November 4 2018 - "Four Poets: Susan Singer Kerschner, Sandra Fees, Heather Thomas, Lisa DeVuono

Susan Singer Kerschner is a poet who lives in Reading, Pennsylvania and is the author of two books, The Shoulders of Country Roads (2012) and the upcoming Soul and Bone (2019). Some of her poems have appeared in  The Burden of Light: Poems on Illness and Loss, Shirazad, Arts Connection, BardFest Anthology, Circle Magazine, River Poets (Lily Press), and The River of Bucks County, PA. ​She was featured in the Poets & Painters exhibit at the Berks Arts Council Reading Pagoda Gallery. She has won in ​ two Summit Arts Fellowship​s​ in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.

Sandra Fees is the author of two chapbooks, The Temporary Vase of Hands (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and Moving, Being Moved (Five Oaks Press, 2017). Named 2016-2018 Berks County Poet Laureate, she resides in Reading, Pennsylvania. She has also served as minister of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Berks County.  Her recent work appears in Michigan State University’s poets laureate anthology on social justice.

Heather H. Thomas’s new book Vortex Street (FutureCycle Press, 2018) spirals from the poet’s riverside home across the globe, trailing patterns “behind a poet who stands bluntly amid the fluid of life.” The book includes poems translated into Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, and Italian and has been praised as a "masterful collection . . . in a compassionate and intimate voice.” Heather lives in Reading, PA, along the Schuylkill River, where her vortex street begins. She teaches at Cedar Crest College. Vortex Street is her seventh book. Visit her at www.heatherhthomas.com.

Lisa DeVuono (www.lisadevuono.com) is a poet and workshop facilitator living in the Philadelphia area. She was the co-founder of IT AIN’T PRETTY, a women’s writing collective that performed in a variety of places including bookstores, cafes, radio and prison. For ten years she worked as coach and mentor-trainer in the Artist Conference Network, a nationwide coaching community for artists doing creative work. She has facilitated creativity and poetry workshops at conferences, festivals, retreats, hospitals and business settings. Additional work has been with teenagers in recovery, cancer patients, and ALS patients and their families. She has also written a peer-based poetry curriculum “Poetry as a Tool for Recovery” which is now being used through a partner program with the Institute for Poetic Medicine at both Austin and Cleveland Clubhouses. Her poetry has been published in several literary reviews, and her chapbook is entitled “Poems from the Playground of Risk.” She also performs poems based on the poetry of Rumi, with musician and songwriter Michael London.