11:30 am The E-S Express Jazz Band - the Edgewood-Sheridan Middle School Jazz Band directed by Joel Pietrorazio (Gloria Washinton, Raymond Ho, Annakate Schatz, David Elkin-Ginetti, Jordan Doyens, Corey Staggers, Anthony Greene, Jacari McClure, Paul Roeller, Alec Shub, and Terrell Jones)
1:00 pm The New Haven Review - New Haven Review editors Mark Oppenheimer (former editor of the New Haven Advocate, now a writer for the New York Times Magazine and Slate.com) and Brian Francis Slattery (author of the novel Spaceman Blues) will be reading from their work and the work of others. Slattery and local musician Jonny Rodgers will be backing up the readings on guitar, too.
2:00 - 4:00 pm Poetry Reading by Southern Connecticut State University’s Community of Poets: Shula Chernoff, Val Mckee, Will Hochman, Lois Lake Church, Deborah Mcduff, Lee Keylock, Margot Schilpp, Sarah Rizzuto, Tony Fusco, Dana Sonnenschein, Jeff Mock, Pat Mottola, Lisa Siedlarz. Moderated by Vivian Shipley, Editor of Connecticut Review.
Biographies of Poets (in reading order follow):
Shula Chernoff, Associate Professor of Education Emeritus at SCSU is eighty five and she discovered a new career as a poet after she retired from teaching in 1998. Her poems have been published in several literary magazines and she won first prize in an international poetry contest on Judaic themes run by the Magnes Museum in Berkeley , CA . Her first book, The Stones Bear Witness was published by the Hanover Press in September, 2006.
Valerie B. McKee was the SCSU Graduate Student Poet from 2005-2007, and the 2006 recipient of the Leo Connellan Poetry Prize. Her poetry has appeared in Connecticut Review, Louisiana Literature, Caduceus and The Connecticut River Review. Valerie's poetry has recently been awarded a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prize and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Will Hochman: After living in New York 's East Village and publishing his first chapbook, Just Around the Corner, Coffee Poems with Kim Shkapich, Will Hochman's early poems were collected in his first book, Stranger Within in 1994. His second full collection of poems, Freer was published in 2006, and he is presently working on Undoing as his final collection of poems. Hochman has published poems frequently in small magazines and journals since 1973. Hochman is the Poetry Editor for War, Literature & the Arts and the co-editor of Letters to J.D. Salinger which was published in 2002. He is currently working on A Critical Companion to J.D. Salinger with Bruce Mueller. Dr. Hochman is a writing professor at SCSU and he is recognized locally and nationally for his work with computers in writing classrooms.
Lois Lake Church, former home educator, is an adjunct instructor in the English Department and in the ConnCAS program at Southern Connecticut State University, where she will receive her MA this May. The first short story she wrote, “Shards,” won second place in the SCSU 2006 Fiction Contest. Her poetry has appeared in Folio, Broken Bridge Review, Connecticut River Review, and Varney's Nurse-Midwifery, and her prose will be included in the upcoming anthology Mourning Sickness. Her essay "Wordperson'' won the 2008 Connecticut State University Essay Award and will appear in Connecticut Review in 2008. Her short-short "Journey" was a winner of the February 2008 Writing the World contest. Each July, she is an invited reader in the Touchstone Poetry Festival. She is founder and Editor of Noctua Review, the Graduate Magazine of Literature and Art at Southern.
Deborah McDuff uses art as an educational tool to bring about social change. She works in a variety of media: newspaper illustrations, interior design, murals, paintings , sculpture, masks and poetry. She has exhibited in many national galleries and in New Haven galleries such as Artspace, City Gallery, Go Red, Healthnet and American Heart Associaton, Mills Pond Gallery and Southern Connecticut State University. She is also a member of the City Gallery Coop.
Lee Keylock is a British transplant now living in Connecticut . He teaches English at Newtown High School in Sandy Hook . His work has appeared in Connecticut River Review, Caduceus, Raving Dove, English Journal, Broken Bridge and The Litchfield Review.
Margot Schilpp’s books are The World's Last Night (2001) and Laws of My Nature (2005), both from Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her poetry has appeared in Chelsea, The Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, Denver Quarterly, Hotel Amerika and is forthcoming in American Poetry Review. She lives in New Haven with her husband, Jeff Mock and their two daughters, Paula and Leah.
Sarah Rizzuto has her BA from SCSU and is pursuing a MA in English. She has just been awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship from SCSU and is the Poetry Editor of Noctua Review. In the future, she looks forward to earning a PhD and continuing to advocate through the arts for people with disabilities.
Tony Fusco, has a MA in Creative Writing from Southern Connecticut State University. He is the past editor of The Connecticut River Review and Long River Run. the journals of the Connecticut Poetry Society and Editor of Caduceus, the poetry anthology of the Yale Medical Group Art Place Poets. He has been editor of the Southern News and the poetry anthologies High Tide and Sounds and Waves of West Haven. His work has appeared in Connecticut Review, Louisiana Literature, the Red Rock Review, The South Carolina Review, The Paterson Review, Freshwater Review, Chiron, Lips and Orphic Lute. He is the author of Jessie's Garden published in 2004 by Negative Capability Press and three Chapbooks. His poetry has won prizes in several contests including: The Sunken Garden Poetry Prize and The Alan Ginsberg Poetry Contest. He is a member of the Connecticut Poetry Society and the New England Poetry Club. Tony produced West Shore Poets a television poetry series at CTV. His poem "Harvest" was nominated for a Pushcart Award
Dana Sonnenschein’s publications include Corvus (Wind, 2003), No Angels But These (Main Street Rag, 2005), and Natural Forms (Word Press, 2006). Recently, her work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, The MacGuffin, Northwest Review, Seneca Review, and Quarter After Eight. She Is a Professor of literature and writing at Southern Connecticut State University.
Jeff Mock is the author of Evening Travelers, a chapbook of poems published by Volans Press, and You Can Write Poetry, a guide-book published by Writer's Digest Books. His poems appear in The Atlantic Monthly, Connecticut Review, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, New England Review, Quarterly West, The Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. He is a Professor of creative writing at SCSU.
Pat Mottola is an artist and poet with an MS from SCSU in Art Education. She enjoys working with the elderly as an art therapist. Utilizing art and poetry, she helps seniors observe, understand and enjoy their world. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in numerous poetry journals including War, Literature & the Arts, Connecticut River Review, Caduceus, Long River Run, Connecticut Review, Noctua Review, and Folio. She is the winner of the 2008 Leo Connellan Poetry Prize.
Lisa Siedlarz received her MA from SCSU in 2007 and is in the MFA program at WCSU. Her publications include, Calyx, Connecticut Review, Louisiana Literature, Main Street Rag, Rattle, Alimentum, Poetry Southeast, South Carolina Review, New Millennium Writings, War, Literature & the Arts, CADUCEUS, Bent Pin Quarterly, Minnetonka Review, and The Anthology of New England Writers 2008. Winner of the 2006 John Holmes Poetry Award, and the 2007 Leo Connellan prize, she has recently been nominated by WCSU for the 2008 Best New Poets anthology. She is the 2008 Editor for Connecticut River Review, the poetry journal for the CT Poetry Society, and Managing Editor for Connecticut Review.
