Poetry Speaks featuring James Siegel with

Jim Ferris, Cathryn Essinger, Jonie McIntire and Myrna Stone

Join us Aug. 23 for Poetry Speaks featuring Ohioana Book Award Nominee James Siegel and hosted by Toledo Poet Laureate Jim Ferris with Cathryn Essinger, Jonie McIntire, and Myrna Stone

About the poets:

James J. Siegel is the author of the poetry collection How Ghosts Travel from Spuyten Duyvil Press, which was recently nominated as a finalist for the Ohioana Library Book Award. He lives in San Francisco where he hosts and curates a monthly show called Literary Speakeasy, which showcases Bay Area authors, poets, and songwriters. His work has appeared in several journals including The Cortland Review, Assaracus, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Good Men Project, and more.  

Jim Ferris is a poet and performance artist. He is the Toledo Lucas County Poet Laureate and author of Slouching Towards Guantanamo, Facts of Life, and The Hospital Poems, which won the Main Street Rag Book Award in 2004. Ferris, who holds a doctorate in performance studies, has performed at the Kennedy Center and across the United States, Canada and Great Britain; recent performance work includes the solo performance piece “Scars: A Love Story.” Past president of the Society for Disability Studies, he has received awards for performance and mathematics as well as poetry and creative nonfiction. His writing has appeared in dozens of publications, ranging from POETRY to Text & Performance Quarterly, from the Georgia Review to weekly newspapers. He holds the Ability Center Endowed Chair in Disability Studies at The University of Toledo. 

Cathryn Essinger is the author of three prize winning books of poetry:  A Desk in the Elephant House, My Dog Does Not Read Plato, and What I Know About Innocence.  Her work has appeared in a wide variety of journals, from Midwest Gothic to The Southern Review, The Antioch Review and Poetry.    Her poems has been read on the Writer's Almanac, nominated for Best of the Net, and will soon be reprinted in American Life in Poetry.  She is a retired Professor of English and a member of The Greenville Poets, a small but well published poetry group that has been together for over 25 years.

Jonie McIntire is the author of Not All Who Are Lost Wander, Finishing Line Press, 2016. Proud to be on the board of the Toledo Streets Newspaper and Sylvania Avenue Neighbors, she is also a founding member of Toledo Poetry Museum, ToledoPoet.com and Almeda Street Poetry Co-op. Her work has been published in the online journal Red Fez, in the anthology Sam & Andy’s Uptown Café  through Westron Press, in the print journal Khroma, in the Hessler Street Fair Anthology 2016 and has even been stamped into cement as part of the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo’s Sidewalk Poetry series. Her poem “Work Night” won 2nd place in the Toledo City Paper Poetry Contest in 2015 and her short poem “43612” won an honorable mention in 2017 Ode to the Zipcode contest. She lives in Toledo, Ohio with her artist/autoworker husband, two teenagers, and Betty Charlotte Beaglesworth and Ralph Alpha Sprout, her dogs.

Myrna Stone is the author of five full-length books of poetry, and the recipient of two Ohio Arts Council Fellowships, a Full Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center, and the 2001 Ohio Poet of the Year Award for her first book. A two-time finalist for the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry, her poems have appeared in over fifty journals and in nine anthologies. In 2015 she presented five lectures on Poetry as a member of the faculty at the Antioch Writers’ Workshop. Stone is a founding member of The Greenville Poets, a well-published group that meets monthly in Greenville, Ohio.