long-term relationship, but fortunately Larry convinced her to try again. Their age difference of sixteen years made being a caregiver a probability, but she was surprised to find deepening intimacy, affection, and personal growth far outweigh the frustrations and loss that come with that role.

You can learn more about Janet’s chapbook HERE

The Poetry Box LIVE – March Edition!

Saturday, March 9, 2024 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific)

3pm (Alaskan) / 5pm (Mountain) / 6pm (Central) / 7pm (Eastern)

Featuring:

• Emily-Sue Sloane (New York) – author of Disconnects and Other Broken Threads
• James K. Zimmerman (New York) – author of The Further Adventures of Zen Patriarch Dōgen
• Sue Fagalde Lick (Oregon) – author of Blue Chip Stamp Guitar

Enjoy a Video from the Show:

About the Featured Poets

Emily-Sue Sloane is an award-winning poet who published her first full-length collection, We Are Beach Glass, in 2022. She has won first-place awards from Calling All Writers, the Long Island Fair, Nassau County Poet Laureate Society, Performance Poets Association and Princess Ronkonkoma Productions. Her poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Amethyst Review, The Avocet, Bards Against Hunger, Boston Literary Magazine, Corona, Evening Street Review, Front Porch Review, Long Island Sounds Anthology, Mobius Magazine, MockingHeart Review, Nassau County Poet Laureate Society Review, Panoplyzine, The Poeming Pigeon, PoetryBay, The RavensPerch and Shot Glass Journal. Sloane holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Vassar College and lives in Huntington Station, NY, with her wife, singer-songwriter Linda Sussman. In addition to writing, she enjoys reading, yoga and exploring her native Long Island’s natural beauty.

You can learn more about Emily-Sue’s chapbook HERE

James K. Zimmerman is an award-winning, neurodivergent writer, frequently a Pushcart Prize nominee. His poetry appears in Atlanta Review, Carolina Quarterly, Chautauqua, december, Folio, Lumina, Nimrod, Pleiades, Rattle, and Salt, among many other publications, and is also featured on websites such as The Poetry Foundation, American Life in Poetry, and Vallum. He is also the author of “Little Miracles” (Passager Books) and “Family Cookout” (Comstock Press Books), winner of the Jessie Bryce Niles Prize. He resides at the crepuscular edge between this universe and the one next door, often with one foot in each, and, in his spare time, cultivates roses, orchids, and paradoxical questions.

You can learn more about Jim’s chapbook HERE

Sue Fagalde Lick escaped life as a Silicon Valley journalist to write, sing, and wander the beaches and forests of the Oregon coast. Her previous publications include The Widow at the Piano: Poems by a Distracted Catholic, Gravel Road Ahead, and the forthcoming collection Dining Al Fresco with My Dog, along with poems in Cirque, Rattle, The MacGuffin, Sage Soup, Cloudbank, New Letters, The American Journal of Poetry, and other literary journals. In addition to performing both poetry and music as much as possible, Sue is a Catholic music minister, playing piano and guitar for Masses, funerals, potlucks, and other festivities. She travels with a notebook and sheet music in one hand and a guitar in the other and has learned that doesn’t leave much room in the trunk for clothing, strangers ask questions when you walk in with a guitar, and everything is better with music.

You can learn more about Sue’s chapbook HERE