Six Louisiana poets to read April 30 at Metairie Library

Six local poets – Esme Franklin, Benjamin Aleshire, Elizabeth Gross, Brad Richard, Benjamin Morris and Cassie Pruyn – will discuss and read from their works at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 30, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon, Metairie.

Esme Franklin earned a master of fine arts degree from Warren Wilson College. Her work is published or forthcoming in The Asheville Poetry Review, Fairy Tale Review, The Comstock Review, Peaxdunque Review, and elsewhere.

Benjamin Aleshire’s poems have appeared in The Times UK, Iowa Review, Boston Review, and an excerpt of his novel-in-progress, Poet for Hire: Kismet of a 21st Century Troubadour, is forthcoming. Aleshire received the Chighizola Award from the University of New Orleans, and a Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council. The second edition of his artist-book of visual poems, Currency, was released in 2017.

Elizabeth Gross is a poet/translator/teacher/artist in New Orleans. This body/that lightning show, her first poetry collection, was selected by Jericho Brown for the Hilary Tham Capital Collection of the Word Works Press (2019). DEAR ESCAPE ARTIST, a chapbook in collaboration with artist Sara White, came out from Antenna in 2016. She teaches interdisciplinary humanities for the Honors Program at Tulane University.

Brad Richard has published four collections of poems: Habitations, Motion Studies, Butcher's Sugar, and Parasite Kingdom (winner of the 2018 Tenth Gate Prize from The Word Works). A former faculty member at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and founder and chair of the creative writing program at Lusher Charter School, he is transitioning to a life of writing and new educational endeavors.

Benjamin Morris is the author of Coronary (Fitzgerald Letterpress, 2011), Hattiesburg, Mississippi: A History of the Hub City (Arcadia/ History Press, 2014), and Ecotone (Antenna/Press Street Press, 2017). His work has received fellowships from the Mississippi Arts Commission, Tulane University, and A Studio in the Woods. Formerly a researcher with the University of Cambridge and the Open University (UK), he is a member of the Mississippi Artist Roster.

Cassie Pruyn is the author of Bayou St. John: A Brief History (The History Press, 2017) and the poetry collection Lena (Texas Tech University Press, 2017), winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry and finalist for the Audre Lorde Award. Her poems, essays and reviews have been published in numerous publications. Born and raised in Portland, Maine, and a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, she lives and teaches in New Orleans.

For more information regarding this presentation, contact Chris Smith, Manager of Adult Programming for the library, at 504-889-8143 orwcsmith@jefferson.lib.la.us.

Louisiana Book News is written by award-winning author Chere Dastugue Coen, who writes Louisiana romances and mysteries under the pen name of Cherie Claire. Her first book in each series is FREE to download as an ebook, including "Emilie," book one of The Cajun Series, "Ticket to Paradise," book one of The Cajun Embassy series and "A Ghost of a Chance," the first Viola Valentine mystery.

Four poets to discuss and read their works Aug. 16

Four local poets – Anne Babson, Gina Ferrara, Valentine Pierce and Cassie Pruyn – will discuss and read from their works at 7 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 16, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon, Metairie. This event is free and open to the public.

 

Anne Babson, Polite Occasions

Polite Occasions imagines the future is female, that she is a lady, and if the human race is to survive what evangelical Christians call “end times,” it will be because ladies have decided to make unladylike plans. This collection is largely set in a dystopian near-future world where political structures have become authoritarian and many feel spiritually adrift, all while most people pretend not to notice.

Anne Babson’s first collection, The White Trash Pantheon, won the Colby H. Kullman prize from the Southern Writers Southern Writing Conference in Oxford, Mississippi. She has received residency grants from Yaddo and Vermont Studio Center. Her blog about moving south, The Carpetbaggers Journal, has close to 50,000 hits and has been picked up by Y’all Politics and PBS-related websites. She teaches writing and literature at Southeastern Louisiana University. She writes and lives in New Orleans.

Gina Ferrara, Fitting the Sixth Finger

Fitting the Sixth Finger is an homage to the paintings of Marc Chagall. Like so many of Chagall’s mysterious paintings, the poems in this chapbook oscillate between memory and dream, images observed and those only imagined, as they draw readers close with their quiet color and vivid music. 

Ferrara was born in New Orleans and received an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of New Orleans. She works as an educator and lives in New Orleans near Bayou St. John. Her chapbook, The Size of Sparrows, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including Poetry East, The Briar Cliff Review, and Callaloo. She was awarded a grant from The Elizabeth George Foundation and was recently published in The Poetry Ireland Review. She coordinates Poetry Buffet, the monthly reading series sponsored by the New Orleans Public Library.

Valentine Pierce, Up Decatur: Poems

Up Decatur, according to the author, “is the gush to keep faith, hope and stay alive. It is birthed in tribute to the dead, family, friends and for everyday struggle: freedom. The words express experiences of life and of being of New Orleans - the rhyme, rhythm, neighborhoods, senses and people that make the city unique, eccentric and always keeping its roux in your blood.”

Pierce is a widely published poet who has performed on a variety of stages from Louisiana universities to California art galleries, Florida book centers to Arizona coffeehouses. She has performed at popular venues such as the Maple Leaf, the Goldmine, DramaRama and the WRBH Writers' Forum in New Orleans, State of the Nation in Jackson, Rhythm and Music Poetry Series in Berkeley, CA, the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, CT, and Jump Start in San Antonio, TX.

Cassie Pruyn, Lena 

Cassie Pruyn's Lena asks questions: why we love, why we grieve. She describes it as a lush and unsparing first book that asks readers to understand love--crucially, a first love, an erotic love--in the context not of a love lost but instead of an identity gained: Was she worth it? Who has she made me? Pruyn lets us feel what lovers feel--the magnetism, the physicality, the tenderness, the rage, the wondering. In these poems, the landscape is a character in itself; the past is as tangible as the present.

Cassie Pruyn is the author of Bayou St. John: A Brief History and the poetry collection Lena, winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry and finalist for the 2017 Audre Lorde Award. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in AGNI Online, The Normal School, 32 Poems, The Los Angeles Review, and many others. Born and raised in Portland, Maine, she holds a BA from Bard College and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars.

For more information regarding this presentation, contact Chris Smith, Manager of Adult Programming for the library, at 504-889-8143 or wcsmith@jefferson.lib.la.us.

Louisiana Book News is written by award-winning author Chere Dastugue Coen, who writes Louisiana romances and mysteries under the pen name of Cherie Claire. Her first book in each series is FREE to download as an ebook, including "Emilie," book one of The Cajun Series, "Ticket to Paradise," book one of The Cajun Embassy series and "A Ghost of a Chance," the first Viola Valentine mystery.