In the spirit of “Words of Art,” the Pennsylvania Center for the Book and 3 Dots Downtown host six poets, who will share the origin concepts, investigations, and experiences that influenced their ekphrastic work.

Featured poets include:

Mary Rohrer-Dann is a poet, writer/playwrights, and painter. She is the author of La Scaffetta: Poems from the Foundling Drawer and Accidents of Being—both adapted to stage with Tempest Productions, Inc.—and Taking the Long Way Home, her collection in-progress on her mother’s life and long fall into Alzheimer’s.

Julia Spicher Kasdorf has published three books in the Pitt Poetry Series and a documentary project with Steven Rubin, Shale Play: Poems and Photographs from the Fracking Fields. She co-edited Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn and has published a biography and essay collection. She teaches creative writing at Penn State.

Lock Haven University Professor, Marjorie Maddox won America Magazine’s 2019 Foley Poetry Prize and has published: 11 poetry collections, incl. Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation and True, False, None of the Above; What She Was Saying (prose); children’s books; Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (co-editor); and Presence (assistant editor). See www.marjoriemaddox.com.

Nicole Miyashiro writes poetry and fiction, supports literary programs with the PA Center for the Book at Penn State, and is developing Words of Art, an online collection of ekphrastic poetry that shares the creation process of each poem to encourage self-led engagement with the visual arts.

Lee Peterson teaches at Penn State’s Altoona campus. She is the author of Rooms and Fields: Dramatic Monologues from the War in Bosnia (Kent State University Press). Her poetic, research, and community interests center on issues of human rights, displacement and migration, motherhood, and the female body and female desire.

Camille-Yvette Welsch is a Teaching Professor of English at Penn State and director of the High School Writing Program. She is the author of Full and The Four Ugliest Children in Christendom.

Words of Art: https://sites.psu.edu/wordsofart/
Pennsylvania Center for the Book: https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/
3 Dots Downtown: https://www.3dotsdowntown.com/

Penn State News: https://news.psu.edu/story/591133/2019/10/02/arts-and-entertainment/local-poets-featured-words-art-ekphastic-poetry