Casey Community Center, 1 mile north of Shady Grove Metro on 355.
810 S Frederick Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 20877
Lucinda Marshall is the author of Inheritance Of Aging Self (Finishing Line Press, 2021). Her poetry has appeared in Global Poemics, Broadkill Review, Foliate Oak, The Rising Phoenix Review, and Poetica, among others, as well as in the anthologies “Poems in the Aftermath” (Indolent Books), “You Can Hear The Ocean” (Brighten Press), “Is It Hot In Here Or Is It Just Me?” (Beautiful Cadaver Project), and “We Will Not Be Silenced” (Indie Blu(e) Publishing). Her writing has received awards from Waterline Writers, Third Wednesday, and Montgomery Magazine. She is also an award-winning artist who has worked in a variety of mediums, including her most recent work in improvisational quilting.
Lucinda founded DiVerse Gaithersburg Poetry Reading and Open Mic over five years ago. She served as Host for three years, welcoming both new and experienced Poets and building a vital local community that has been central to the creative, intellectual lives of many participants and attendees. Grateful for the series she built and that we can at last host her!
Raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, CL Bledsoe is the author of more than 30 books, including the poetry collections Riceland, Trashcans in Love, Grief Bacon, and his newest, The Bottle Episode, as well as his latest novels Goodbye, Mr. Lonely and The Saviors. Bledsoe co-writes the humor blog, How to Even, with Michael Gushue. He’s been published in hundreds of journals, newspapers, and websites that you’ve probably never heard of. Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.
Casey Community Center, 1 mile north of Shady Grove Metro on 355.
810 S Frederick Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 20877
Claudia Gary lives in Northern Virginia and teaches workshops on Villanelle, Sonnet, Natural Meter, Poetry vs. Trauma, Poetry for Musicians, etc., at The Writer’s Center (writer.org) and elsewhere, currently via Zoom teleconference. Author of Humor Me (2006), and of chapbooks including Genetic Revisionism (2019) and Bikini Buyer’s Remorse (2015), she is also a health science writer, visual artist, and composer of tonal chamber music and art songs. See pw.org/content/claudia_gary; follow her on Twitter at @claudiagary.
Ethan Goffman is the author of the poetry collections I Garden Weeds (Cyberwit, 2021), a 2nd place winner of the Taj Mahal Review Poetry Prize, and Words for Things Left Unsaid (Kelsay Books, 2020), as well as Dreamscapes (UnCollected Press, 2021), a collection of flash fiction. Ethan is co-founder of It Takes a Community, which brings poetry to Montgomery College students and nearby residents, and is founder and producer of the Poetry & Planet podcast on EarthTalk.org. Ethan also writes nonfiction on transportation alternatives for Greater Greater Washington and other publications.
Casey Community Center, 1 mile north of Shady Grove Metro on 355.
810 S Frederick Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 20877
Poet, teacher, lecturer, Le Hinton is the author of six poetry collections including, most recently, Sing Silence (Iris G. Press, 2018). His work has been widely published and can or will be found in The Best American Poetry 2014, the Baltimore Review, the Pittsburgh Poetry Review, the Summerset Review, the Skinny Poetry Journal, Valley Voices: A Literary Review, Little Patuxent Review, Pleiades, and other publications. His poem “Epidemic” was honored by The Pennsylvania Center for the Book, and “Our Ballpark” can be found outside Clipper Magazine Stadium in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, incorporated into Derek Parker’s sculpture Common Thread.
Dana Kinsey is an actor and teacher living in Lancaster PA. She is the Director of the Spartan Writing Lab at Saint Mark’s High School in Wilmington, DE. Her writing is published or forthcoming in Writers Resist, One Art, On the Seawall, Porcupine Literary, Sledgehammer Lit, West Trestle Review, Drunk Monkeys, Prose Online, Ariel Chart, and Teaching Theatre. Dana’s play, WaterRise, was produced at the Gene Frankel Theatre in Greenwich Village and produced in film version by Sagesse Productions. Her chapbook Mixtape Venus is published by I. Giraffe Press. Visit her @wordsbyDK.com .
Casey Community Center, 1 mile north of Shady Grove Metro on 355. Our new Home! 🙂
810 S Frederick Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 20877
Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of a more perfect Union, 2019 Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize winner and Haint, awarded the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. A Cave Canem fellow and member of the Black Ladies Brunch Collective. She is the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Poetry Coordinator.
photo credit: Tom Wolff
E. Ethelbert Miller is a writer and literary activist. He is the author of two memoirs and several books of poetry including The Collected Poems of E. Ethelbert Miller, a comprehensive collection that represents over 40 years of his work. He hosts the WPFW morning radio show On the Margin with E. Ethelbert Miller and hosts and produces The Scholars on UDC-TV which received a 2020 Telly Award. Miller was awarded the 2019 Literary Award for poetry by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association for his book If God Invented Baseball. Most recently, he received a grant from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and a congressional award from Congressman Jamie Raskin in recognition of his literary activism. Miller’s latest book is When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and Other Baseball Stories, published by City Point Press.
Photo Credit: T. Qualey
Jona Colson’s poetry collection, Said Through Glass, won the 2018 Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. He is also the co-editor of This Is What America Looks Like: Poetry and Fiction from D.C., Maryland, and Virginia (2021). His poems have appeared in Ploughshares,The Southern Review, The Massachusetts Review and elsewhere. His translations and interviews can be found in Prairie Schooner, Tupelo Quarterly, and The Writer’s Chronicle. He has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He is a professor of ESL at Montgomery College in Maryland and lives in Washington, DC. In 2022, he became co-president with Caroline Bock of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House.
Reuben Jackson is the Archivist with the University Of The District Of Columbia’s Felix E. Grant Jazz Archives. He is the author of two volumes of poetry- Fingering the keys (Gut Punch Press-1991) and Scattered Clouds (Alan Squire Publishing, 2019 ) His poems have been included in over 40 anthologies . Reuben’s music reviews and essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Jazz Times, Downbeat, Washington City Paper, and on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.
From 2000 until 2004,he was an after school poetry instructor at Garnet-Patterson Middle School in Washington, DC From 2012 to 2018, he was host of Friday Night Jazz on Vermont Public Radio.
He currently co-hosts The Sound Of Surprise with Larry Applebaum on WPFW-FM in Washington, DC.
A Washington, DC resident since 1997, Naomi Ayala is the author of three books of poetry – Wild Animals on the Moon (Curbstone Press); This Side of Early (Curbstone Press/Northwestern University Press); and Calling Home: Praise Songs & Incantations (Bilingual Press). She’s the translator of La sombra de la muerte/Death’s Shadow, a novel by His Excellency José Tomás Pérez, Dominican Republic Ambassador to the U.S., and of Luis Alberto Ambroggio’s poetry collection La arqueología del viento/The Wind’s Archeology.
Please feel free to bring a poem to share at the Open Mic following the Featured Readers (one page maximum). Hope to see you there!
Pamela Murray Winters lives and works in Maryland. Her first full-length poetry collection, The Unbeckonable Bird, was published in June 2018 by FutureCycle Press. Her work has also appeared in Calvert Review, Delaware Poetry Review, Gargoyle Magazine, and Innisfree.
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Rocky Jones has been producing poetry readings in Maryland since 2005. He has enjoyed performing his poetry at Wheaton Arts Parade, Lynn Hollyfield concerts at Hard Bargain Farm, and other events around Maryland, DC, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. His work has appeared in Texture Magazine, Truck, and elsewhere. He would choose invisibility over flying, but not to do evil.
CANCELLED or, say rather, postponed. We’ll invite these two Great Poets back soon!
5 S Summit Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 20877
Please feel free to bring a poem to share at the Open Mic following the Featured Readers (one page maximum). Hope to see you there!
In case of rain, it will be rescheduled. In case of cold, bundle up!Rain or shine! Java Junction has indoor seating, but hopefully we’ll be outside in the sun! Hope to see you there!
Claudia Gary lives in Northern Virginia and teaches workshops on Villanelle, Sonnet, Natural Meter, Poetry vs. Trauma, Poetry for Musicians, etc., at The Writer’s Center (writer.org) and elsewhere, currently via Zoom teleconference. Author of Humor Me (2006), and of chapbooks including Genetic Revisionism (2019) and Bikini Buyer’s Remorse (2015), she is also a health science writer, visual artist, and composer of tonal chamber music and art songs. See pw.org/content/claudia_gary; follow her on Twitter at @claudiagary.
Raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, CL Bledsoe is the author of more than twenty-five books, including the poetry collections Riceland, Trashcans in Love, Grief Bacon, and his newest, The Bottle Episode, as well as his latest novels Goodbye, Mr. Lonely and The Saviors. Bledsoe co-writes the humor blog How to Even, with Michael Gushue. He’s been published in hundreds of journals, newspapers, and websites that you’ve probably never heard of. Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.
Poets included in THE GREAT WORLD OF DAYS collection of poetry published in Bourgeon arts magazine between in 2007-2021 will share a few poems each at our February DiVerse Reading to be followed by an open mic. Please feel free to bring a poem to share (one page maximum). Some incredible poets will be reading! We hope to see you there.
5 S Summit Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 20877
In case of rain, it will be rescheduled. In case of cold, bundle up! If it seems to you from the weather that the outdoor chairs at Java Junction may be covered in snow or ice, please feel free to fold up a chair to bring with you. We will have several but may run out without the several more outside being hospitable.
Anne Becker is author of Human Animal, The Transmutation Notebooks: Poems in the Voices of Charles and Emma Darwin, and The Good Body. Also a teacher, working with poets putting together chapbooks and full length collections, she was senior producer of Watershed Tapes, recordings of national and international poets reading their body of work. She is now a co-editor of Bourgeon magazine. A paper artist, she prints her poems on paper that she has made and works on collaboration projects with dancers and musicians.
Gregory Luce is the author of Signs of Small Grace (Pudding House Publications), Drinking Weather (Finishing Line Press), Memory and Desire (Sweatshoppe Publications), Tile (Finishing Line), and Riffs & Improvisations (forthcoming from Kelsay Press). His poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals, and in several anthologies, including Written in Arlington (Paycock Press) and This Is What America Looks Like. (Washington Writers Publishing House). In 2014 he was awarded the Larry Neal Award for adult poetry by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Retired from the National Geographic Society, he lives in Arlington, VA, and works as a volunteer writing tutor/mentor for 826DC.
Jeffrey Banks is poetically known as “Big Homey.” His credits include ESSENCE Magazine, Sirius/XM Satellite Radio, Radio-One Inc., the CBS Early Show, BLACK ENTERPRISE Magazine, performing nationwide, international broadcasts, multiple grant awards and publications through DC Public Libraries, the National Association for Poetry Therapy, Paris Lit Up, and Day Eight.
J.D. Smith published two books of poetry in 2021: the light verse collection Catalogs for FoodLovers (Kelsay Books) and the free verse collection Glenn Danzig Carries Cat Litter (Alien Buddha Press). His first fiction collection, Transit, is forthcoming in 2022 from Unsolicited Press. Smith’s other books include the essay collection Dowsing and Science and the children’s picture book The Best Mariachi in the World. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Poetry, he works in Washington, DC, where he lives with his wife Paula Van Lare and their rescue animals.
W. Luther Jett is a native of Montgomery County, Maryland and a retired special educator. His poetry has been published in numerous journals as well as several anthologies. He is the author of four poetry chapbooks: Not Quite: Poems Written in Search of My Father (Finishing Line Press, 2015), Our Situation (Prolific Press, 2018), Everyone Disappears (Finishing Line Press, 2020), and Little Wars (Kelsay Books, 2021).
Naomi Thiers grew up in California and Pittsburgh, but her chosen home is Washington-DC/Northern Virginia. She is author of four poetry collections: Only The Raw Hands Are Heaven (WWPH), In Yolo County, She Was a Cathedral (Finishing Line Press) and Made of Air (Kelsay Books). Her poems, book reviews, and essays have been published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, and others. Her latest book Made of Air is available at www.kelsaybooks.com or directly from her at this PayPal link: https://paypal.me/madeofair (Cost $14, with all profit made going to CASA MD for their DC-area work with local asylum seekers/immigrants if you order from the author).
Serena Agusto-Cox was one of the first featured poets of the DiVerse Gaithersburg reading series in Maryland. Poems are in Halfway Down the Stairs, The Magnolia Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Bourgeon, and elsewhere. Work appears in the forthcoming anthology The Great World of Days, This Is What America Looks Like, Mom Egg Review’s Pandemic Parenting issue, The Plague Papers digital anthology, Made Priceless, Love_Is_Love: An Anthology for LGBTQIA+ Teens, and Everyday Book Marketing. She also runs the book review blog, Savvy Verse & Wit, and founded Poetic Book Tours to help poets market their books.
Indran Amirthanayagam writes in five languages. He has published 22 poetry books, including Isleño (R.I.L.Editores,2021) Blue Window, translated by Jennifer Rathbun (Diálogos Books); Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Media, 2022); The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press); Coconuts on Mars; The Elephants of Reckoning (winner 1994 Paterson Poetry Prize), Uncivil War; and The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems. He edits the Beltway Poetry Quarterly and co-directs Poets & Writers Studio International. He has received fellowships from the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The US/Mexico Fund for Culture, and the Macdowell Colony. Powèt nan po la (Poet of the Port) and Isleño, will be published in early 2022. His books may be purchased from: https://www.broadstonebooks.com/shop/p/ten-thousand-steps-against-the-tyrant-poetry-by-indran-amirthanayagam (Ten Thousand Steps…) or https://www.lavenderink.org/site/books/indran-amirthanayagam/?v=76cb0a18730b (Blue Window)
Kelly Bradley is an artist, poet, songwriter and senior product manager in the Washington, DC area where she writes stories and creates apps based on data. Her first collection of poetry, “love, loss and the enormity of it all” published by FootHills Publishing, addresses themes of grief, joy, love, heartbreak and perseverance. Connect with Kelly via Instagram.
Happy New Year! Hope this New Year greets you with good health, kindness, and inspiration!
Events have been suspended at the library due to Omicron. We will instead meet at Java Junction in Old Town Gaithersburg (5 S Summit Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 20877), 1:30-3:00. We may get interrupted by a train but we’ll have plenty of outside space and, if inclined, some great coffee! I include pictures of the space that is charming and will allow for plenty of room to distance. We will have mic covers and sanitizer to ensure safety for all who read. Please bundle up, come out, enjoy some great live poetry and feel free to share your own work at the open mic!
Our new readers will be Kelly Bradley and Indran Amirthanayagam. We’re excited for them to relaunch the DiVerse series with us! Lucinda Marshall and Teri Ellen Cross Davis will be rescheduled for hopefully soon.
The reading will be cancelled in the event of rain. Hope to see you there.
DiVerse Gaithersburg 