April 19th Reading With Diane Wilbon Parks, Naomi Thiers, and Gregory Luce

Please note:  Because Easter falls on the 2nd Sunday in April, our April reading will be on the 3rd Sunday this month.  We return to 2nd Sundays in May.

Please join us on April 19th, 2-4 pm, when our featured poets will be Naomi Thiers, Gregory Luce, and Diane Wilbon Parks. The reading will be at the Quince Orchard Library (15831 Quince Orchard Rd./Gaithersburg 20878) and is hosted by Lucinda Marshall and will be followed by an Open Mic. Please feel free to bring a poem that you have written to share (one page maximum).

Diane Wilbon Parks is a poet, visual artist, and author; Diane has written a Children’s Book and two poetry collections; her most recent, published collection is The Wisdom of Blue Apples.  She is completing her third and newest collection of poetry. Diane is one of six PG County Poets whose poetry has been highlighted throughout the DMV. She celebrated the permanent installation of one of her poems and art pieces as a sign at the Patuxent Research Refuge – North Tract. Diane has been a featured poet on Prince George’s CTV’s Awarding Winning Program, Sojourn With Words, and on Pod Casts, as well as, Radio Broadcast Programs. Diane has read for Grace Cavalieri’s “The Poet and The Poem” at the Library of Congress; she holds a degree in Information Systems Management, is an U. S. Air Force Veteran and resides in Maryland.

Gregory Luce, is the author of Signs of Small Grace (Pudding House Publications), Drinking Weather (Finishing Line Press), Memory and Desire (Sweatshoppe Publications), and Tile (Finishing Line Press), and has published widely in print and online. He is the 2014 Larry Neal Award winner for adult poetry, given by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In addition to poetry, he writes a monthly column on the arts for Scene4 magazine. He is retired from National Geographic, works as a volunteer writing tutor/mentor for 826DC, and lives in Arlington, VA.

Naomi Thiers is the author of three poetry collections: Only The Raw Hands Are Heaven (WWPH), In Yolo County, and She Was a Cathedral (both Finishing Line Press.) Her poems and fiction have been published in Virginia Quarterly Review , Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Sojourners, and many others. She is a former editor of Phoebe, and works as an editor for Educational Leadership magazine.

 

March 8th Reading With Susan Sonde, Melanie Figg, and Sistah Joy Alford

Reminder–March 8th is the first day of Daylight Savings, reset those clocks unless you want to miss the first hour of DiVerse!

Please join us on March 8th, 2-4 pm, when our featured poets will be Susan Sonde, Sistah Joy Alford, and Melanie Figg. The reading will be at the Quince Orchard Library (15831 Quince Orchard Rd./Gaithersburg 20878) and is hosted by Lucinda Marshall and will be followed by an Open Mic. Please feel free to bring a poem that you have written to share (one page maximum).

Susan Sonde s an award winning poet and short story writer. Her debut collection: In the Longboats with Others  won the Capricorn Book Award and was published by New Rivers Press. The Arsonist,  her fifth collection was released in 2019 from Main Street Rag and her sixth collection, Evenings at the Table of an Intoxicant was a finalist in the New Rivers New Voices 2019 contest. The Last Insomniac, a chapbook, now working its way to a full collection, was a 2019 finalist in The James Tate Award. Grants and awards include, a National Endowment Award in poetry. grants in fiction and poetry from The Maryland State Arts Council, and the Gordon Barber Memorial Award from The Poetry Society of America. Her collection The Chalk Line was a finalist in The National Poetry Series.  Individual poems have appeared in Barrow Street, The North American Review, The Southern Humanities Review, The Mississippi Review, American Letters and Commentary, Bomb, New Letters, Southern Poetry Review, and many others.

  Sistah Joy Matthews Alford is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Prince George’s County, Maryland as well as the Poet Laureate of Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in Fort Washington. She is an author, arts advocate, as well as the producer and host of award-winning poetry-based cable television show, Sojourn with Words. She is an alum of the late Washington, DC Poet Laureate’s “Poets in Progress” series and the Mariposa Writers Retreat and the founder of the socially-conscious poetry ensemble, Collective Voices. Sistah Joy is the author of three books, Lord I’m Dancin’ As Fast As I Can (2000); From Pain to Empowerment, The Fabric of My Being (2009); and This Garden Called Life (2011).She is a Charter Board Member of C.A.A.P.A. (Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts, Inc.) and a Lifetime Member of the Prince George’s African American Museum and Cultural Center.

Melanie Figg is the author of the award-winning debut poetry collection, Trace, as well as a chapbook. She has won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The McKnight and Jerome Foundations, the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County, and other. Her poems, essays, and reviews have been published in dozens of literary journals, including The Iowa Review, Nimrod, Conduit, and Iron Horse Literary Review. Melanie curates Literary Art Tours in DC galleries (a Washington Post Editor’s Pick) and teaches writing at the Writer’s Center and privately. As a certified professional coach, she offers women’s writing retreats and works one-on-one with writers and others.