Healing the Divide Reading

Healing the Divide urges us, at this fraught political time, to move past the negativity that often fills the airwaves, and to embrace the ordinary moments of kindness and connection that fill our days. The anthology features work by Mark Doty, Ross Gay, Donald Hall, Marie Howe, Naomi Shihab Nye, and many others. These poets, from all walks of life, and from all over America, prove to us the possibility of creating in our lives what Dr. Martin Luther King called the "beloved community," a place where we see each other as the neighbors we already are.

The reading will include poet and editor James Crews; local poets Heather Swan, Jodi Vander Molen, Dylan Weir, and John McCracken will read their own work as well as selections from the anthology. A brief discussion will follow.

Please note this reading will be held at 2645 Milwaukee Street in Madison.

James Crews

James Crews' work has appeared in Ploughshares, Raleigh Review, Crab Orchard Review, and The New Republic, among other journals, and he is a regular contributor to The London Times Literary Supplement. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from University of Wisconsin-Madison and a PhD in Creative Writing from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he worked for former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry newspaper column. He is the author of two collections of poetry, The Book of What Stays (Prairie Schooner Prize, 2011) and Telling My Father (Cowles Prize, 2016), and the editor of Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection (Green Writers Press, 2019). He lives on part of an organic farm in Vermont with his husband and teaches creative writing at SUNY-Albany.

Heather Swan

Heather Swan's poems have appeared in such journals as Terrain, Minding Nature, Poet Lore, Phoebe, The Raleigh Review, The Hopper, Midwestern Gothic and Cold Mountain, and in many anthologies. She is the author of the poetry collections A Kinship with Ash (Terrapin), which was a finalist for the ASLE Book Award, and Dandelion (Terrapin). She is also a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, the Maud Weinshenk Award, the August Derleth Prize for Poetry, and an honorable mention for the Lorine Niedecker Award. Her nonfiction has appeared in Aeon, Belt, Catapult, Edge Effects, Emergence, ISLE, Minding Nature, and The Learned Pig. Her book Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field (Penn State Press) won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. A companion book, Where the Grass Still Sings: Stories of Insects and Interconnection, will be released in May 2024. She teaches environmental literature and... Read More

John McCracken

John McCracken is a poet and freelance writer from Madison, WI whose work has appeared in OCCULUM, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, Pressure Gauge Journal, and more. His work is also forthcoming on the side of a Madison Metro Transit Bus. He is a Staff Reviewer for Glass: A Journal of Poetry and provides culture and arts coverage for Tone Madison.

Jodi Vander Molen

Jodi Vander Molen grew up on a farm and has kept a journal for 33 years. She has been reading poetry around Madison since spring of 2001.

She has written for The Progressive magazine, a national voice for peace & social justice, where she worked for 17 years as a poetry editor, proofreader, and fundraiser. She was a poetry editor at Premiere Generation Ink (PGI), a former local publishing collective featuring poetry, art, photography, spoken word, and video.

Jodi is a member of Arts + Literature Laboratory and Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, and is a supporter of PEN, an association of writers working to advance literature, defend freedom of speech, and foster international literary fellowship.

She lives in Madison with her spouse Yogesh, her daughter Marigold, and their dog Atwood. You can read more of her poetry at www.jodiv.com/wp/wordpress, along with her haiku on Instagram @jvwords.

Dylan Weir

Dylan Weir is a poet currently working on his MFA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he teaches Creative Writing & Composition. His work can be found in Blue Earth Review, North American Review, Rhino, Tinderbox, Word Riot, and Yemassee. Dylan also teaches a Poetry Workshop at the Oakhill Correctional Institution. You can find him on twitter @dylanweird

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Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.

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