More About Pat Riviere-Seel

I had planned to do a wonderful post on Pat Riviere-Seel's reading and discussion at City Lights bookstore yesterday and had it all set up with numerous links and photographs. After a good while of work getting the images and words arranged as I liked them, I tried to paste in another poem, and lo and behold, the whole page vanished.

 So, Pat, I'm sorry. I don't have time to re-do this page, of which I was so proud. But I am going to post the photos from our morning in the Regional Room, which you described as "magical."  For you readers who don't know Pat's work, please go to this link on  My Laureate's Lasso blog for an introduction to her work and, best of all, more poems.

Here's the bookstore cat, snoozing on the top of the sofa as we were leaving.  Pat said she especially wanted a photo of him, so here he is.  I wonder if our discussion put him to sleep?

Our reading and discussion circle in the Regional Room. Nobody looks asleep in this group! Except for the cat, of course.  You can see him sprawled just behind Carolyn Elkins' head.

Pat, flanked by poet-friends Susan Lefler, who drove over from Brevard, and Jeannette Cabanis Brewin.

Pat discusses the process of writing The Serial Killer's Daughter and the mystery of entering into the internal landscape of her characters' lives.

Bill Everett, poet, novelist, and retired professor of theology and philosophy reminds us the the origin of "mystery" comes from the Greek "mysterion," meaning something that is unknowable.

Carolyn Elkins, Joyce Foster, and Pat Montee like what they hear.


And they weren't the only ones.  We are grateful to City Lights Bookstore for letting us use the Regional Room for our monthly gatherings--and grateful to Netwest for inspiring us to bring Coffee with the Poets eastward to Sylva.

PAT RIVIERE-SEEL: COFFEE WITH THE POET

February's Coffee with the Poet features Pat Riviere-Seel, a friend who graced my poetry class in the Great Smokies Writing Workshop several years ago.  Pat has become a vibrant presence in our North Carolina Literary community, offer her talents and her time to her readers and the literary organizations that help draw us all together.  Please join us at City Lights Bookstore on Feb. 16 at 10:30 to meet Pat and listen to her read and talk about her work.  Our gatherings are always informal and, yes, fun.  Afterward, I highly recommend lunch downstairs at City Lights Cafe!

Here is a poem of hers that I love.   You can find more on her website by clicking on the link above.

The Bears 

The bears returned last night.

 The mother and her three cubs 

slept in the mound of leaves. 

They left deep indentations

 where summer-sated bellies 

A snowy evening last winter.

and massive paws lay curled

 beneath the maple’s outstretched limbs

and the quarter moon’s pale light.

All day, while I raked leaves into piles,

 the bears were watching. They moved 

silent and unseen among evergreens,

 gray trunks, and branches as they had

all summer. Preparing for winter sleep, 

 they stuffed themselves on acorns and grubs.

One late summer day they came  into 

 the orchard. The cubs shimmied

up the young apple trees, bent 

 one bough to the ground and broke

another in their play. The mother

 took her time selecting fallen apples,

and those she could reach balanced 

 on her hind legs. She carried these

one by one to her cubs, gently 

 urged them to taste and chew. 

She knows how long winter lasts. 

   

Pat Riviere-Seel

Pat Riviere-Seel has published two poetry collections, The Serial Killer’s Daughter (Main Street Rag, 2009), winner of the Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry and No Turning Back Now (Finishing Line Press, 2004), nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She teaches poetry at UNCA in the Great Smokies Writing Program.

Pat is a 2003 graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Queens University of Charlotte. Her poems have been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies including Asheville Poetry Review, Passager, Tar River Poetry, and Kakalak, an Anthology of Carolina Poets, among others. Recent poems  appear in Boomtown, the Queens University MFA Program 10^th Anniversary Anthology, Cloudbank, and Poetry of Love, an anthology published by Jacar Press. 

Her poetry has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and was a finalist in the Press 53 Open Awards and a semi-finalist in the first James Applewhite Poetry Prize in 2011. The Serial Killer’s Daughter premiered as a staged reading in March 2011 with a 4-member cast. 

Pat is a former award winning journalist, lobbyist, publicist, and editor. She worked as a political reporter for daily newspapers in Fayetteville, NC, and Annapolis, Maryland until 1987 when she established her own public and government relations firm. She represented nonprofit organizations in the Maryland General Assembly, designed public relations campaigns for private businesses and political candidates.

In 1992 she returned to her native North Carolina to take a position as Editor of Voices, the bimonthly journal of Rural Southern Voice for Peace. She married Ed Seel in 1997 and moved with him to Germany for two years. During that time, Pat attended the Spoleto Writers Workshop in Spoleto, Italy.

She has lived in Asheville, NC, since 1999 and served as President of the North Carolina Poetry Society and Chair of the North Carolina Writers Conference. Pat is an avid runner, hiker, and gardener.

from  The Serial Killer's Daughter
Winner of the Roanoke Chowan Poetry Award from the NC Literary and Historical Association

I. About the Daughter
The serial killer's daughter hangs damp sheets on the line.
She likes the yeasty way the wind fills the cloth and how the sun sweetens the
threads.
When she holds the clothespins between her teeth, she tastes bread and salted butter.
She no longer worries about trying to hold on to the brass pole of the carousel.
The serial killer's daughter can hold anything - or anyone - she pleases.
Preferring familiar company, she surrounds herself with dahlias and lavender.
She always rides the wooden tiger because there is no bear.
Why are the animals always one step ahead of the humans?
The serial killer's daughter knows how frightening a creature walking upright can be, so
she always walks as if she were about to waltz.
Her hands write a language only she can read.
She's not a figment of anyone's imagination. 
She is sunlight striping murky swamp water.

II. More About the Serial Killer's Daughter




The serial killer's daughter wears tight curls made of cypress roots and washes them in
buttermilk from the moon.
When mud oozes between her toes she no longer worries about wiping her feet before
stepping through the door.
She likes to touch people she loves on the nape of the neck and feel the rocky landscapes
of their spines.
Her heart measures her intentions and stretches them in a chain around her wrist so she
will not forget.
The serial killer's daughter waits for no one.
It never matters if she is on time. Whose time?
Time is irrelevant, like memories she saves and forgets.
Because her life needs seasoning she grows spearmint, basil, and lemon balm.
The serial killer's daughter is always leaving Robeson County.
For her, the stone covered with moss and mica that she carries in
her pocket contains a galaxy.

(Available from Main Street Rag Press )

SIBA 201O BOOK AWARDS NOMINATIONS ARE OPEN!

(CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE IN SYLVA, NC)

TO ALL MY BLOG READERS WHO VALUE SOUTHERN LITERATURE, ESPECIALLY POETRY, PLEASE CONSIDER NOMINATING BOOKS PUBLISHED IN 2010 THAT YOU LOVE. HERE'S THE LINK: http://www.sibaweb.com/siba-book-award/nomination-form. Readers may nominate books if they list a SIBA member as their bookstore. SIBA IS THE SOUTHERN INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS ALLIANCE. THEY ARE AN IMPORTANT RESOURCE IN A CULTURE THAT IS RAPIDLY MOVING TOWARD CHAIN BOOKSELLERS AND THE INTERNET. PLEASE HELP SUPPORT OUR INDIE BOOKSTORES.

POETRY WAS DROPPED FROM THE AWARDS LAST YEAR BECAUSE OF SO FEW NOMINATIONS. LET'S CHANGE THAT THIS YEAR!

This a quick list of books I value and think deserve to be honored. There are others I've not listed. We've a wealth of good poetry being published now. Let's celebrate it.

-----------------------------------

Nancy Simpson: Living Above the Frost Line (Carolina Wren)

Isabel Zuber: Red Lily (Press 53)

Joseph Bathanti: Restoring Sacred Art (Star Cloud Press)

Jeffery Beam: Gospel Earth (Skysill Press)

Nancy Dillingham: Home

Janisse Ray: A House of Branches (Wind Pub.)

John Thomas York: Naming the Constellations (Spring Street Editions)

Dede Wilson: Eliza (Main Street Rag)

Stephen Smith: A Short Report on the Fire at Woolworths (Main St. Rag)

Tara Powell: Physical Science (Finishing Line)

Debra Kaufman: The Next Moment (Jacar)

Julia Nunnally Duncan: At Dusk (Old Seventy Creek Press)

Alex Grant: The Circus Poems (Lorimer)

Holly Iglesias: Angles of Approach (White Pine)

Cathy Smith Bowers: Like Shining from Shook Foil (Press 53)

Ruth Moose: Tea (Main Street)

COFFEE WITH THE POETS: LAURA HOPE-GILL, DEC. 16, IN SYLVA, NC

WHAT COULD MAKE A MORE BEAUTIFUL SEASON'S GIFT THAN THE SOUL TREE, A COLLECTION OF POEMS BY LAURA HOPE-GILL AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN FLETCHER? COME MEET LAURA on DEC. 16 AT CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE IN SYLVA. SHE WILL READ FROM HER WORK AND SIGN HER BOOK FOR HOLIDAY GIVING.

(Published and printed in Asheville, North Carolina by Grateful Steps Publishing. )

LAURA HOPE-GILL will be at CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE THIS THURSDAY, DEC. 16TH, 10:30 a.m. to discuss her work. Please join us for coffee, tea, and pastries----and poetry by both Laura and attendees.

-- To say that Laura Hope-Gill and John Fletcher, Jr. have put together one of the most stunning books I've ever seen would be an understatement. Here is a collaboration that expands the definition of that word. It's a seamlessly interwoven collection of words and images that invite and inspire, in the the original meaning of that over-used term. Laura's poems show the depths of her poetic "inseeing, " as Rilke calls it, and Fletcher's photographs open up the landscape that Laura sings into being with her words. The Soul Tree speaks to the landscapes of internal and exterior reality. In this collection those two landscapes have found harmony through two artists working together in celebration of what they love.

Laura Hope-Gill is in the process of being certified as a Certified Applied Poetry Facilitator by the National Federation for Poetry Therapy, working under the mentorship of poet and psychotherapist Perie Longo. The Director of Asheville Wordfest, a free poetry festival which presents poetry as Citizen Journalism, she consciously pursues ways of revealing poetry’s relevance to every-day life and not merely an “art form” whose only use is to beautiful. The Soul Tree: Poems and Photographs of the Southern Appalachians (Grateful Steps, Asheville) is a collaboration with local photographer John Fletcher, Jr. and is an application of her vision of poetry as a conversation between inner and outer worlds. Renowned photographer John Fletcher has this to say about the beginnings of their collaboration. "After visiting my landscapes website in the spring of 2008, Laura replied with an email containing an attachment titled, 'The Soul Tree.' I was stunned after reading the poem, then I noticed that there were 35 more pages to the document. My jaw dropped a little lower each time I scrolled to the next poem…36 in all. I was speechless.Not only was her writing beautiful and poignant, but her poetry brought new life to the photographs. I was also quite overwhelmed by her choice of photos…not the pretty sunset pictures that most people like. She was inspired by the photos that were my favorites…the mysterious and more abstract images that I feel personify my experience and observations. Today I continue this pursuit by working as a staff photographer for the Asheville Citizen-Times, shooting weddings, and freelancing for regional and national clients including, USA Today, The Associated Press, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Asheville Chamber of Commerce."

Images and poems from The Soul Tree may be found at http://www.thsoultree.org/, along with ordering information and more about the two artists who have brought this lovely book into existence.

Here are two pages from the book.

William Everett: Coffee With the Poets

William Everett gave us a thought-provoking and thoroughly enjoyable reading and commentary about his poetry at our last Coffee With the Poets at City Lights Bookstore on August 19. Bill is both novelist and poet and a former professor of Ethics and Theology. He is fluent in German (he's done translations) and Lord knows what else. He's mostly fluent in poetry, however, and we were delighted to be able to welcome him to Sylva. After the reading several of us retired downstairs to Spring Street Cafe for lunch and a casual poetry workshop around the table. What could be better than good food and poetry?

Bill was waiting in the Regional Room of City Lights Bookstore.

We were immediately joined by Charlie, the Bookstore Cat!

Food, glorious food! Muffins, cookies, coffee, lemonade, and so on.

Bill organized his presentation around his journey as poet. His earlier poems showed his ear for the sounds of language and the influence of poets whose work he has admired in the past. He is clear about how the poetic tradition guides and instructs us as we write our own poems.

The following are some early poems he read. To read more about Bill, go to his website www.williameverett.com.

Rusted roofs
---where children played,
Graybeaten boards
---engrained with laughter,
Christmas pines in morning
--drape the walls
---in shadow calico.
The sun bakes down
--the flower patch,
A puppy hushed in memory
--underneath the porch.
Old folks whisper in the weeds,
--it was not so,
--it was not so.


9-10-83

Round red lips pubaceous
Smile in the glossy of the party
Frozen on the yellowing page,
A sentimental daiquiri
Of tender expectations.
How, with whom and where
Will teasing eyes find their reflection?
Who will find the woman
In the girl in the taffeta gown?

3-27-87/4-6-10

Sweet lady,

if
in tinseled tear
you pray the evergreen upon us,
supplicate the lavish laughter of your heart
to snow upon the muddy traces of our mind.

12-17-80

Nan Watkins, prose writer, translator, and musician, listens.

After Bill's presentation, Newt Smith read some new poems. We continued our comments on his work at lunch.

Dianna Jurss, below, on the left, will be the featured poet in September.

IF ARE IN THE AREA, PLEASE JOIN US ON THE THIRD THURSDAY OF EACH MONTH FOR COFFEE WITH THE POETS AT CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE IN SYLVA, NORTH CAROLINA. PHONE: 336-9499. WEBSITE: WWW.CITYLIGHTSNC.COM.

COFFEE WITH THE POETS: WILLIAM EVERETT

(William Everett at the July Coffee With the Poets)

On August 19 City Lights Bookstore will welcome poet and fiction writer William Everett as guest. Bill is a Netwest member, the author of eight books and many poems. He will read and talk about his journey as a writer, his creative process, and engage participants in their own ways of accessing their voices. The event will take place in the Regional Room of City Lights at 10:30. After a break for lunch, there will be a two hour writing workshop at 1:30. Participants should bring copies of one poem or excerpt of prose for discussion.

Bill maintains a website (www.williameverett.com) which I highly recommend visiting. Here is his announcement of his visit to City Lights next week. You will have to go to his site to read the second poem!

On Thursday, August 19, I will be reading and reflecting on my poetry at 10:30 am for the “Coffee with the Poets” group at City Lights Bookstore, Sylva, NC. The poet’s group is just one of several under the umbrella of the Netwest Mountain Writers, affiliated with the North Carolina Writers Network. (Check outwww.netwestwriters.blogspot.com.) We are convened by Kay Byer, a former NC Poet Laureate, who has graciously encouraged me to reflect on my thirty years of often hidden poetry writing. As I have been reflecting on this welcome task, two poems popped up that I thought I’d share with you. They both involve the quirky, unexpected way that poems elude our normal patterns of perception and expression. I thought you might enjoy them.

I Love That Poetry

Do you like poetry? I asked.

Oh yes, he said. Last year I went to see a poet

Maya Angelou and she was beautiful.

The curtain opened and the spotlight lit upon her hair,

not white, but lustrous gray.

She wore a long crushed velvet dress, much like a kaftan,

bell shaped sleeves descending to wide cuffs

embroidered with a band that looked like kinte cloth.

A long string of pearls draped down from her broad shoulders,

picking up the highlights in her hair.

She was surrounded by a bank of ferns that reached up to her waist

as she sat down among them.

The ferns were like extensions of the dress. They billowed like her hair.

Oh, it was gorgeous. I just love that poetry.

I’m glad you liked it, passed my lips. Perhaps you might cut off a little more

above my ears. I want to look my best tomorrow night.

COFFEE WITH THE POETS: Jeannette Cabinis-Brewin

(Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin)

City Lights Bookstore and the NC Writers Network West now sponsor Coffee With the Poets every third Thursday of the month. Inspired by a similar gathering in Hayesville which has been in existence for a number of years, this program is only in its second month. Our first meeting featured poet Glenda Beall of Hayesville, former Program Coordinator for Netwest. Glenda read and discussed her new chapbook, Now Might As Well Be Then, published by Finishing Line Press.




(At the coffee and tea table)


Thursday's guest was Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin, who brought her beautifully rendered poetry to us, along with an intelligent and stimulating commentary. We could have talked on for hours about poetry, the mountains, environmentalism, spirituality...well, I could go on, but wouldn't you rather read some of Jeannette's poems? The ones that follow are from her chapbook Patriate, which won the Longleaf Press chapbook prize in 2007. She began with a quote from William Stafford, a voice that's been like a touchstone for her.

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

--William Stafford

Jeannette then read this beautiful poem written as if in conversation with Stafford's poem.
Still That Way
--with thanks to William Stafford

The thread I follow winds among wild plum trees
in an orchard planted by black bears. It drops

in windblown loops from nine beanpoles
lately wound with tender pods, makes a beeline

for the garnet parade-hats of sourwoods on the ridge,
their cream tassels buzzing with next year's honey.

It's drawn upstream by the gravity of the mossy altar
we call The Stone Table, and weaves a circle round it

for safekeeping of leafy fair-linen and acorn-cup
chalices. As it trails down the road, the thread takes a zig

and a zag, caught up in an exuberance of happy dogs.
While I follow it, I am not lost. The dirt names itself:

here's the sandy soil where coneflowers poke
spike seednoses this way and that; here's the sreambank

where in spring the Quaker ladies throng, feet down
in the dampness. Here the sparrow grass sleep in their bed

and parsnips lengthen their white sweet bodies down into dark.
The granite heft of the knoll lies across a hidden stream

that springs up on north and south to spread into pools,
one upwelling frequented by bars, the other by blacksmiths.

Let me explain about the thread: it's wrapped around this house
from foundation stone to roofpeak, lies across the marriage bed

length and breadth so many times, it's warp and woof
of the blanket that, sighing, we draw over our nakedness.

beneath it his heart pounds like the beater bar of a loom.
and I listen. We grow old; some things are still steady, but we know

nothing can stop time's unfolding. Like the skein for a covered basket
it pays out, soft and pliant, as I wind and count the loops

around the board. From this window I see the places it has knit
into home: vegetable patch, wild grove, flowery verge, all now bitten

black with frost. The basket's no longer full and at any moment
I may draw up the raggletaggle end, frayed out to nothingness and my hands'

surprised, scribe a final airy O




(William Everett listens as Jeannette responds to his question. He will be August's guest author.)


One of our favorites was a new poem titled Still, in which Jeannette plays on that word. Here are some lines I especially like, Randolph speaking at the outset.


My daddy sometimes was known
to weld up a still, he grins.
He’d pretend and go along
with whatever wink and purpose was given.

Still and all, that was the way
the old-timers got around and along.
And it still is today.
Some things, over time, still strong

as double-run corn. Like
Randolph’s will, like love
for the burn, that likker-spike beyond flavor.

---from Still





An exemplary quote from Blaise Pascal is tailor-made for our contemporary rushed, texting, online lives: "The sole cause of our unhappiness is that we do not know how to stay quietly in our rooms."


Jeannette concludes the poem "Pupil" with similar instructions to us and to herself.

Learn to sit still. The dark


iris of the mind,


receptacle and organizer,


opens inside, synapses making


birds, movements, sounds, thoughts,


glass and wood--a hole in the wall--


into a whole and living thing.


The cage of mullions,


a hologram of creation:


each pane entirely full


of new and repetitive beauties.

(Netwest member Ben Eller)


Afterward, we had lunch at Spring Street Cafe, underneath the bookstore. Pictured are Jeannette, Bill Everett, and Newt Smith, Netwest Treasurer.

POET OF THE DAY: CHITRA DIVAKARUNI

Two weeks ago I meet novelist and poet Chitra Divakaruni who was here for our WCU literary festival. I had long admired Chitra's work, beginning years ago with her book of poems Black Candle. After her poems, I began to read her beautifully realized novels, among them Sister of My Heart and The Vine of Desire, and knew I had to try to contact her. She generously responded to my blog comments and emails, all of which led to the invitation for her to come to Cullowhee for our festival. Spending time with her was a pleasure! At the NC Center for the Advancement of Teaching, she engaged the teachers in a friendly, informative question/answer session, and her reading that night was a marvel of presentation. Born in Calcutta, Chitra now lives in Houston with her family; she teaches in the University of Houston graduate writing program and has just published a new new novel, One Amazing Thing. You can find her online at her website, chitradivakaruni.com, and on facebook.

The New City ( II)

In the old place, the soil was black from earthquakes.

Jacaranda grew in it, and purple iceplant,

things she was not sure would winter here.

At what point does one grow too old

to learn new names? Green ash, water oak. The sounds

soft as a palm pressed over her mouth, her nose.

She prayed for distraction. Felt guilty to say

she missed the roads more than all else,

the way they plunged from hills, not looking back.

On a new freeway there are no landmarks.

Driving, she felt her tires slide as on river-ice.

Blur and wheel. A sound like enormous wings.

The faceless trees were pronged by their unleashing.

Time, white as shredded letters,

rushing laughing past her windows.

from Black Candle, Calyx Books, Rev. Edition 2000)

(Chitra and City Lights Bookstore owner/manager Chris Wilcox at the book table)

Reading with Friends this Weekend

Mary Adams


I'm looking forward to this weekend when I get to read with three friends--Cecilia Woloch, Mary Adams, and Julia Nunnally Duncan. On Saturday Night, Cecilia, Mary and I come together at City Lights in Sylva to flaunt our new books. Mary's Commandment is hot of the press at Spring Street Editions. An NEA Fellow in writing, she saw her first book, Epistles from the Planet Photosynthesis, published by The University of Florida Press.

On Sunday, December 6, 2009, Malaprop's Bookstore/Café (55 HaywoodStreet in downtown Asheville, NC) will host poets Kathryn StriplingByer reading from ARETHA'S HAT: INAUGURATION DAY, 2009; Julia NunnallyDuncan with AN ENDLESS TAPESTRY and new, unpublished poems; andCecilia Woloch, author of CARPATHIA.

Julia Nunnally Duncan writes both poetry and fiction. She has
previously published two collections of stories and a novel, and her
second novel, WHEN DAY IS DONE, is just out from March Street Press.
Her Appalachian poems have appeared in scores of literary journals,
and her first published collection of poetry, AN ENDLESS TAPESTRY
(2007), was named a finalist for the 2008 Roanoke-Chowan Award for
Poetry. She recently completed the manuscript for a second collection
of poems, AT DUSK. Rob Neufeld, book columnist for The Asheville
Citizen-Times, wrote of Julia Nunnally Duncan that she is one of four
Western North Carolina "poets to watch." He remarked that her poems
"make the greatest possible use of line breaks, so that individual
phrases glow like haiku observations. Metaphors develop naturally and
emotionally." In a recent article in North Carolina Literary Review,
Jeffrey Franklin observed of AN ENDLESS TAPESTRY, "Duncan always makes
the place solid, the people real, the situation, in all its emotional
complexity and perilousness, rendered with a deceptive simplicity that
quietly resonates. . . .[Her] people are as recognizably human as any
in Shakespeare[.]" Like our other readers for December 6, Julia
Nunnally Duncan is at once a dedicated writer and an experienced
teacher; she has served as a full-time English instructor at McDowell
Community College for nearly two and a half decades. At Malaprop's,
she will read selections from AN ENDLESS TAPESTRY and from her
manuscript, AT DUSK.

CARPATHIA is Cecilia Woloch's fifth poetry collection. Published in2009, it went into a second printing about two months after itsofficial publication date. Natasha Trethewey, Pulitzer Prize-winningpoet, has written of CARPATHIA, "The poems . . . are guided by anexquisite lyricism and heartbreaking emotional honesty. . . . This isa gorgeous book by a poet who is passionately alive in the world."Cecilia Woloch has traveled widely and taught just as widely, offeringpoetry workshops for children and adults across the United States andin several locations abroad. She serves as a lecturer in creativewriting at the University of Southern California and is foundingdirector of the Paris Poetry Workshop. The recipient of numerousawards for her writing, teaching and theatre work, in 2009 alone,Cecilia Woloch has been recognized as a finalist in the CaliforniaBook Awards of The Commonwealth Club of California for her 2008chapbook, NARCISSUS; as a finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize inPoetry at Nimrod; as the first prize winner of the New Ohio ReviewPrize in Poetry; and as a Fellow at the Center for InternationalTheatre Development/US Artists Initiative in Poland.
Please join us in welcoming three distinguished poets on December 6,and begin your holiday season with poetry!

Poetrio: Kathryn Stripling Byer, Julia Nunnally Duncan, Celia WolochSunday, December 6, 2009, 3:00 p.m.Malaprop's Bookstore/Café55 Haywood StreetAsheville, NC 28801(828) 254-6734http://www.malaprops.com/