[Reading] Hobart Festival of Women Writers’ preview event
Fri, Aug 12, 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm

READING, RECEPTION / PARTY

Bushel is pleased to be hosting this advance event in anticipation of the Hobart Festival of Women Writers, which will take place September 9–11, 2022.

Eight writers associated with the Festival will read for five minutes each, followed by a reception.

Doors open at 4:00, readings begin at 4:30. This event is free and open to the public.

About the readers:

Breena Clarke is the author of three novels, River Cross My Heart, Stand the Storm, and her newest, Angels Make Their Hope Here. All three novels present vivid views of African-American communities. She served as a faculty member of the Stone Coast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. She is affiliated with A Room of Her Own: A Foundation for Women Artists. She is an avid swimmer. Since 2000, she has been a full-time writer. She is a co-organizer of the Hobart Festival of Women Writers.

Black lesbian feminist poet Cheryl Clarke is the author of six books of poetry, including Bushel Edition’s Targets (2019). Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Sinister Wisdom, Callaloo, The Georgia Review, and the iconic anthologies: This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color, and Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. She is a co-organizer of the Hobart Festival of Women Writers. She looks forward to the publication in 2023 of Archive of Style, a volume of new and selected poems (Northwestern University Press).

Esther Cohen is a novelist and poet living in New York City. She’s the author of several books, including Book Doctor. Her writing appears daily on her blog Overheard which features her intensely personal poetic observations of life in New York City and the world.

Ginnah Howard‘s stories have appeared in WaterStone Review, Permafrost, Portland Review, Descant 145, ELEVEN ELEVEN, Stone Canoe and others. Several have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her first novel, Night Navigation (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2009), was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. She says this of herself: “Though I didn’t discover writing until much later in my life, I was a lover of books . . . who could be happy for hours off in stories. My favorites were usually . . . characters wronged by people I loathed.”

Anna Moschovakis is the author of the novels Eleanor, or, The Rejection of the Progress of Love and Participation (forthcoming this year) and of three books of poetry, most recently They and We Will Get Into Trouble for This. Her translation of David Diop’s At Night All Blood Is Black (Frêre d’âme) was awarded the 2020 International Booker Prize. She is a member of the publishing collective Ugly Duckling Presse and a co-founder of Bushel Collective.

Master teaching artist Bertha Rogers has published more than 600 poems and translations in anthologies, including the recent Like Light: 25 Years of Poetry & Prose by Bright Hill Poets & Writers (2017), which she edited and includes many Festival writers. Her own poetry collections include Heart Turned Back (2010) Even the Hemlock: Poems, Illuminations, Reliquaries (2005), and the forthcoming Wild. Rogers is the Poet Laureate of Delaware County, New York and co-founder of Bright Hill Press & Literary Center of the Catskills with her late husband, Ernest M. Fishman.

Leslie T. Sharpe is the former Vice President of the New York City Audubon Society, an environmentalist, and a lifelong naturalist living on Lazy Hawk Mountain in the Greater Western Catskills. Her book, Editing Fact and Fiction: A Concise Guide to Book Editing, is regarded by practitioners as the best. She also published a memoir, Our Fractured, Perfect Selves, and most recently her award-winning The Quarry Fox and Other Critters of the Wild Catskills. She says this of her own writing practice: “The Catskills are an incredibly beautiful, unspoiled place that we have to fight tooth and nail to keep that way. . . . and I’m happy to be out here, writing and speaking to all these critical points.”

Lisa Wujnovich is a poet and farmer at Mountain Dell Farm in Hancock, New York. She earned her MFA in poetry from Drew University and her BA in drama from Antioch College. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks Fieldwork (Finishing Line Press, 2012) and This Place Called Us (Stockport Flats Press, 2008). With poet Nancy Dymond and sculptor Naomi Teppich, she collaborated on the chapbook Dirty Work Carved Earth Complete Breath (Stockton Flats, 2007).