Gail Lansgstroth, Lisa Alexander, Kathy Engel, and Bonita Penn, from Get Fresh Books, will be joining us to read their work. More about each poet below. We hope to see you there!
About Gail Langstroth:
GAIL LANGSTROTH, raised under the Big Skies of Montana, Langstroth is a tri-lingual lecturer, international eurythmy performer, translator, poet, filmmaker, and visual artist. She is a graduate of Drew University’s M.F.A. in poetry and winner of the Patricia Dobler Poetry Prize, 2011. In October 2023, Before Now / After I, an exhibition of Langstroth’s visual art opened in Hamburg, Germany. Recently Langstroth returned from Buenos Aires where she performed, taught, lectured, and presented her bilingual firegarden / jardín-de-fuego (Get Fresh Books, 2020) in ARTETRA, a historical warehouse in La Florida Distrito de BA. Her recent publications include: Another Chicago Magazine, Black Sunflowers, Cyte Magazin, Fatal Flaw, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, rApport, Stillwater Review. She has been anthologized in QuillsEdge Press 50/50, Voices from the Attic, Is It Hot In Here Or Is It Just Me? and, will appear in City of Asylum’s The Gulf Tower Forecasts Rain, (2025). www.wordmoves.com
About Lisa Alexander:
LISA ALEXANDER is the author of the full-length collection throttlebody (Get Fresh Books, 2024). Her poems have appeared in various journals including Tupelo Quarterly, 2 Bridges Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and The Burnside Review, among others. She holds an MFA in poetry from Drew University and is a longtime member of the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops in Pittsburgh.
About Kathy Engel:
KATHY ENGEL is a poet, essayist, educator, organizer, and cultural worker. Her writing has been widely anthologized, appearing in numerous journals including the Academy of American Poets Poem a Day. Her poems and essays are forthcoming in several international anthologies. She’s spoken internationally on the relationship between art/culture and social change. Engel currently serves as Associate Arts Professor in NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts’ Department of Art and Public Policy, and Master’s Program in Arts Politics. Her latest poetry collection, Dear Inheritors was released by Get Fresh Books (June 2024). The Lost Brother Alphabet, also with Get Fresh Books, was published in 2020. For over 40 years Kathy has worked in many of the major social justice, peace, and human rights movements in the U.S. and internationally. She was founder and first director (1983) for the international women’s human rights group, MADRE, and co- founder, producer, consultant for numerous projects, campaigns, organizations in the U.S. and in partnership with women transnationally. www.kathyengelpoet.com
About Bonita Penn:
BONITA LEE PENN, is a poet and recipient of the Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh two-year grant to produce her poetic stage performance ‘Gospel in the Wake.’ She serves on the Sweetwater Center for Arts Board of Directors and is the Managing Editor of the Soul Pitt Quarterly Magazine.
Author of When the Trees Finally Testify, Every Morning a Foot is Looking for my Neck, and contributing poet in the award-winning anthology Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience. Her works have appeared in various literary journals such as Taint Literary Journal, Solstice, a Magazine of Diverse Voices, Joint.Magazine, The Skinny Journal, The Massachusetts Review, and Women Studies Quarterly. Penn is a Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Fellow, a Madwomen in the Attic poetry workshop facilitator, member of United Black Book Clubs of Pittsburgh, and sewist, B’s Bags, and member of the national Association for the Study of African American Life and History, (ASALH).
This past summer she read at the New York City Poetry Festival, on Governor’s Island.