POETSWEDNESDAY & More

Susan Lembo Balik

Susan Lembo Balik’s first book of poetry, Sinatra, the Jeeperettes & me, was published in July by Garden Oak Press.  She is Associate Director of Cultural Affairs at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ (home to the Poetry Center). She has a master degree in journalism from New York University, and has worked as a newspaper feature writer and columnist.  Her poems have appeared in The Paterson Literary Review, Lips, Paddlefish, Tiferet, and other literary journals.

 

Lori Roper

 Lori is a Professor of English Literature at Essex County College in Newark, NJ.   Her new play, The Sisters Grey, co-written with Gab Cody, recently received a complete page to stage development and production through the August Wilson Center for African American Culture’s “New Theatre Initiative.”  An excerpt from The Sisters Grey was also featured in Luna Stage’s first annual short play festival. Lori has served as a faculty member of Words and Music, sponsored by the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society.   During the 2010 Words and Music Festival, she launched the panel discussion about the relationship between race and literature by presenting a reading of her essay, Making War to Create Love, which placed as a finalist in the William Wisdom creative writing competition. Lori was awarded admission to the inaugural Yale Writers’ Conference and upon conclusion of the conference, was described as a “valued participant.”  She currently serves as an advisor to the conference chair and plays an integral role in the expansion of the conference’s programming.  Throughout her teaching career she has directed students, most notably, in a production of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor for which she and her students were awarded “Best Overall Performance” at the New Jersey Folger Shakespeare Festival.   Lori is a theater adjudicator and workshop instructor for the New Jersey, Somerset County Teen Arts Festival. As a ten-year teaching veteran, her experiences as an award-winning educator fuel her dedication to powerful storytelling.  In that vein, Lori Roper created Atticus Theater Workshop, a writing lab for aspiring playwrights.  Her work as a playwright, essayist and poet casts illumination upon complex subjects such as education, race, gender, religion and class.  She is a recipient of the prestigious ING Unsung Heroes Award for Innovation and Excellence in Education.  Lori is a graduate of The College of William and Mary where she received a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and a Bachelor of Science in Sociology.  She obtained her MA in English Education from New York University from which she graduated Summa Cum Laude.  She is the Writer-In-Residence at the Ethical Cultural Society of Essex County, NJ.  Lori is currently developing a new play set during the Newark riots of 1967. She is pleased to make her latest New Jersey performance with the Berkeley Light Opera’s production of Love, Loss and What I Wore.

 

Donna Baier Stein

DONNA BAIER STEIN’s chapbook Sometimes You Sense the Difference was published by Finishing Line Press. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly Review, Puerto del Sol, Beloit Poetry Journal, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. She was a founding poetry editor at Bellevue Literary Review and now publishes Tiferet Journal.  Her story collection Sympathetic People  was published by Serving House Books in 2013; it was a Finalist in the Iowa Fiction Awards; her unpublished novel Fortune received the PEN/New England Discovery Award. Other awards include a scholarship from Bread Loaf, fellowships from Johns Hopkins University and the New Jersey Council for the Arts, prizes from the Poetry Societies of Virginia and New Hampshire, an Honorable Mention from the Allen E. Ginsberg Poetry Prizes, a Summer Literary Seminars Scholarship, three Pushcart nominations and prizes from Kansas Quarterly, Florida Review, and elsewhere.

www.donnabaierstein.com

Tom Plante

Tom Plante was born in New York City in 1949 and raised in East Rockaway. He studied Geography at the University of California in Berkeley and worked for several newspapers, including The Berkeley Barb, The Irish Echo, and The Courier News. He published Berkeley Works magazine (1981-85) and has published Exit 13 Magazine, an annual poetry journal, since 1988. Tom works in Elizabeth for the Union County Bureau of Housing and lives with his wife and daughter in Fanwood, New Jersey.

Teresa Carson

Teresa Carson is the associate publisher at CavanKerry Press 
and the assistant director of the Frost Place Conference on 
Poetry and Teaching. She holds an MFA in Poetry and an MFA in 
Theatre, both from Sarah Lawrence College. She continues to live 
in the crooked house in Union City, NJ with her husband, John.

Teresa Carson

Teresa Carson is the associate publisher at CavanKerry Press 
and the assistant director of the Frost Place Conference on 
Poetry and Teaching. She holds an MFA in Poetry and an MFA in 
Theatre, both from Sarah Lawrence College. She continues to live 
in the crooked house in Union City, NJ with her husband, John.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

 

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is a recipient of the 2014 George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from AWP, the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, and the 2008 American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions). She is the founder /executive director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ, and editor of the Paterson Literary Review. She is also director of the Binghamton Center for Writers and the creative writing program, and professor of English at Binghamton University-SUNY.  She has published 20 books, including The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets (Cat in the Sun Books, 2014); Ancestors’ Song (Bordighera Press, 2013); The Silence in an Empty House (NYQ Books, 2013); Writing Poetry to Save Your Life: How to Find the Courage to Tell Your Stories (MiroLand, Guernica Editions, 2013); The Place I Call Home (NYQ Books, 2012); and What We Pass On: Collected Poems 1980-2009 (Guernica Editions, 2010). With her daughter Jennifer, she is co-editor of four anthologies. Visit her website at www.mariagillan.com.

Tara Betts

 

Tara Betts is the author of Arc and Hue. Tara is a Ph.D. candidate at Binghamton University and a Cave Canem fellow. Tara’s work has appeared most recently in RHINO, Court Green, Bellevue Literary Review, Saul Williams’ CHORUS: A Literary Mixtape (MTV Books, 2012), VILLANELLES (Everyman Publishing, 2012) and A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry (The University of Akron Press, 2012). She is co-editor of with Afaa M. Weaver of “Bop, Strut, and Dance”.

Emily Vogel

 

 

Emily Vogel’s poetry has been published in numerous journals, most recently in Tiferet, Lyrelyre, Maggy, Lips, The San Pedro River Review, The Paterson Literary Review, The Comstock Review, [Spaces}, and The Journal of New Jersey Poets. She has published five chapbooks: most recently Digressions on God (Main Street Rag, author’s choice series, 2012). The Philosopher’s Wife, a full-length collection, was published in 2011 (Chester River Press). She has work forthcoming in New York Quarterly, Omniverse, and 2 Bridges Review. Recently, she collaborated with her husband, Joe Weil on a book of poetry, West of Home, which has been published by Blast Press. She is the poetry editor of the online journal Ragazine, and teaches writing at SUNY Oneonta and Hartwick College.

 

Joe Weil

  Joe Weil is currently a professor at Binghamton University, and has taught graduate courses in both poetry and fiction. Prior to Binghamton, Weil founded the summer program for interactive arts at Arts High in Middlesex County, New Jersey. During Weil’s tenure as a master instructor in both poetry and fiction, his students won the Rutgers’ awards eight times (the highest award in poetry in NJ), and six of Weil’s students were admitted into the Governor’s school. Weil was also recognized by the NFFAA (a national high school awards foundation) twice as an outstanding teacher of the arts. Weil has appeared on PBS as well as reading his poetry on both NPR and Pacifica Public radio. He has been a featured poet with Stephen Dunn (winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize), Allen Ginsberg, as well as Louise Gluck, Thomas Lux, Gerald Stern, and Philip Levine. As a pianist and composer, Weil has had many works commissioned and has performed with such noteworthy musicians as Sweet Sue Terry, Perry Robinson, and Vic Ruggerio. His full length collections of poetry include What Remains (Nightshade Books), Painting the Christmas Trees (Texas Review Press), and The Plumber’s Apprentice (New York Quarterly books).