PUTNEY — Green Writers Press and Next Stage announce the Book Launch Party and Reading and Earth Day Celebration, an annual affair that GWP hosts with Next Stage Arts in a partnership to bring out the best of Vermont literature published by an emerging independent publishing house located in Brattleboro.
The Reading and Earth Day Book Launch will be held Friday, April 20, from 7 to 8:30 p.m.
The audience will have a chance to hear local poets and fiction authors read and celebrate Earth Day with a display of GWP's new children's picture book, "Salamander Sky," along with the press's environmental literary magazine, The Hopper.
Dede Cummings, publisher and founder of Green Writers Press and a published poet will host the event and read a few poems from her second poetry collection, "The Meeting Place," due out spring 2019 from Salmon Poetry
Putney's T Stores will read from her highly anticipated short story collection, "Frost Heaves." T Stores is also the author of three novels — "Getting to the Point," "SideTracks," and "Backslide." Her work has appeared in multiple publications. Honors include grants from the Vermont Arts Council and Barbara Deming Fund, residencies at Bread Loaf, Squaw Valley, and Shiro Oni, and a Pushcart Prize nomination. A graduate of the M.F.A. program at Emerson College, she is Associate Professor and Associate Dean at the University of Hartford.
Jackson Ellis, a longtime Vermont writer and editor from Burlington, will read an excerpt from his novel, "The Lords of St. Thomas," winner of the 2017 Howard Frank Mosher First Novel Prize. Ellis is a writer and editor from Vermont who has also spent time living in Nevada and Montana. His short fiction has appeared in The Vermont Literary Review, and other publications nationwide. He is the co-publisher of Verbicide magazine, which he founded in 1999. Lords of St. Thomas is his first book.
West Brattleboro poet/farmer Ross Thurber will read from his debut poetry collection, "Pioneer Species." Thurber's poems have appeared in Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Chrysalis Reader, and Vermont Life; they are anthologized in "So Little Time" (2014), published by Green Writers Press. He was awarded an Emily Mason Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center in 2012. Ross lives in Brattleboro, with his family, and owns and operates Lilac Ridge Farm, a third-generation organic dairy and diversified hill farm nestled in the foothills of the Green Mountains. "Pioneer Species" is his first full-length collection of poems.
Putney's Tim Weed will read from his award-winning short story collection "A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing" to be out in paperback in time for the event. Weed is an avid outdoorsman in addition to being a writer and has pursued a parallel career leading international education programs around the world for National Geographic and other organizations. Weed teaches at Grub Street in Boston and is the co-founder of the Cuba Writers' Program. He's the winner of a Writer's Digest Popular Fiction Award and his first novel, "Will Poole's Island," was named to Bank Street College of Education's Best Books of the Year.
James Crews' work has appeared in Ploughshares, Poet Lore, and The New Republic, among other journals, and he is a regular contributor to The (London) Times Literary Supplement. His first collection of poetry, "The Book of What Stays," won the 2010 Prairie Schooner Book Prize and received a Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award. His second collection, "Telling My Father," won the Cowles Prize and will be published by Southeast Missouri State University Press. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing-Poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a PhD. in Writing and Literature from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He lives on an organic farm with his partner in Shaftsbury and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Eastern Oregon University.
Special guests include former Vermont state poet laureate Sydney Lea, and Guilford poets, Megan Buchanan and Verandah Porche, who will read two poems each from GWP's Vermont poetry anthology entitled "Roads Taken: Contemporary Vermont Poetry."
Books will be available for purchase and signing. A $10 suggested donation, or sliding scale, or free will benefit Next Stage's education programs. Next Stage Arts is located at 15 Kimball Hill.
GWP, an independent, Vermont-based publishing company, is dedicated to spreading environmental awareness and social justice by publishing authors who promulgate messages of hope and renewal through place-based writing and environmental activism. GWP publishes such authors as Julia Alvarez, Chard deNiord, John Elder, Dr. M Jackson, Governor Madeleine Kunin, and Clarence Major. Read more at greenwriterspress.com.
