Join us for a poetry reading at UConn Bookstore, Storrs Center, at 7:00 PM!
Pegi Deitz Shea’s The Weight of Kindling, her first book for adult readers, examines her roots of inspiration including her grandmother’s history, her own world travels, and the family she helped create. Regina Barreca, UCONN Board of Directors’ Distinguished Professor of English, says: “The Weight of Kindling demands to be read for strength and with courage. Each poem does its own hard work, whether its job is to lighten the heart or eviscerate the innards, without forsaking clarity or precision.” Shea, a two-time winner of the Connecticut Book Award, taught Children’s Literature and Creative Writing from 2007-2020 at UCONN. She is the author of more than 450 published articles, essays, and poems for adult readers and 16 books for young readers. The inaugural Poet Laureate of Vernon, Shea directs Poetry Rocks, a quarterly reading series she founded in 2017.
Karen Warinsky’s Sunrise Ruby is an unwavering window into a wise mother’s heart, a fierce interrogation of humanity’s toxic exploits and a poetic reprieve in the resonating movement of spirit and hope,” says Kai Coggin, poet and recipient of the 2021 Arkansas Governor’s Arts Award. Warinsky began publishing poetry in 2011 and was named as a finalist for her poem “Legacy” in the Montreal International Poetry Contest in 2013. Her work appears in several anthologies including Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms in Our Hands, the 2019 Mizmor Anthology, and lit mags including Blue Heron, Circumference and Consilience. Her books are Gold in Autumn (2020), and Sunrise Ruby, released this past June (both from Human Error Publishing), with work centering on mid-life, relationships, politics, and the search for spiritual connection through nature. She is retired from careers in media and teaching and now coordinates poetry readings under the name Poets at Large in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Sponsored by the UConn Bookstore
For more information, contact: Dan Healy- Creative Writing at daniel.healy@uconn.edu