Bucks County Community College, whose Wordsmiths
Reading Series brings the voices of award-winning poets and authors to
the region, invites the public to hear
J.C. Todd and
Ethel Rackin read their poetry at 1 p.m. Monday
February 20, in historic Tyler Hall on the Newtown campus.
Todd,
winner of the 2016 International Literary Award in poetry and a 2014-16
Pew Fellow, has held fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the
Arts, Ragdale and Ucross and a writing residency at Humboldt University
in Berlin. Her books include What Space This Body (Wind, 2008) and two chapbooks. Individual poems have been published in The Paris Review, The American Poetry Review, Ekphrasis, and are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal.
Todd teaches in the Creative Writing
Program at Bryn Mawr College. Last fall, Todd served as judge for the
Bucks County Poet Laureate Competition.
Rackin is the author of
The Forever Notes (2013) and
Go On (2016), both from Parlor Press.
Elizabeth Robinson awarded her collaborative lyric sequence “Soledad,” written with
Elizabeth Savage,
the 2016 Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred. Her poems, book
reviews, and collaborations have appeared in journals such as
Colorado Review, Hotel Amerika, Kenyon Review, Jacket2, Parabola, Verse Daily, and
Volt.
Rackin earned her MFA from Bard College and her Ph.D. in
English Literature from Princeton University. She is an associate
professor of Language and Literature at Bucks County Community College,
where she co-directs the Wordsmiths Reading Series and the Poet Laureate
Program with
Dr. Christopher Bursk.
The poetry reading takes place at 1 p.m. Monday,
February 20 in
room 142 of Tyler Hall, the French Norman mansion listed on the
National Register of Historic Places. Bucks County Community College is
located at 275 Swamp Rd., Newtown, Pa., 18940, where there is ample free
parking. The reading is free and open to the public.
The Wordsmiths Reading Series continues Friday,
March 24, with author
Lorene Carey and writer
Kaitlin Moore, followed by Montgomery County Poet Laureate
Amy Small-McKinney reading with Philadelphia Poet Laureate
Yolanda Wisher on Friday,
April 21. To learn more, visit
www.bucks.edu/news/culture/wordsmiths.
The free series is part of Bucks Live!, innovative programs to
inform, inspire, and enrich the life of grater Bucks County, sponsored
by the Bucks County Community College Cultural Affairs Committee. To
learn more, contact
Dr. Christopher Bursk at
Chris.Bursk@bucks.edu or 215-968-8156 or visit
www.bucks.edu/cultural.
