in conversation

In Conversation: Tricia Bogle & Shu Tu

September 12, 2023 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm EDT

Poet Tricia Bogle and Artist Shu Tu will discuss their current ekphrastic exhibit, In a Garden of Small Dreams: Art + Poetry in Conversation, at the Hamilton Grange branch of the New York Public Library. Learn more about this poet and artist in the bios below. 

Free

About Shu Tu

Shu Tu has earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Parsons School of Design and studied fashion accessories at the Cordwainers, London College of Fashion. For over 25 years, she held positions as a creative director and leader in the advertising and beauty industries. In recent years, she has expanded her work as an artist. This journey has enabled her to produce deeply personal work that communicates her story through multiple mediums, including traditional and digital art, floral arrangement, ceramics, and metalsmithing.

Shu is currently residing in Upper Manhattan. You might often spot her in the company of her children, Ander and Percy, engaging in the silliest conversations and sharing the wildest laughter.

www.shutucreative.com | hello@shucreative.com | IG @beingshu2

About Tricia Bogle

Tricia Bogle (Trish) has called NYC home since 1991. She holds a BA in Creative Writing & Philosophy from Loyola Baltimore, and an MA and PhD (in Political Theory and Philosophy) from Fordham University. For over two decades, she taught advanced courses in Writing, Philosophy, Bioethics, Political Science, and Great Books at various institutions, including Montclair State University, Stevens Institute of Technology, Fordham University, and the Johns Hopkins University CTY program.

In recent years she has expanded her work as a poet, exploring many of the same themes through poetry that engaged her for decades as an academic philosopher. Trish currently lives and writes in Washington Heights, and can often be spotted in Highbridge Park, watching the sunrise over the Bronx while sipping café con leche and reading translations of Basho out loud to the trees.

boglepoetry@gmail.com | IG & Twitter @boglepoetry

In Conversation: Mark Turcotte & Suzanne Frank

August 15, 2023 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm EDT

Poets Mark Turcotte and Suzanne Frank will read from their collected works and discuss the importance of friendship and community in the writing life. Learn more about these poets in the bios below.

Bonus: Each poet has graciously offered to gift one signed copy of their book to an attendee! Anyone who asks/chats a question during the Q&A segment of the program will be eligible to be randomly selected to receive either a signed copy of Exploding Chippewas by Mark Turcotte or Double Vision: Reflections on the Coastal Forest and the City We Love by Suzanne Frank and Angela Just.

Free

About Mark Turcotte

Writer Mark Turcotte (Turtle Mountain Band Anishinaabe) is author of four collections, including The Feathered Heart and Exploding Chippewas. His poetry and prose have appeared in TriQuarterly,
POETRY, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review and other journals, and is included in the first Norton Anthology of Native Nations poetry. He has been the recipient of awards from the Lannan Foundation and the Wisconsin Arts Board. He lives in Chicago where he is Distinguished Writer-In-Residence in the English Department at DePaul University.

About Suzanne Frank

Suzanne Frank has been writing and reading her poetry in Chicago for over 30 years. She has been a Chicago Poetry Slam team finalist, a two-time Puchcart Prize nominee, and her work has been published in many poetry journals and anthologies, including Sow’s Ear, Another Chicago Magazine, Stray Bullets, Power Lines, Appleseeds Anthology of Americana Poetry, Birds Thumb,
HAMMERS Magazine, and Arts Alive: A Literary Review.

She has featured in poetry venues across the city, from the infamous Green Mill Lounge to Printers Row Book Fair to the Guild Literary Complex where she directed and performed in the Women in Verse poetry cabaret.
She completed, with writer Angela Just, a residency at Shotpouch Cabin in the Oregon Coast Range, granted by Oregon State University’s Center for Ideas, Nature and the Written Word, which resulted in the publication of their chapbook of poems, prose and photographs, Double Vision (2019). Most recently, her collection of travel poems, All On the Same Blue Planet, was featured in Nowhere Magazine. Currently, Suzanne is finalizing a poetry collection, Woundwood, that gives voice to women whose lives were hijacked in the 1960s when flower children and free love collided with puritanical laws, unreliable birth control and backstreet abortions.

She has been writing with the Egg Money Poetry Collective for over 15 years.

Three Poets in January

We were so excited to host jason b. crawford, Nicholas Goodly, and Malcom Tariq for an evening of poetry and conversation. They discussed safe spaces, the South, language and more.

The Event

In Conversation: Kathleen Aguero & Jennifer Martelli

 Our speakers for this conversation are poets, are editors, and are a part of a writers group in Salem MA. Kathi & Jennifer have spent their time locked up with their work and also time with each other revising, workshopping, reviewing, reading. They know each other’s work intimately and while the words are their own, they were supported and propelled by others. Writing is writing. Writing is also revising, reading, talking, mentoring, editing, sharing, and supporting.

The Event

In Conversation: Amy Hoffman & Meg Kearney

A reading and conversation with novelist and memoirist Amy Hoffman and poet Meg Kearney. Amy reads from her new book, Dot & Ralfie, and talks with Meg Kearney about humor in the face of challenges, craft, and transcending genres.

“Amy Hoffman creates unforgettable characters, and her scintillating wit keeps things lively even in the face of the decline that awaits us all” writes Alison Bechdel, author of The Secret to Superhuman Strength.

A writer, editor, and community activist, Amy Hoffman is the author of the novels Dot & Ralfie and The Off Season, and three memoirs—Lies About My Family;  An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News; and Hospital Time. An Army of Ex-Lovers was short-listed for a Lambda Book Award, and both An Army of Ex-Lovers and Hospital Time were short-listed for the New York Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award. Hospital Time was also a New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age selection and has been adopted in college and university courses. It is the subject of chapters in several works of literary criticism.

As Long As I Know You: The Book Launch

From Lisa’s Introduction:

So let’s talk about my week instead. I spent it with Anne-Marie Oomen’s newest memoir in essays, As Long As I Know You: The Mom Book, winner of the Sue Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction. It was my companion as I sipped my first cup of coffee on weekday mornings, my lunch date on Saturday, and my break at work, between meetings and desk shifts. It made me smile. It made me cry. It reminded me that good memoirs are built from tight yet breathable essays, that essays are constructed from paragraphs weaved together to tell a bigger story, and that paragraphs don’t sing without exquisitely written sentences. And, even if someone accomplishes all of that with technical skill, a good memoir in essays needs an invisible scaffolding: lacework of deep thinking and a willingness to be vulnerable, to show our bruises, to face ourselves in the most unflattering light without being so focused on the I that we exclude the reader from the truths we’re trying to share. 

The Event

Please enjoy this in conversation with Anne-Marie Oomen & Patricia Ann McNair:

In Conversation: Jessica Cuello & Jan Beatty

When Lisa and I began planning this project over a year ago, we had the same vision in mind. Our hope was that we could provide a non-competitive space, a space where people at all stages of their writing life could feel welcome and bolstered by the creativity they see in others. We also wanted to give creatives the time and the platform to do what they might not get to do in the course of a normal reading at a bookshop.  

And another reason for doing what we do is selfish, but selfish in the way that it nurtures us. We get to participate in the events we host and revel in the curiosity, the motivations, and the practice of being a poet. We are so honored to host Jessica Cuello and Jan Beatty for this conversation. We are so grateful to them for their time and for sharing with us.

Both of them are fierce writers about womanhood, exploring themes of the body and autonomy, the changes we experience as we grow from child to adult. This conversation doesn’t shy away from menstruation, death, or neglect… and it also celebrates the work, the words, the moments that give us peace.

Please enjoy Jessica Cuello & Jan Beatty.

The Event