Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival as part of the Woodstock Arts Consortium is sponsoring the following poetry event as part of the Woodstock “Second Saturdays” Art Events. For a full listing of “Second Saturday” events, see: www.woodstockartsconsortium.org.
Poets Iris Litt and Jana Martin will be the featured readers when the Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival meets at the Woodstock Town Hall, 76 Tinker Street, on Saturday, June 9th, 2007 at 2pm. Note: WPS&F meetings are held the 2nd Saturday of every month except for October, when it is held on the 3rd Saturday.
The readings will be hosted by Woodstock area poet Phillip Levine. All meetings are free and open to the public. For information about the group, and its activities, visit http://www.woodstockpoetry.com/
Iris Litt’s new book of poetry is What I Wanted to Say from Shivastan publishing. She’ll be reading from it today, and you’ll find a stack of the book for sale on the table in the back. It’s also available at The Golden Notebook, the Book Bin in the Marshall’s Mall, St. Marks Books in NY, etc., or you can order it on Amazon.
She is also the author of a former book of poetry, Word Love, published by Cosmic Trend Publications—some copies will also be available at the reading.
She has had poems published in many literary magazines including Onthebus, Confrontation, Hiram Poetry Review, The New Renaissance, Asphodel, Poetry Now, Central Park, Icarus, The Rambunctious Review, Pearl,The Ledge, Earth’s Daughters, Poet Lore, Scholastic, Atlantic Monthly (special college edition) and many others. She has had short stories in Travellers Tales, Prima Materia, Out Of The Catskills, The Second ‘Word Thursdays Anthology, Kaleidoscope, Cronos, etc., and articles in Pacific Coast Journal, Writer’s Digest, The Writer and others. She has won many awards, including the Atlantic Monthly Award for College Writing, first prize in The Virtula Press short story contest, French Bread poetry award from Pacific Coast Journal and others. She teaches writing workshops in Woodstock, NY, and has taught creative writing at Bard College, SUNY/Ulster, Writers in the Mountains, Educational Alliance, New York Public Library, Marble Collegiate Church and many other venues in New York City and the Hudson Valley. She lives in Woodstock, NY and in New York City’s Greenwich Village.
Jana Martin has been hailed as one of fiction’s truly original voices. Her writing has been described as a “powerful punch, combining the brilliance of TC Boyle and the icy clarity of Margaret Atwood, as “prose so luminous it glows like poetry, stories that make you cry.” Her forthcoming collection of short stories and prose pieces, Russian Lover, is due out in fall with Yeti Books/Verse Chorus Press. A collection of short prose, Blue Elegy, is in the works as well. Her writing has been published in journals and magazines from Five Points to Glimmer Train to Cosmopolitan. Her lauded fiction column, “Is Mink Hollow”, appears regularly on www.sporkpress.com, the online zine of Tucson-based Spork, an award-winning literary journal. She won Glimmer Train’s Best New Writer Award for her story “Hope,” received an NEA for a collaborative book on industrial design, and was Best Woman Writer of her class at the University of Arizona’s MFA program (1994). She is part of the writing collective “The Fictionaires”, which also includes colleagues Vivien Goldman (The Book of Exodus) and Evelyn McDonnell (Mamarama).
A fervent believer in speaking life into the page, Jana has appeared at countless venues, such as NYC’s Nuroyrican Poet’s Café, the Knitting Factory, and the Jefferson Market Library. Her prose poems and lyrics have been set to music by composers such as Randall Woolf and Michael P. A musician as well, for much of the 1990s she was a member of NYC-based indie pop supertrio “The Rings” (Revelator Records), played bass in Tucson-based punk ensemble “Flavor Cage”, was part of the 7-member “Crotch City”, and in the late 80s fronted famed NYC-based outfit “The Campfire Gilrs”. She lives in Woodstock.
