Join us on Friday, April 21 at 7 pm for a poetry night featuring readings by three incredible voices, creative mentors and educators, and writers: Terry Blackhawk, Gloria Nixon-John, and Ellen Stone.
This event is FREE but capacity is limited. Your Eventbrite RSVP is appreciated.
ABOUT THE POETS //
Terry Blackhawk is the founder of Detroit’s InsideOut Literary Arts Project, a poets-in-schools program dedicated to encouraging young people to “think broadly, create bravely, and share their voices with the wider world.” Her poetry collections include Escape Artist (BkMk Press, 2003), selected by Molly Peacock for the John Ciardi Prize; The Dropped Hand (Lotus Press, imprint of WSU Press 2011); The Light Between (Wayne State University Press, 2012); One Less River (Mayapple Press, 2019), and other titles. Terry was twice named Creative Writing Educator of the Year by the Michigan Youth Arts Festival (1990, 2008) where she led the annual festival poetry workshop during the 1990s. She served on the board of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) from 2008-2012 and was named a Kresge Arts in Detroit Literary Fellow in 2013. At this event, Terry will be reading from her 2022 poetry collection, Maumee, Maumee, written in love and grief for her partner, the Toledo artist Neil Frankenhauser (1939-2019).
Gloria Nixon-John is a Michigan-based poet and author. Her novel, The Killing Jar is based on the story of one of the youngest Americans to have served on death row. Her memoir, Learning from Lady Chatterley is written in narrative verse and set in Detroit. Breath me a Sky, a chapbook of her poems was published by the Moonstone Arts Center of Philadelphia. She has also published essays in pedagogical texts for teachers and essays and poems about gardening and horses. She is a Teacher Consultant for the Red Cedar Writing Project at Michigan State University. At this event, Gloria will be reading from her 2022 poetry collection, The Dark Safekeeping (Mayapple Press).
Ellen Stone is an Ann Arbor-based poet who taught special education in Ann Arbor Public Schools from kindergarten to high school for over 30 years. She is the co-founder of Community High School’s poetry club, where she advises young poets and hosts nationally known guest poets. Her poems have appeared most recently in Anti-Heroin Chic, Great Lakes Review, Rust + Moth, One (Jacar Press), West Trestle Review, The Maynard, and Hobart among other places. In 2013, she released The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press) and in 2020, her work was included in the anthology Choice Words: Writers on Abortion (Haymarket Books). At this event, Ellen will read from her 2020 release, What Is in the Blood (Mayapple Press).