A small group of poet-friends who have been sharing their work with each other once a week for many years, for support, critique/feedback, and pleasure, will each read a selection of their work. In alphabetical order: Cathy Lee, Wendy McVicker, Jean Mikhail, Deni Naffziger, Bonnie Proudfoot, Kristine Williams, and Renee Williams. 

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BIOS - 

• Cathy Lee has performed her poems for the Women of Appalachia Project, the Anna Jinja Show, and at the Parkersburg (WV) Arts Center. Her poems have appeared in New Verse News online and Logan Hocking School District’s literary anthology. She teaches English and Public Speaking at Logan High School, where she also facilitates Poetry Out Loud. She lives in Athens, Ohio, with her husband, and two daughters. She believes good chocolate is also poetry.

• Wendy McVicker’s latest collection of poetry is Alone in the Burning (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2024). She has been an Ohio Arts Council teaching artist for many years. Her poems have appeared in Gyroscope Review, Sheila-Na-Gig online, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and elsewhere. She was Athens, Ohio’s poet laureate from 2020 though 2022, where she and her husband raised two sons and now share their home with a Hemingway cat named Dora.

• Jean Voneman Mikhail is a former college instructor and librarian. She has published in Sheila-Na-Gig Online, The Northern Appalachian Review, One Art: a Journal of Poetry, Gyroscope Review, and other journals. She was recently nominated for “Best of the Net” by Eucalyptus Lit. Originally from Avon Lake, Ohio, she has lived in Athens for most of her life. 

• Deni Naffziger lives and works in Athens, Ohio. Her most recent collection, Strange Bodies,  published in 2023 by Shadelandhouse Modern Press, was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award.  A nominee for The Pushcart Prize and The Weatherford Award,  Naffziger's poems have appeared in numerous literary journals including New Ohio Review, Atticus Review, The MacGuffin, Still: The Journal, and The Main Street  Rag. She has served as Poet-In-Residence at the Passion Works Collaborative Studio (Athens, Ohio) for many years.

• Bonnie Proudfoot's fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies, including SWWIM, Rattle, and the New Ohio Review, and have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart. Her novel Goshen Road (OU Press) received the WCONA Book of the Year and was long listed for the PEN/ Hemingway. Household Gods, a poetry chapbook, can be found on Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. A full-length poetry collection, Incomer, is forthcoming on Shadelandhouse Modern Press. 

• Kristine Williams, of Athens, Ohio, is the author of Like an Empty House (Finishing Line Press, 2021) and the forthcoming Frost Warning (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions).

• Renee Williams has been published in The New Verse News, Impspired, Amethyst Review, Red Eft Review, Panoply, Highland Park Poetry, Ohio Bards, Pudding, The Rye Whiskey Review, The Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Of Rust and Glass, Verse-Virtual, The Muleskinner’s Journal, and ONE Art among others. Her photography has been featured by the Corolla Wild Horse Fund in calendars, books, billboards and promotional materials. New Feathers Anthology, Moss Piglet, and other journals used her work as well.