Watershed: Bullets into Bells Reading

Every year tens of thousands of Americans—including more than 400 people in Wisconsin alone—are killed by guns. Those losses warp and sometimes shatter even more lives. A new anthology from Beacon Press, Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence, gives voice to the lived reality behind the devastating statistics. This reading marks the release of an important new anthology of poets and citizens responding to gun violence in America. The reading features Khary Penebaker whose mother died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, along with local poets Cynthia Marie Hoffman, Laurel Bastian, Dana Maya, and Angie Trudell Vasquez.

Books will be available for purchase at the reading, with thanks to A Room of One's Own, Madison's independent bookstore since 1975.

Khary Penebaker

Khary Penebaker is a husband, father, and successful businessman who isn’t afraid to stand up for what’s right. His strong moral values have served him well and shaped him into the tenacious leader he is today. After completing his bachelor’s degree from UW-Milwaukee, he embarked upon a successful, nearly twenty-year-long career in the roofing industry. He currently serves as President of Roofed Right America. In 2016, Penebaker challenged incumbent Jim Sensenbrenner for his Congressional seat. His campaign highlighted issues of education, jobs and public safety. When he was 20 months old, Khary’s mother shot and killed herself when she was only 27. Khary’s mother’s gun suicide is what sparked his advocacy with gun violence prevention. Additionally, he has been actively involved with education, from his own children’s educational achievements to worker skill training, as well as being a strong champion for women’s reproductive rights. Khary is a proud board member of Planned... Read More

Laurel Bastian

Laurel Bastian is a former Halls Emerging Artist Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing; while there she founded and taught with the Writers in Prisons Project. Her work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Drunken Boat, Cream City Review and other journals. She’s worked in civil rights enforcement and fair housing law, and currently teaches at the UW-Madison School of Business.

Cynthia Marie Hoffman

Cynthia Marie Hoffman is the author of four collections of poetry: Exploding Head, Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer, all from Persea Books. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Wisconsin Arts Board. Poems have appeared in Electric Literature, The Believer, Image, Smartish Pace, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Madison, WI. Her website is www.cynthiamariehoffman.com.

Dana Maya

Poet, essayist, editor, and teacher Dana Maya was born and lives in what Américo Paredes called “Greater Mexico”—a space transcending geopolitical, cultural, linguistic, & creative borders. She descends from a line of single Mexican mothers and was educated at Vassar College & the University of Texas at Austin, with an orientation in Chicanx, Queer, & Race Studies. She has taught literature & writing at UT Austin, Madison College, schools, & community organizations. She collaborates with artists on projects for social change, facilitates ekphrastic poetry happenings, & is a member of the Spontaneous Writing Booth Collective. Her poems and essays have garnered awards & appear in anthologies, journals, buses, stages, museums, memorial sites, & other public spaces.

Angie Trudell Vasquez

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

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