2:00 PM EST
Cost: Free
Event Description:
George Wallace and Walt Whitman Birthplace proudly present season three of POETS BUILDING BRIDGES: A TRIANGULATION PROJECT, inaugurated in March 2022 with the purpose of enhancing dialogue between communities of writers across the US and internationally. Based on a shared small-group experience, these Saturday zoom sessions engage three distinct and well defined communities of poets with each other to share work and foster further interaction. In Season Three, POETS BUILDING BRIDGES will build on that experience, triangulating national and international groups based not only on location but additionally offering key small press publications an opportunity to form a participating group.
THIS IS A ZOOM ONLY EVENT.
Find Zoom Information Below.
Live on zoom. archived on Youtube. For Season 2 visit our YouTube Channel >>
Flash Boulevard Writers: Francine Witte | Gary Fincke | Myna Chang | Chelsea Stickle
Francine Witte is the author of 11 books of poetry and flash fiction. She is also a playwright. Her stories and poems have appeared in many anthologies including, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, Flash Fiction America, New Micro, NYC from the Inside as well as national journals. She is the flash fiction editor of FLASH BOULEVARD and South Florida Poetry Journal. Visit her website at francinewitte.com.
Gary Fincke, co-editor of the annual anthology Best Microfiction, published a collection of flash fiction in 2022 with Pelekinesis Press. His long-form collections of short stories have won the Flannery O’Connor Prize and the Elixir Press Fiction prize. His most recent book is The Mayan Syndrome: Essays, published in 2023 by Madhat Press. Its lead essay “After the Three-Moon Era” was reprinted in Best American essays 2020.
Myna Chang (she/her) is the author of The Potential of Radio and Rain. Her writing has been selected for Flash Fiction America (W. W. Norton) and Best Small Fictions. Awards include the Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction, the New Millennium Award in Flash Fiction, the CutBank Books Chapbook Award, and the CRAFT Creative NonFiction Editor’s Choice Award. She hosts the Electric Sheep speculative fiction reading series. See more at MynaChang.com or @MynaChang.
Chelsea Stickle is the author of the flash fiction chapbooks Everything’s Changing (Thirty West Publishing, 2023) and Breaking Points (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Her stories appear in The Citron Review, Peatsmoke Journal, 100 Word Story, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and others. Her micros have been selected for Best Microfiction 2021, the Wigleaf Top 50 in 2022 and the Wigleaf Longlist in 2023. She lives in Annapolis, MD with her black rabbit George and a forest of houseplants. Read more at chelseastickle.com.
Northport NY Poets: Bruce Johnson | Emily-Sue Sloan | Phil Asaph | Linda Trott Dickman | Bill Graeser
Bruce Johnson is a lifelong resident of Long Island and has lived in Northport, NY for 25 years. He started writing poetry in 1990 and has been published in several journals, most notably the Long Island Quarterly. Bruce has published a full length book of poetry, Borderlands and Dreams, and is working on a second volume. With George Wallace he co-founded the Huntington Poets Café, a monthly poetry venue.
Bill Graeser currently lives in Iowa but is native to Long Island and formerly lived in Northport, NY. He has been published in the North American Review, TelePoem Both, Lyrical Iowa, and Long Island Quarterly. He is the winner of Iowa Poetry Association’s 2012 Norman Thomas Memorial Award and is author of two books of poetry: Fire in a Nutshell and Rushing is a Waste of Time, available at Lulu Press.
Phil Asaph was born and grew up in Huntington, NY. He is a transplant to the Ithaca, NY area where he continues to write prolifically and where he is a meditation teacher. Phil is happy to teach his meditation method to anyone who wants to learn—if you don’t have the money, he’ll teach you for free. Phil has published poems in Long Island Quarterly, Tampa Review and Poetry.
Linda Trott Dickman has been writing poetry since her first sleep-away camp experience when she was ten years old in the High Sierras in California. She is a recently retired school librarian and is poetry coordinator for the Northport Arts Coalition where she runs a monthly poetry reading. She serves on the education committee of the Northport Historical Society and leads a poetry workshop at Samantha’s Li’l Bit O’ Heaven coffee house in East Northport. Linda teaches poetry workshops at the Walt Whitman Birthplace in Huntington and the Vanderbilt Museum in Centerport. She is the author of the following books: Robes, The Art of Being Covered, The Air That I Breathe, Road Trip, Road Trip 2: On the Road Again, and Catching the Light.
Emily-Sue Sloane is an award-winning poet from Huntington Station, NY. After retiring from a career in business-technology publishing, she happily resumed a long-dormant poetry practice. She is the author of a full-length poetry collection, We Are Beach Glass (2022), and her poetry has won first-place awards in contests held by Calling All Writers, the Long Island Fair, Nassau County Poet Laureate Society, Performance Poets Association and Princess Ronkonkoma Productions. Her poems have appeared in many online and print journals and anthologies, including Corona; Evening Street Review; Front Porch Review; Long Island Quarterly; Long Island Sounds Anthology; Mobius Magazine; Mocking Heart Review; Nassau County Poet Laureate Society Review; The Ravens Perch; and Rumors, Secrets & Lies Anthology. She lives with her wife, singer-songwriter Linda Sussman.
South Asian Diaspora: Pramila Venkateswaran | Zilka Joseph | Megha Sood | Kalpa Singh-Chitnis
Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island (2013-15) and co-director of Matwaala: South Asian Diaspora Poetry Festival, is the author of Thirtha (Yuganta Press, 2002) Behind Dark Waters (Plain View Press, 2008), Draw Me Inmost (Stockport Flats, 2009), Trace (Finishing Line Press, 2011), Thirteen Days to Let Go (Aldrich Press, 2015), Slow Ripening (Local Gems, 2016), The Singer of Alleppey (Shanti Arts, 2018), and more recently, We are Not a Museum (Finishing Line Press, 2022). She has performed internationally, including at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival and the Festival Internacional De Poesia De Granada. An award winning poet, she teaches English and Women’s Studies at Nassau Community College, New York. Author of numerous essays on poetics as well as creative non-fiction, she is also the 2011 Walt Whitman Birthplace Association Long Island Poet of the Year. Her critical essays on Dalit poetry appear in recent issues of International Women’s Studies Journal, Journal of Contemporary Poetics, and Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics. She leads writing workshops for breast cancer patients in their healing journey. She is a founding member of Women Included, a transnational feminist association and the current President of NOW Suffolk, Long Island.
Zilka Joseph has authored five collections of poetry. Her books were nominated for PEN, ABA, and Pushcart awards. She has been widely published in international journals and anthologies. Her work is influenced by her Indian and Bene Israel roots, and Western cultures. She is the recipient of a Zell Fellowship, the Michael Gutterman award, and the Elsie Choy Lee Scholarship from the University of Michigan. Her recent chapbook Sparrows and Dust won a Notable Best Indie Book award and was a Notable Asian American Poetry Book, and her new book, In Our Beautiful Bones, is a Foreword INDIES finalist. Born and brought up in India, she now lives in Michigan, USA. She is a creative writing coach, a manuscript advisor and freelance editor.
Megha Sood is an Award-winning Asian American Poet, Editor, and Literary Activist from New Jersey, USA. She is a Literary Partner with “Life in Quarantine”, at Stanford University. Member of National League of American Pen Women (NLAPW), Women’s National Book Association, and United Nations Association-US Chapter. She is the recipient of the 2021 Poet Fellowship from MVICW (Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creating Writing), a 2022 mini-grant for Kundiman, a 2020 National Level Winner for the Poetry Matters Project, and a Four-Time State Level Winner for NAMI NJ Dara Axelrod Poetry Award. Her works have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of Net. She is an Associate Editor for the literary journals Mookychick(UK) and Brownstone Poets (USA). Author of Chapbook ( “My Body is Not an Apology”, Finishing Line Press, 2021) and Full Length (“My Body Lives Like a Threat”, FlowerSongPress,2022). Her widely anthologized poems, essays, and other works talk about her experience as a first-generation immigrant and woman of color. Her co-edited anthology and a few selected poems The Medusa Project has been selected as a digital payload to be sent to the moon in 2024 as part of the historical LunarCodex Project in collaboration with NASA/SpaceX
Kalpna Singh-Chitnis is an Indian-American poet, writer, filmmaker, and author of six poetry collections, including “Love Letters to Ukraine from Uyava” (River Paw Press), a finalist at the 2023 International Book Awards, and “Trespassing My Ancestral Lands,” forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Her works have appeared in notable journals and anthologies worldwide. Notably, “Sunflowers: Ukrainian Poetry on War, Resistance, Hope, and Peace,” an anthology curated and edited by her, was shortlisted for the 2023 National Indie Excellence® Awards. Her poetry has been translated into eighteen languages. In addition to being a nominee for a Pushcart Prize, she is a recipient of the “Bihar Rajbhasha Award,” “Rajiv Gandhi Global Excellence Award,” and “Bihar Shri.” Poems from her award-winning book “Bare Soul” and her poetry film “River of Songs” have been selected to go to the moon with NASA’s missions in 2023. A former lecturer of Political Science, she is also an Advocacy Member at the United Nations Association of the USA.
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POETS BUILDING BRIDGES is produced by Poetrybay Productions for the Walt Whitman Birthplace.
