Here, Now: A Reading of Poetry and Prose featuring Grace Bonner, Brian Dewan, Norman Douglas, Reyna Eisenstark, and Irene Mitchell, hosted by Karen Schoemer at Magpie Bookshop (392 Main Street, Catskill) on Friday, July 28 at 6:30 p.m.
HERE, NOW is an extremely occasional reading series that promotes writing craft and the importance of writers in our artistic and wider communities. HERE, NOW brings together established and emerging writers, the published and private, in an event that emphasizes writing as process rather than product.
Previous installments of HERE, NOW took place at the Spotty Dog in Hudson, NY in 2013 and 2014 and featured Andrea Kleine, Melissa Holbrook Pierson, Richard Boch, Nic Francis Flood, Dave King and others.
The July 28 lineup features Grace Bonner, who published her debut poetry collection Round Lake in 2016; multimedia artist Brian Dewan; poet and essayist Norman Douglas; essayist Reyna Eisenstark, and Irene Mitchell, the author of several collections of poetry.
Grace Bonner is a former Director of the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center, where she now teaches poetry. Round Lake, her first collection of poetry, was published by Four Way Books in October 2016. She has written a memoir, Ghost Tracks. She is a MacDowell fellow, a mentor in PEN’s Prison Writing Program, and Associate Publisher of CavanKerry Press. She lives in Hudson, New York.
Brian Dewan is an artist who works in many media, including art, music, audio-visual performances, decorative painting, furniture design, poetry and musical instrument design. Dewan writes, narrates and illustrates I-CAN-SEE Filmstrips, and collaborates with his cousin Leon Dewan in the electronic music duo Dewanatron. He has produced four albums of songs and concertized extensively as a solo artist, as well as having performed in various collaborations and as a sideman. His musical releases include: Tells The Story, The Operating Theater, Words Of Wisdom, and Ringing At The Speed Of Prayer. Dewan lives in Catskill, New York.
Norman Douglas lives on planet earth with little or no property that he can call his own. His 59th trip around the sun begins at the next 911. Suspicious that his meat and bones have hosted a few distinct spirits—also certain that he has channeled scores of other entities—his resolve to cooperate in the writing of a history that recounts the simple human construction of a universal utopia will one day appear far less selfish than it sounds.
Reyna Eisenstark is a freelance writer and editor living in Chatham, NY. She writes for plenty of educational publishing companies, but her essays have been published in Free Range Nonfiction, Full Grown People, and Kripalu.org. You can read more of her writing at reynaeisenstark.wordpress.com.
Irene Mitchell’s fourth poetry collection, Equal Parts Sun and Shade: An Almanac of Precarious Days was published in January 2017 by Kelsay Books. Her other collections include Minding the Spectrum’s Business (FutureCycle Press, 2015), A Study of Extremes in Six Suites (Cherry Grove Collections, 2012), and Sea Wind on the White Pillow (Axes Mundi Press, 2009). Formerly Poetry Editor of Hudson River Art Magazine, Mitchell, an ad hoc facilitator of poetry workshops, is known for her collaborations with visual artists and composers.
Karen Schoemer is a poet, journalist and performer living in Hudson. She won first prize in the 2015 Hudson Valley Writers Guild poetry contest; her poems have appeared in Up the River, Chronogram and forthcoming in the Pine Hills Review. A 2016 Virginia Scholar at Instarlodge in Germantown, she is vocalist for Sky Furrows and the Schoemer Formation, and contributed vocals to Street of Mirrors, a 2017 album by Venture Lift.
Magpie Bookshop specializes in awesome. And in nearly new, used books.
