Upcoming Word Thursdays
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.
details coming soon
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:
- Charles Coe
- Jeffrey Feingold
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 fill 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.
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.