Poetry Atlanta Presents... M. Ayodele Heath & Alice Lovelace

Poetry Atlanta and Georgia Center for the Book present an evening with M. Ayodele Heath and Alice Lovelace on Tuesday, March 29, 7:15 at the Decatur Library, 215 Sycamore St. The event is free and open to the public.

Heath's debut collection, Otherness, has just been published by Brick Road Poetry Press. The Atlanta native earned an MFA at New England College and has had his work published in many journals including New York Quarterly and Mississippi Review. He held the McEver Chair in Writing at Georgia Tech, is a two-time Southeastern Region Slam champion and has presented at the National Black Arts Festival.

Lovelace is an award winning playwright, performance artist, internationally published and award winning poet producer, and a teacher of poetry. Since 1995, she has worked as coeditor of Art Changes at In Motion Magazine, a multicultural, online publication about democracy. She is the editor of the anthology CRUX: A conversation in words and images South Africa to South USA; and 100 Poems of Solidarity for Haiti.

Poetry Atlanta Presents... Colin Cheney & Ginger Murchison, Oct. 26

Poetry Atlanta and Georgia Center for the Book present a special evening of poetry featuring National Poetry Series winner Colin Cheney and local favorite Ginger Murchison. The free reading will be Tuesday, Oct. 26, at 7:15 p.m. in the lower level auditorium at the Decatur Library, 215 Sycamore St. Books will be available for purchase.

About Colin Cheney
Colin Cheney's first book, Here Be Monsters, was selected as a winner of the 2009 National Poetry Series Open Competition and published by the University of Georgia Press. A Pushcart Prize winner and 2006 recipient of the Ruth Lily Fellowship, his work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, American Poetry Review and more. Visit his website at www.colincheney.com.

About Ginger Murchison
A graduate of the M.F.A. Program in Poetry at Warren Wilson College, Ginger Murchison retired from teaching in 1997 to write. A two-time Pushcart nominee, she has published articles, book reviews, and interviews, and her poems have appeared most recently in Atlanta Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Terminus Magazine and numerous anthologies. She assisted Thomas Lux in the founding of POETRY at TECH, Georgia Tech's widely-acclaimed poetry program and is editor of The Cortland Review. Her first collection of poems, Out Here, was published by Jeanne Duval Editions in 2008.

25 Books All Georgians Should Read

The Georgia Center for the Book will reveal the ”25 Books All Georgians Should Read” at a special event on Thursday night (April 29) at 7 p.m. at the Decatur Public Library, 215 Sycamore St.

The fourth edition of the prestigious “25 Books” list includes 11 novels and short story collections, three volumes of poetry, and 11 nonfiction books, and boasts three Pulitzer Prize winners.

Eighteen of the authors are expected to be at the event to talk with attendees and sign books. Who’s on the list? We can’t tell you that, so you’ll just have to go and find out for yourself.

For more details, visit www.georgiacenterforthebook.org.

Poetry Atlanta Presents... January Gill O'Neil and James May, April 1

Poetry Atlanta and Georgia Center for the book team up to present another Poetry Atlanta Presents... with two fantastic poets performing and signing their latest work. The reading is Thursday, April 1, 7:15 p.m. at the Decatur Library, 215 Sycamore St. Admission is free and free parking is available in the deck behind the library. This event is made possible by a grant from Poets & Writers.

The featured poets:

January Gill O’Neil is the author of Underlife (CavanKerry Press). Her poems and articles have appeared in The MOM Egg, Crab Creek Review, Ouroboros Review, Drunken Boat, Crab Orchard Review, Callaloo,Babel Fruit, Edible Phoenix, Literary Mama,Field, Seattle Review, Stuff Magazine, Can We Have Our Ball Back, Read Write Poem, and Cave Canem anthologies II and IV. In 2009, January was awarded a Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant. She is featured in Poets & Writers magazine's January/February 2010 Inspiration issue as one of their 12 debut poets. A Cave Canem fellow, she is a senior writer/editor at Babson College, runs a popular blog called Poet Mom, and lives with her two children in Beverly, MA.

James May's work has recently appeared in The New Republic, The New Ohio Review, and 32 Poems. He is the editor-in-chief of New South and soon to be married to the poet Chelsea Rathburn.

Poetry Atlanta Presents... January 12

The next Poetry Atlanta Presents... in conjunction with Georgia Center for the Book and Poets & Writers is set for Tuesday, Jan. 12, at 7:15 p.m. at the Decatur Library, 215 Sycamore St., in downtown Decatur. We're excited to feature Tara Betts, Tania Rochelle and Travis Denton -- all reading from their brand new collections. This is FREE event and you won't want to miss this exciting night of poetry!

Tara Betts is the author of Arc and Hue, her debut collection on the Willow Books imprint of Aquarius Press. Tara is a lecturer in creative writing at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. She is also a Cave Canem fellow and a poetry editor at The November 3rd Club. Her poetry has appeared in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and performed her work at venues around the world.

Tania Rochelle is the author of the critically acclaimed collection Karaoke Funeral and the newly released The World’s Last Bone, both from Snake Nation Press. Rochelle is the poetry editor for Chattahoochee Review and her work has appeared in numerous journals around the country.

Travis Wayne Denton is the Associate Director of Poetry at Tech as well as a McEver Chair in Poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the founding editor of Terminus literary magazine and his poems have appeared in journals, magazines and publications around the country. The Burden of Speech (C&R Press) is his debut collection of poetry.

Poetry Atlanta Presents... set for Sept. 29

Poetry Atlanta Presents...

The next Poetry Atlanta Presents... reading in conjunction with Georgia Center for the Book will be held Tuesday, Sept. 29, at 7:15 p.m. The reading will be held at the Decatur Library, 215 Sycamore St. The reading is free, but we encourage you to purchase books, which will be available for sale.

Robin Kemp was born in New Orleans on Mardi Gras Day. A former print journalist and CNN newswriter, she holds degrees in English and creative writing from Georgia State and the University of New Orleans, and is finishing her Ph.D. at Georgia State, where she teaches writing. Her poetry has appeared in New Orleans Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Texas Review, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in Rites of Spring (Pecan Grove Press), Maple Leaf Rag III (Portals Press), and Letters from the World: Poems from the WOM-PO Listserv (Red Hen Press). This Pagan Heaven (Pecan Grove Press) is her debut collection.

Karen Head is the author of Sassing (2009, WordTech Editions), My Paris Year (All Nations Press, 2009) and Shadow Boxes (All Nations Press, 2003). Her poetry appears, or is forthcoming, in a number of national and international journals and anthologies, and has been invited to present her work in the U.S. and Europe. As a scholar of contemporary American poetry, she has begun to explore the connections between traditional text-based poetry and digitally-enhanced poetry, an exploration that involves her in a number of creative projects being conducted in the Wesley Center for New Media at Georgia Tech. Her first digital poetry project, Poetic Rub, was featured at the E-Poetry 2007 festival in Paris. Head is the Graduate Communication Coordinator and Special Advisor to the Writing and Communication Program at Georgia Tech.

Robert E. Wood teaches in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at Georgia Tech. His poetry has appeared recently in Quiddity, Quercus Review, Blue Fifth Review, Ouroboros and Umbrella. His chapbook, Gorizia Notebook, was published this year by Finishing Line Press.

For more information, visit www.georgiacenterforthebook.org.