Upcoming Word Thursdays
Word Thursday Poetry – October 23rd at 7PM:
Featured Readers:
- Gabriela B. dos Santos
- Demi Chowen
Broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.
Gabriela Bittencourt is a Brazilian-American poet from South Florida. She holds an English degree from FAU. In 2023, she was the award recipient of the New York State Summer Writers Institute Poetry Scholarship. Her poems have appeared in Shō Journal, The Acentos Review, and The Bread and Poetry Anthology. She is the founder of Gabriela the Overthinker, a Substack publication about big thoughts, feelings, and honest conversations. Subscribe to Gabriela the Overthinker, or follow her on Instagram @bittecnourt_gabriela.
Demi Chowen is a poet from Henrico, Virginia. She studied religion and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and Wadham College at the University of Oxford, earning her BA in liberal arts in 2024. She has been published in EcoTheo Review’s Autumn 2023 print issue and is a 2023 scholarship recipient of New York State Summer Writers Program at Skidmore College.
Suggested donation is $5, and free to students.
Donations to Bright Hill are gratefully accepted via Paypal by visiting this link, https://paypal.me/brighthillpress, by check made out to Bright Hill Press Inc, and mailed to 94 Church Street, Treadwell, NY 13846, or by credit card by personal appointment by emailing info@brighthillpress.org.
Previous Word Thursdays
Word Thursday Poetry – February 27th at 7PM:
Featured Readers:
- Antoinette Brim-Bell
- Annis Cassells
Broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.
(Antoinette Brim), Connecticut’s 8th State Poet Laureate, is the author of three full-length poetry collections: These Women You Gave Me, Icarus in Love, and Psalm of the Sunflower. Her poetry has appeared in various journals, magazines, textbooks, and anthologies, as well as in Poetry Magazine and Poem-a-Day. Brim-Bell has also published critical works, “The Myopic Eye in Alice Walker’s ‘Flowers’” (Critical Insights: Alice Walker, Salem Press) and “Juxtaposed Dichotomies: the idealized white suburban pastoral, the surrealist tableau of Black Poverty & the Women in between” (The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience and Change Agent, Haymarket Books). Brim-Bell has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for both poetry and essay. She is a Cave Canem Foundation Fellow and an alum of Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA).
Brim-Bell hosted a series of Black History Month television programs for the OneWorld Progressive Institute. She is also a former guest host of Patrick Oliver’s Literary Nation Talk Radio (KABF 88.3, Little Rock), for which she interviewed a variety of entertainers, literary figures, political pundits, and community developers.
Additionally, In Her Image, a ballet based on Brim-Bell’s These Women You Gave Me, choreographed by Sarah Grace and commissioned by the New England Ballet Theatre, was performed in Connecticut and on the renowned Alvin Ailey stage in New York City.
Annis Cassells is a writer, coach, and teacher who lives half-time in California and Oregon. She claimed her poet’s voice in 2015, and her work has been published in print and online journals.
In 2019 Annis published her first poetry collection, You Can’t Have It All: Poems. She is a contributor in the social justice anthology, Enough, Say Their Names: Messages from Ground Zero to the WORLD, which features photography and artwork from the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
Just in time for Annis’s 80th birthday in 2023, her latest collection, What the Country Wrought, was launched. The collection features poems of rural roots and legacies, the mainstays of home, family, and personal identity. She includes poems that address societal issues and truths America has wrought and poems that revel in the ideals and spirit of building a country.
Passionate about the legacy of family stories, Annis facilitates memoir writing classes and workshops for senior adults and continues to write her own memoir tales and “poemoirs”.
For over 25 years, Annis traversed the country on her candy apple red motorcycle. She is grateful for the personal growth, new experiences and vistas, life-long friends, and poetry subject matter.
Word Thursday Poetry – March 13th at 7PM:
Featured Readers:
- Robert Gwaltney
- Jeffrey Dale Lofton
Broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.
Robert Gwaltney, a graduate of Florida State University, was named 2023 Georgia Author of the Year for First Novel. He resides in Atlanta Georgia where he is an active member of the Atlanta literary community serving as a board member for Broadleaf Writers Association.
By day, he works as Vice President of Easterseals North Georgia, Inc., a non-profit supporting children with disabilities and other special needs. Robert’s work has appeared in such publications as Southbound Magazine, Southern Literary Review, The Blue Mountain Review, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. He was awarded the 2022 Pat Conroy Writers Residency, and his debut novel, The Cicada Tree, won the Somerset Award for Literary Fiction. His forthcoming novel, Sing Down The Moon, will be published by Mercer University Press in the Spring of 2026.
Jeffrey Dale Lofton hails from Warm Springs, Georgia, best known as the home of Roosevelt’s Little White House. He calls the nation’s capital home now and has for over three decades. He is a senior advisor at the Library of Congress where he is surrounded by books and people who love books—in short, paradise. He is a contributing editor for WELL READ Magazine and co-host of the Inside Voices podcast alongside author Robert Gwaltney.
Red Clay Suzie is his first novel, a fictionalized memoir written through his personal lens as an outsider—gay and living with a disability in a conservative family and community in the Deep South.
He was named Georgia Author of the Year for first novel and was the Pat Conroy Literary Center Spring 2024 Writer-in-Residence. Red Clay Suzie was Longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize, twice named an Indie Next Pick by the American Booksellers Association, and was awarded the Seven Hills Literary Prize for Fiction.
You can learn more about Jeffrey at JeffreyDLofton.com.
Word Thursday Poetry – March 27th at 7PM:
Featured Readers:
- Sandra Fees
- Annette Sisson
Broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.
Sandra Fees‘s first full-length poetry collection is Wonderwork (BlazeVOX Books). She is also the author of two chapbooks, including The Temporary Vase of Hands (Finishing Line Press, 2017). A former Berks County Poet Laureate (Reading, PA), her poems have been published in Crab Creek Review, SWWIM, Nimrod, River Heron Review, Witness and other journals, and received Pushcart Prize and Best of Net nominations . You can learn more about her at sandrafees.com.
Annette Sisson’s poems appear in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Rust & Moth, Citron Review, Cumberland River Review, and many other journals. Her second book, Winter Sharp with Apples, was published by Terrapin Books 10/1/24. Her first book, Small Fish in High Branches, was published by Glass Lyre Press (5/22). She has won or placed in many contests, including being named a finalist in the 2024 Charles Simic Poetry Prize, and ten of her poems have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
Suggested donation is $5, and free to students.
Donations to Bright Hill are gratefully accepted via Paypal by visiting this link, https://paypal.me/brighthillpress, by check made out to Bright Hill Press Inc, and mailed to 94 Church Street, Treadwell, NY 13846, or by credit card by personal appointment by emailing info@brighthillpress.org.
Word Thursday Poetry – April 10th at 7PM:
Featured Readers:
- Melissa Eleftherion
- Georgina Marie Guardado
Broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.
Melissa Eleftherion (she/they) is a writer, a librarian, and a visual artist. Born & raised in Brooklyn, she holds degrees from Brooklyn College, Mills College, and San Jose State University. They are the author of the full-length poetry collections, field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), & gutter rainbows (Querencia Press, 2024), as well as twelve chapbooks including abject sutures (above/ground press, 2024). Her work has been widely published & featured in venues like Quarter after Eight, Sixth Finch, Entropy, & Barren Magazine. Melissa now lives in Northern California where she manages the Ukiah Branch Library, curates the LOBA Reading Series, and serves as Poet Laureate Emeritus of the City of Ukiah. Recent work is available at apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.
Georgina Marie Guardado is the Poet Laureate of Lake County, CA for 2020-2024, and a Poets Laureate Fellow with The Academy of American Poets. She is the Literacy Program Coordinator for the Lake County Library and President of the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference. She has received support from the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, Hugo House, and SF Writing Salon. Her work has appeared in The Bloom, Noyo Review, Poets.org, Humble Pie Magazine, Gulf Coast Journal, Yellow Medicine Review, The Muleskinner Journal, Colossus: Freedom, and Two Hawks Quarterly. She is a 2nd year graduate student and scholar of the Kwame Dawes Mapmakers and Master of Fine Arts Merit endowments at the Pacific University MFA in Writing program. She is currently working on her full-length poetry manuscript, The Length of Trauma Covets.
Suggested donation is $5, and free to students.
Donations to Bright Hill are gratefully accepted via Paypal by visiting this link, https://paypal.me/brighthillpress, by check made out to Bright Hill Press Inc, and mailed to 94 Church Street, Treadwell, NY 13846, or by credit card by personal appointment by emailing info@brighthillpress.org.
Word Thursday Poetry – April 24th at 7PM:
Featured Readers:
- Clifford Brooks
- Skye Jackson
Broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.
Clifford Brooks is founder of The Southern Collective Experience, a cooperative of writers, musicians, and visual artists, which publishes the journal of culture The Blue Mountain Review. He hosts the National Public Radio show Dante’s Old South and co-hosts the podcast This Business of Music & Poetry. He is an instructor with the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, Teachable and Noetic. His teaching includes courses on creative writing, editing, and thriving as an autistic person.
His poetry publications include the books The Draw of Broken Eyes & Whirling Metaphysics, Athena Departs: Gospel of a Man Apart, and the chapbook Exiles of Eden. Old Gods, his third full-length book of poetry, is available through Mercer University Press.
Skye Jackson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. She graduated from the UNO Creative Writing Workshop in May 2021. Her work has appeared in RHINO, The Southern Review, Palette Poetry, RATTLE and elsewhere. Her poetry has been a finalist for the Iowa Review Poetry Award, the RATTLE Poetry Prize, the RHINO Founders’ Prize, and in 2021 she received the AWP Intro Journals Award. Jackson’s work was also selected by Billy Collins for inclusion in the Library of Congress Poetry 180 Project. She has received support for her work from The Frost Place, The Key West Literary Seminar & Cave Canem. This summer, she will serve as Writer-in-Residence of the Jack Kerouac House. She currently teaches at Xavier University. Her debut poetry collection, Libre, has recently been published by Regalo Press with distribution from Simon & Schuster.
Suggested donation is $5, and free to students.
Donations to Bright Hill are gratefully accepted via Paypal by visiting this link, https://paypal.me/brighthillpress, by check made out to Bright Hill Press Inc, and mailed to 94 Church Street, Treadwell, NY 13846, or by credit card by personal appointment by emailing info@brighthillpress.org.
Word Thursday Poetry – May 8th at 7PM:
Featured Readers:
- Charles Coe
- Jeffrey Feingold
Broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.
Charles Coe is the author of five books of poetry: All Sins Forgiven: Poems for my Parents, Picnic on the Moon, Memento Mori, Purgatory Road, and Charles Coe: New and Selected Works, all published by Leapfrog Press. He is also author of Spin Cycles, a novella about a homeless man on the streets of Boston, published by Gemma Media.
Charles has won numerous awards and fellowships from organizations such as the Massachusetts Cultural Council, The St. Botolph Club, The Boston Authors Club, the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and the Associates of the Boston Library. In 2018 he served as Artist-in-Residence for the City of Boston. In addition, he is adjunct professor of English at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, where he teaches in the Master of Fine Arts writing program.
Jeffrey M. Feingold is an award-winning writer of fiction in Boston. His debut short story collection The Black Hole Pastrami won a National Indie Excellence Award, a Pinnacle Achievement Award, was finalist for the Eyelands Book Awards, finalist for the International Book Awards, and was selected as a Readers’ Favorite Five Stars book. His second story collection There Is No Death in Finding Nemo won a PenCraft award, an Indie Reader Discovery award, and was a finalist for the Wishing Shelf Book Awards, the Eyelands Book Awards, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the National Indie Excellence Awards, the International Book Awards, and the Santa Fe Writers Project Awards.
Jeffrey’s stories have been nominated for the Pen America Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, the Pushcart Prize, and The Best American Short Stories; shortlisted for the Exeter Story Prize in England; and winner of London’s Superlative literary journal annual story prize.
Jeffrey’s work appears in magazines, such as the international Intrepid Times, and in The Bark (a national magazine with readership over 250,000). Jeffrey’s work has also been published in anthologies, and by numerous literary reviews and journals, including The Pinch, Maudlin House, Meat for Tea, Wilderness House Literary Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and elsewhere. Jeffrey’s stories about family, about the tension between heritage versus assimilation, and about love, loss, regret, and forgiveness, reveal a sense of absurdity tempered by a love of people and their quirky ways.
JeffreyMFeingold.com
Suggested donation is $5, and free to students.
Donations to Bright Hill are gratefully accepted via Paypal by visiting this link, https://paypal.me/brighthillpress, by check made out to Bright Hill Press Inc, and mailed to 94 Church Street, Treadwell, NY 13846, or by credit card by personal appointment by emailing info@brighthillpress.org.
Word Thursday Poetry – May 22nd at 7PM:
Featured Readers:
- Bertha Rogers
- and friends
Broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.
BERTHA ROGERS, poet, translator, and visual artist, has published poems and translations in literary journals and anthologies, among them the just released What Want Brings: New & Selected Poems (Salmon, Ireland) Like Light: 25 Years of Poetry & Prose by Bright Hill Poets & Writers, Seeing Things: Woodland Arts Editions; and Even the Daybreak: 35 Years of Salmon Poetry. Her poetry collections include Wild, Again (Salmon); Heart Turned Back (Salmon); Sleeper, You Wake (Mellen); and several chapbook sand interdisciplinary collections. Her illustrated translation of Beowulf was published in 2000, and her translation with illuminations of the Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Poems from the Exeter Book, Uncommon Creatures, was published in 2019. She has been awarded fellowships by the MacDowell Colony, Hawthornden International Writers Retreat, and others. Her writings on inclusion and cultural diversity in arts education have been published in Open the Door, Education Week, and the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Blog, In 1992, she founded, with her husband, Ernest M. Fishman, Bright Hill Press & Literary Center of the Catskills. She led the development of the New York State Literary Web Site and Map in partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts; and she has served as Poet Laureate of Delaware County, NY, and on the selection panel for the Empire State Writers Hall of Fame.
Suggested donation is $5, and free to students.
Donations to Bright Hill are gratefully accepted via Paypal by visiting this link, https://paypal.me/brighthillpress, by check made out to Bright Hill Press Inc, and mailed to 94 Church Street, Treadwell, NY 13846, or by credit card by personal appointment by emailing info@brighthillpress.org.
Word Thursday Poetry – June 12th at 7PM:
Featured Readers:
- Larry Jabbonsky
- Fred Schneider
Broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.
A poet trapped inside the body of a business writer, Larry Jabbonsky spent 40 years in corporate America before breaking free (with a push) in the fall of 2020 to pursue his lifetime passion for the twist of a phrase full time.
He has shared his poetry to growing audiences at National Public Radio, twice been featured on WNYC Radio’s Poetry Month, been invited to read at the University of Bridgeport, and is a frequent contributor to Connecticut’s “Ezra Lovecroft Presents… the Unexpected Poet”.
He will be reading tonight from his long-awaited inaugural chapbook titled Between Calls (and other stops) also scheduled for release this October.
Larry lives in South Norwalk, Connecticut, with his eminently more famous wife Sharon McIntosh and a Black Labrador named Ink. He (Larry, not the dog) has three adult children and four dependably smile-inducing grandchildren.
A former humor essayist on public radio, Fred J Schneider is a novelist, poet and playwright now living a snow-less life in South Carolina. He is the author of four novels including Cats in a Chowder, Pig in Flight, Last Stop Ronkonkoma, and his latest, the just completed Sauerkraut Song slated for publication in 2026.
His novels have received critical success with Kirkus declaring Last Stop Ronkonkoma, Fred’s semi-autobiographical look at a family put asunder by competing religious prophecies, “Comically inventive, tenderly poignant, funny and moving”.
Forward had this to say about Pig in Flight, Fred’s novel based on the true story of the first pig to be nominated for president, Pigasus in 1968 , “It’s hard not to fall in love with this far-out work. Schneider wins his audience!”
Kirkus agreed, calling the novel “A wildly funny sendup with a keen sensitivity to the political surreal!”
His collection of short work, “Somewhere, Over the Transom”, from which he will be reading tonight, is slated to hit the press in October.
Fred is the father of two daughters, and a husband of forty five years.
Suggested donation is $5, and free to students.
Donations to Bright Hill are gratefully accepted via Paypal by visiting this link, https://paypal.me/brighthillpress, by check made out to Bright Hill Press Inc, and mailed to 94 Church Street, Treadwell, NY 13846, or by credit card by personal appointment by emailing info@brighthillpress.org.
Word Thursday Poetry – June 12th at 7PM:
Featured Readers:
- Chocolate Waters
- Katherine Piedl
Broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.
Chocolate Waters first appeared in the Bright Hill poetry series at Bertha and Ernie’s Treadwell farmhouse in 1996.
She is a continuously evolving radical feminist poet and celebrant of the new power of the feminine. One of the first openly lesbian poets to produce her work in the U.S., Waters is also a pioneering performance poet, presenting her work as a one-woman show in the mid ’70s.
Chocolate’s first three books of poetry are considered classics of the Second Wave, and her latest book, Melting in Your Mouth: The Early Work of Chocolate Waters, has just been published by Sinister Wisdom, the oldest surviving lesbian lit magazine in the country. Two earlier collections: the woman who wouldn’t shake hands (Poets Wear Prada, 2011, NJ) and Muddying the Holy Waters (Eggplant Press, 2021, NYC) are also available.
Chocolate currently conducts poetry workshops at the Woodstock Sr. Center in Times Square and also tutors individual clients. Check out what she’s up to at www.chocolatewaters.com.
Katherine is a native of Union County, NJ, and works at Shop Rite to pay the rent while writing. She is currently working on a translation of Fáldalmos Péntek (Painful Friday), a remembrance of 32 (mostly young) men who were executed by Russian soldiers in Olaszfalu, Hungary, at the end of WWII. She is also working on her first chapbook collection of poems.
Katherine received her Associate’s degree from Union College, where she received the George P. Zirnite Memorial Scholarship award. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Rutgers Newark as a non-traditional student during the Covid years, with a degree in English.
She is a cheese lover, working to dispel G.K. Chesterton’s observation that “[p]oets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” Katherine is also a cyclist, ESL tutor, and grandmother to four wild and crazy boys (who also enjoy cheese and poetry).
Suggested donation is $5, and free to students.
Donations to Bright Hill are gratefully accepted via Paypal by visiting this link, https://paypal.me/brighthillpress, by check made out to Bright Hill Press Inc, and mailed to 94 Church Street, Treadwell, NY 13846, or by credit card by personal appointment by emailing info@brighthillpress.org.
Word Thursday Poetry – July 24th at 7PM:
Featured Readers:
- Virginia Schwartz
- Leslie Sharpe
Broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.
Virginia Frances Schwartz spent her career as a Writing Instructor and Staff Developer in NYC schools. She trained in The Writing Process at Columbia University with Lucy Caulkins for 20 years. In addition, she was a writing instructor in UCLA’s online Creative Writing Program where she fused yoga and meditation to help writers build a sustainable writing practice.
She was the recipient of a Gould Grant from Columbia along with 3 Works in Progress grants from The Society of Children Book Writers & Illustrators. Author of 8 novels, of which Among the Fallen, a “Dickensian #MeToo novel”, is the most recent. It tells the story of a wrongly incarcerated girl in Victorian England who is offered a new life in Urania, a home Charles Dickens managed for homeless girls. Most of her novels are historical fiction: Crossing to Freedom, Initiation, Messenger, If I Just Had Two Wings and Send One Angel Down. Middle grade novels include Nutz! and 4 Kids in 5E & 1 Crazy Year, “a motivational book for reluctant readers and writers”. Recurring themes in her novels include: social justice, immigration, slavery and transformation.
Recipient of Parents Choice Gold, Geoffrey Bilson Historical Award, Notable Book Kuriyama International, Shortlisted for Sunburst for Speculative Fiction & YA Canadian Book of the Year, Violet Downey, NYC Books for the Teenage, Best Book for YA ALA, numerous US state awards, Silver Birch, Red Cedar, MYRCA, Rise YA Feminist Book, White Raven selection, and other nominations.
Triple Conjunction, her current work-in-progress for adult readers, blends speculative, literary and historical fiction. It explores the forbidden friendship between a Christian and a Jew in France’s medieval era, a relationship that alters history five centuries later with the finding of the Colmar Treasure. This story unfolds on a dual timeline with a non human character narrating sections: yersinia pestis, the bacterial agent of the Black Death, a causative force in the persecution of Jews in this era.
Virginia divides her time between Walton and Queens and holds dual citizenship in the US and Canada.
Leslie T. Sharpe is a writer, editor and educator. She began her editing career at Farrar Straus & Giroux and also worked at various book producers, as senior and managing editor, giving her an overview of the publishing business, from the most literary authors to the most commercial projects. Leslie currently works as an editorial consultant for publishers and literary agents.
As a teacher, at her graduate alma mater, Columbia University, Leslie taught nonfiction writing—personal essay and narrative nonfiction—in both the undergraduate and graduate writing divisions. Her popular Columbia seminar, “Can Truth Be Told: Issues in Nonfiction Storytelling,” hosted authors such as James Frey, discussing his controversial work, A Million Little Pieces. She has also taught editing and publishing at NYU and in CCNY’s Publishing Certificate Program, whose goal is to promote diversity within the publishing industry. She currently teaches nature writing with Writers in the Mountains in the Catskills.
As a writer, Leslie was a columnist for New York Newsday, and her essays on a variety of subjects—from birds to baseball to all things New York—have appeared in a variety of publications, including the New York Times, Newsday, The Village Voice, The Villager, City Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, International Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Psychology Today, Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine, Appalachia Journal, and Bluebird: The Journal of the North American Bluebird Society.
Her book, Editing fact and Fiction: A Concise Guide to Book Editing, published by Cambridge University Press, is, for theory, still regarded as the best. The Quarry Fox and Other Critters of the Wild Catskills, the “first literary treatment of Catskills wildlife” since John Burroughs, was published by The Overlook Press in March 2017. In 2020, the Quarry Fox audiobook, with Leslie reading, was produced by Silver Hollow Audio. As an environmentalist, she was Vice President of the NYC Audubon Society, as well as editor of The Urban Audubon.
Suggested donation is $5, and free to students.
Donations to Bright Hill are gratefully accepted via Paypal by visiting this link, https://paypal.me/brighthillpress, by check made out to Bright Hill Press Inc, and mailed to 94 Church Street, Treadwell, NY 13846, or by credit card by personal appointment by emailing info@brighthillpress.org.
Word Thursday Poetry – August 14th at 7PM:
Featured Readers:
- Mark Dunau
- Andrew Phillips
Broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.
Mark Dunau is a farmer and artist in Hancock, NY. He has had ten full length plays produced over the last fifty years, seven in New York City. His play Glass was nationally toured for three years with grants from the National Science Foundation. Since 2014, he has worked collaboratively with Tannis Kowalchuk and Farm Arts Collective in Damascus, Pennsylvania. Farm Arts Collective’s primary performance project is DREAM ON THE FARM, a decade long performance cycle focused on climate change themes. One new show is created annually; this summer’s production, Paradise Lost, will be the sixth play of this cycle.
Beginning in 2016, Mark started writing and publicly reading short memoirs (about 800 words) with Yarnslingers in Sullivan County. For this Bright Hill Word Thursday show, he will be reading three of his Yarnslingers pieces on the subjects of fear, fathers, and odd jobs. He is excited to have his true tales accompanied by the brilliant story telling of legendary radio documentarian, Andrew Phillips.
Andrew Leslie Philips:
Journalist , writer, radio, ABC (Aust.), PacificaRadio, permaculture, traveler, mytho-poetic dreamer, wannabe warrior.
https://andrewsnotebooks.blogspot.com
Suggested donation is $5, and free to students.
Donations to Bright Hill are gratefully accepted via Paypal by visiting this link, https://paypal.me/brighthillpress, by check made out to Bright Hill Press Inc, and mailed to 94 Church Street, Treadwell, NY 13846, or by credit card by personal appointment by emailing info@brighthillpress.org.
Word Thursday Poetry – August 28th at 7PM:
Featured Readers:
- Joshua Lewis
- Teresa Winchester
Broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.
Joshua Lewis received his PhD in English at Binghamton University (SUNY). His poems have been published in publications, such as the Paterson Literary Review and the Edison Literary Review. He is an adjunct instructor at SUNY Broome Community College and SUNY Oneonta. Currently, he is working on various poetry manuscripts including Graffiti on the Grave, a manuscript dedicated to the memory of fellow poet, Cody Todd.
Teresa Winchester began writing poetry, essays, and short stories after covering Word Thursdays in 1992 for the Delaware County Times. Her work has appeared in Bright Hill Press and other local publications. She has frequently written freelance articles for local newspapers. She holds a Ph.D. in French literature.
Suggested donation is $5, and free to students.
Donations to Bright Hill are gratefully accepted via Paypal by visiting this link, https://paypal.me/brighthillpress, by check made out to Bright Hill Press Inc, and mailed to 94 Church Street, Treadwell, NY 13846, or by credit card by personal appointment by emailing info@brighthillpress.org.
Word Thursday Poetry – September 11th at 7PM:
Featured Readers:
- Mike Jurkovic
- Linda McCauley Freeman
Broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.
Since his retirement from the evil empire, the 2025 Ulster County Poet Laureate wonders the hours writing whatever the muses surrender and volunteering within the community. Poetry, prose, and music reviews are published globally with little reportable income. Full-length collections include Buckshot Reckoning, mooncussers, AmericanMental, (Luchador Press 2023, 2022, 2020); haiku collections Monet’s Bamboo (CAPS Press, 2025) and Blue Fan Whirring (Nirala Press, 2018).
Anthologies include: Poets For Harris Anthology, (Viewless Wings Press, 2024); Calling All Poets 25th & 20th Anniversary Anthologies, (CAPS Press); Reflecting Pool: Poets & the Creative Process (Codhill Press, 2018); and Like Light: 25 Years of Poetry & Prose (Bright Hill Press, 2018).
President, Calling All Poets celebrating twenty-six years as the Hudson Valley’s most open and nurturing poetry forum. Through Zoom, poets and patrons from around the world participate in a vital dialogue for a better world. A 2016 Pushcart Award nominee, he co-chairs the Music Fan Series at the Rosendale Theatre. He and Emily are members of the Tower Society of SUNY New Paltz.
Online CD reviews at All About Jazz and lightwoodpress.com. The Rock n Roll Curmudgeon appeared in Rhythm and News Magazine, 1996-2003. Mike hosts NuJazzXcursions, Monday 9-10 am, WVKR-91.3FM Vassar College.
He loves Emily most of all.
Linda McCauley Freeman is the author of two full-length poetry books The Marriage Manual (Backroom Window Press, 2024) and The Family Plot (BWP, 2022) and has been widely published in international journals, including in a Chinese translation. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Grand Prize winner of StoriArts’ Maya Angelou poetry contest, lines from one of her poems are on display at the Civil Rights Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. She has an MFA from Bennington College and is the former poet-in-residence of the Putnam Arts Council. She lives in the Hudson Valley, NY, where she is a swing dance teacher and a yoga instructor. Follow her at www.LindaMcCauleyFreeman.com, Facebook@LindaMcCauleyFreeman
Suggested donation is $5, and free to students.
Donations to Bright Hill are gratefully accepted via Paypal by visiting this link, https://paypal.me/brighthillpress, by check made out to Bright Hill Press Inc, and mailed to 94 Church Street, Treadwell, NY 13846, or by credit card by personal appointment by emailing info@brighthillpress.org.
Word Thursday Poetry – September 25th at 7PM:
Featured Readers:
- Robert Bensen
- George Hovis
Broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.
Robert Bensen‘s seventh collection of poems is What Lightning Spoke: New & Selected Poems. His poetry and literary essays have appeared in AGNI, Antioch Review, Callaloo, The Caribbean Writer, Jamaica Journal, La presa, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Wales, and many others. He has edited anthologies of Native American and Caribbean literature. His writing has won fellowships and awards from the NEA, NEH, Harvard University, the Robert Penn Warren Award, and others. He was Professor of English and Director of Writing at Hartwick College, 1978-2017.
George Hovis is the author of a novel The Skin Artist and the monograph, Vale of Humility: Plain Folk in Contemporary North Carolina Fiction. His short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his stories and essays have won prizes from Carolina Quarterly and Appalachian Heritage and have also appeared in Southern Cultures, Mississippi Quarterly, New Madrid, North Carolina Literary Review, and in other journals and anthologies. He currently lives in Cooperstown, New York, and is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of English at SUNY Oneonta. (georgehovis.net)
Suggested donation is $5, and free to students.
Donations to Bright Hill are gratefully accepted via Paypal by visiting this link, https://paypal.me/brighthillpress, by check made out to Bright Hill Press Inc, and mailed to 94 Church Street, Treadwell, NY 13846, or by credit card by personal appointment by emailing info@brighthillpress.org.
Word Thursday Poetry – October 9th at 7PM:
Featured Readers:
- Laurel Benjamin
- Susan Coronel
Broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.
Laurel Benjamin is a San Francisco Bay Area poet, where she is an active member of the Women Poets Salon. She curates an online writing group called Ekphrastic Writers and is a reader for Common Ground Review. She holds honors such as: Honorable Mention for the Ruben Rose Memorial Poetry Competition, finalist for the Cider Press Review Book Award, and prize winner from Ekphrastic Review. Publication credits include: Pirene’s Fountain, Lily Poetry Review, Taos Journal of Poetry, Mom Egg Review, Nixes Mate. Her full length book, Flowers on a Train, is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions.
Susan Michele Coronel lives in New York City. Her first full-length collection, ”In the Needle, A Woman,” won the 2024 Donna Wolf Palacio Poetry Prize, and is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. A two-time Pushcart nominee, Susan Michele Coronel has had poems published in numerous journals including Mom Egg Review, Redivider, One Art, Anti-Heroin Chic, TAB Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, and Spillway 29. In 2023, she won the Massachusetts Poetry Festival’s First Poem Award, and in 2022 was one of eight poets to have her work featured in the Aeolian Harp Anthology. In 2023 and 2021 her poems were finalists for the Millennium Writing Awards and Sappho Prize. Versions of her book were finalists for Harbor Editions’ Laureate Prize (2021), the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award (2023), the C&R Press Poetry Award (2023), and the Louise Bogan Award (2024). In 2021 she received a Parent Poet Fellowship at the Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing. Susan holds a post-master’s certificate in early childhood special education from Touro College, an M.S. Ed in Applied Linguistics from Queens College, a B.A. in English with a concentration in creative writing from Indiana-University Bloomington, and a post-B.A. certificate in elementary education from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. Susan lives in Ridgewood, Queens, where she has owned and directed a daycare business for over fifteen years. In 2023 Susan was selected to study at the Uriel Weinreich Summer program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture, the oldest intensive Yiddish summer program in the world.
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