Everyone could use a little extra luck on Friday the 13th and we’re here to provide it, along with poems and stories about luck, both good and bad.
Watershed Reading: The Lucky Reading
Marilyn Annucci's poems have appeared in various journals and in collaboration with artists in local projects. She is the author of two chapbooks--Waiting Room, which won the 2012 Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and Luck (Parallel Press, 2000). She teaches in the Department of Languages and Literatures at the UW-Whitewater.
Ron Czerwien is the owner of Avol’s Books, LLC. His poems have appeared online and in a number of print journals. Ron serves on the board of The Council for Wisconsin Writers. His chapbook, “a little rain, a little more,” was published in 2018 by Bent Paddle Press.
Alexandria Delcourt received her MFA from the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing in 2014. She currently teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and is also a Co-Producer for the Madison Moth StorySLAM.
Kelly Harms is the author of The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay, available from Thomas Dunne Books, and The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane. She comes to Madison by way of the NYC publishing industry where she worked with award winners of every stripe. She lives near ALL with a rambunctious 5 year old and his puppy.
Richard Merelman, a native of Washington, D. C., is Professor (Emeritus) of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The Imaginary Baritone (Fireweed Press), his first book of poems appeared in 2012. In 2016, Finishing Line Press published his chapbook The Unnamed Continent. In 2017, Bent Paddle Press published his Sensorium, another chapbook. He has published individual poems in journals, such as Main Street Rag, Lake Effect, Stonbeboat, and Measure. He and his wife, Sally Hutchison, live in Madison, WI.
Andrea Potos is the author of several poetry collections, including most recently Her Joy Becomes (Fernwood Press), Marrow of Summer and Mothershell (both from Kelsay Books), A Stone to Carry Home and An Ink Like Early Twilight (both from Salmon Poetry in Ireland). She has received several Outstanding Achievement Awards in Poetry from the Wisconsin Library Association, the James Hearst Poetry Prize from the North American Review, and the William Stafford Prize in Poetry from Rosebud Magazine. Her poems can be found widely in print and online, including The Sun, Poetry East, Potomac Review, Cave Wall, Lyric, Bearings Online, Braided Way, and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope (Storey Publishing). Andrea was a longtime bookseller in independent bookstores in Madison.
James P. Roberts is a Madison poet and author. He serves as a regional Vice-President for the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and is active in the Arts & Literature Lab. What is not generally known is that he is a devoted fanatic of women's flat-track roller derby under the nom de plume of "Hal Robotsky: The Mad Dollgarian."
Jen leads storytelling workshops around Madison, co-produces the Moth StorySlam in Madison, teaches the occasional social policy class at the University of Wisconsin School of Social Work, and also works at the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. She recently published her first book, We Are Staying: Eighty Years in the Life of a Family, a Store, and a Neighborhood.
Sarah Sadie is co-editor of Cowfeather Press (www.cowfeatherpress.org) and one of the Poets Laureate of Madison, Wisconsin (2012-2015), where she lives with her family. Her poems and books have won the Council for Wisconsin Writers’ Niedecker and Posner Prizes, as well as a Pushcart. Do-It-Yourself Paper Airplanes, her most recent chapbook, was published in 2015 by Five Oaks Press. Sarah teaches online at the Loft, at the University of Iowa’s Summer Writing Festival, and occasionally elsewhere. These days you can find her blogging at Dowsing for Divinity on the Patheos Pagan channel, and occasionally posting articles, pictures and notes of interest on her website.
Shoshauna Shy is the author of four collections of poetry, the most recent titled What the Postcard Didn’t Say which won an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association. A twice-nominated Pushcart Prize nominee, Shoshauna works for the Wisconsin Humanities Council and helped create, coordinate and facilitate poetry programs for the annual Wisconsin Book Festival in downtown Madison for a decade. She is also the founder of Woodrow Hall Editions which sponsors the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf initiative, and the Woodrow Hall Jumpstart Award program.
Marilyn L. Taylor, Ph.D., is a former Poet Laureate of the state of Wisconsin and the city of Milwaukee. She taught poetry for the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for fifteen years, and is the author of eight poetry collections. Taylor’s poems and essays have also appeared in Poetry, Able Muse, Measure, Light, Raintown Review, and Rhino, among many other well-known journals and anthologies. She was awarded the Margaret Reid Poetry Prize for verse in forms, and has been a finalist for the X.J. Kennedy Parody Contest, the Howard Nemerov Sonnet award, and the 2017 Lascaux Review prize. She teaches regularly at Lawrence University’s Bjorklunden Seminar Center and elsewhere, and serves as a Contributing Editor for two poetry journals (Verse-Virtual and Third Wednesday). Her newest book, titled Outside the Frame: New and Selected Poems, was published by Kelsay Books in December, 2021... Read More
Angela (Angie) Trudell Vasquez is a 2nd and 3rd generation Mexican-American writer, editor, publisher, and the former Poet Laureate of Madison, Wisconsin (2020-2024). She holds an MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Finishing Line Press published her collections, In Light, Always Light, in May 2019, and My People Redux, in January 2022. In 2021, she attended the Macondo Writers Workshop started by Sandra Cisneros, and became a fellow, also known as a Macondista. In 2020 she published and co-edited a poetry anthology of Wisconsin poets, Through This Door, through her small press Art Night Books.
Portrait by Nicole Taylor
C.E. Perry's first book, Night Work, was published by Sarabande Press. She lives and practices medicine in Madison, Wisconsin.
PLAN YOUR VISIT
Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.
Our galleries are open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday noon to 5pm, and other programs take place throughout the week. Please check the events calendar and education section for details.