Join us on Saturday, September 17 at 7pm to hear from Alison Townsend, Catherine Young, and Daniel Smith with environmentally focused readings.
September Watershed Reading
Alison Townsend is the author of two books of poetry, The Blue Dress, selected for the Marie Alexander Prose Poem series at White Pine Press, and Persephone in America, which won the Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition. A collection of short prose, The Persistence of Rivers: An Essay on Moving Water, won the Jeanne Lieby Nonfiction Prize. Her poetry and essays appear widely, in journals such as The Kenyon Review, Parabola, The Southern Review, and Under the Sun, and have been recognized in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, and Best American Essays 2020. Her awards include a Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor’s Regional Literary Award (for contributions to the literature of the Upper Midwest), and the 2020 Rattle Poetry Prize. She’s had residencies at Hedgebrook, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Spring Creek... Read More
Catherine Young is a writer and performing artist whose work is infused with a keen sense of place. She is author of the ecopoetry collection Geosmin (scent of soil). Her writing has been published in the anthologies The Driftless Reader, Contours, Permanent Vacation II: Eighteen Writers on Work and Life in Our National Parks, Imagination and Place: Cartography and is forthcoming in Essential Voices. Her work appears internationally and nationally in literary journals, including About Place Journal, Ascent, Minding Nature, Cold Mountain, River Heron, Fourth River, Hippocampus, and Midwest Review among others. Her poetry has been published as broadsides for Fermentation Fest Farm Art / Dtour Passwords and Madison Metro Buslines.
A nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays, Catherine Young worked as a national park ranger, farmer, educator, and mother before completing her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. She holds degrees in... Read More
Daniel Smith’s poetry is grounded in the rural Midwest, particularly his family’s dairy farm where he lived and farmed for over 50 years. His poems, in language direct and accessible, speak of his commitment to an ancestral place and way of life, and to the emotional turbulence leaving such a life presents. With the practicality of a farmer and the syntax of a poet, Smith explores the changing landscape of rural America. His writing has appeared in literary journals nationwide. Since retiring from active farming in 2008, Smith has worked as a counselor for farm families in crisis. Today, he lives with his wife, Cheryl, on a small farm in Wisconsin’s Driftless Region. His collection, Ancestral, was published by Water’s Edge Press in 2021.
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.