Second Sunday Readings

ep. 11 23 Sonia Greenfield, Megan Freshley, and Jared Harél

Sonia Greenfield (she/they) is the author of two recent collections of poetry, All Possible Histories (Riot in Your Throat, December 2022) and Helen of Troy is High AF (Harbor Editions, January 2023). She is the author of Letdown (White Pine Press, 2020), American Parable (Autumn House, 2018) and Boy with a Halo at the Farmer's Market (Codhill Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in the 2018 and 2010 Best American Poetry, Southern Review, Willow Springs, and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Minneapolis where she teaches at Normandale College, edits the Rise Up Review, and advocates for both neurodiversity and the decentering of cis/het white hegemony.  Megan Freshley is a queer poet living in Portland, OR, and author of the chapbook Hypnic Jerk (The Hunger Press 2021). She is a graduate of Antioch College, the Esalen Institute, and the MFA program at Portland State University. Her poems appear in Portland Review, Witch Craft Magazine, 1001, Old Pal, and others. Jared Harél is the author of Let Our Bodies Change the Subject, which won the 2022 Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry (University of Nebraska Press, 2023) and Go Because I Love You (Diode Editions, 2018.) He’s been awarded the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from American Poetry Review, as well as the William Matthews Poetry Prize from Asheville Poetry Review. Harél’s poems have recently appeared in such journals as 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Electric Literature, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, The Southern Review and The Sun. He teaches writing, plays drums, and lives in Westchester, NY with his family.

ep 1023. Linda Michel Cassidy, Koss, and Yael Valencia Aldana

Linda Michel-Cassidy writes criticism and reviews for venues such as The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Heavy Feather Review, and Tupelo Quarterly, where she is senior reviews editor. For many years, she was a contributing editor at Entropy Magazine. Her writing appears in Rattle, Catamaran, Tahoma Review, No Tokens, Sky Island, and others. She is a metalsmith, installation artist, and teacher. Her story collection When We Were Hardcore, is forthcoming in early 2024. She holds an MFA in visual arts from the California College of the Arts, another in fiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars, a third in poetry from Vermont College, as well as a J.D. from McGeorge, which she rarely uses. Her story collection When We Were Hardcore, is forthcoming in early 2024. She lives on a houseboat in Northern California. More at: lmichelcassidy.com Koss is a queer writer and artist with over 220 publications in journals such as San Pedro River Review, Beaver Mag, Sage Cigarettes, diode poetry, Bending Genres, Five Points, Chiron, Prelude, Anti-Heroin Chic, Petrichor, Cincinnati Review (miCro), Gone Lawn, Outlook Springs, Spillway, and many others. They had work in Best Small Fictions 2020, Bending Genre's Get Bent, and diode's Beyond the Frame. They've received numerous Pushcart and BoTN nominations in poetry, CNF, fiction, and art. Find out more about them at https://koss-works.com. Yael Valencia Aldana is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection, Black Mestiza from the University Press of Kentucky in 2025, and of the chapbook, Alien(s) from Bottlecap Press. She is the winner of the University Press of Kentucky New Poetry and Prose Series Prize 2023 in poetry. She is an Associate Editor at West Trade Review, a Guest Editor at Palette Poetry, Frontier Poetry, and Craft Literary. She lives in South Florida with her son and too many pets. You can find her online at YaelAldana.com. Her chapbook is available here https://yaelaldana.com/chapbook/

ep. 0823: Elizabeth Horner Turner, Joanna Fuhrman, and Francesca Bell

Elizabeth Horner Turner's work has been published in journals including Cutbank, Fairy Tale Review, Gulf Coast, Lost Balloon, and trampset. Her work has been selected for inclusion in Best Small Fictions and Wigleaf's Top 50 and Long List. Her chapbook, The Tales of Flaxie Char, was published through dancing girl press, and her current manuscript has been a finalist in several chapbook competitions. She lives in San Francisco. Joanna Fuhrman, an Assistant Teaching Professor in Creative Writing at Rutgers University, is the author of six books of poetry, the most recent of which is To a New Era. Her seventh book Data Mind, a collection of prose poems about the internet, is forthcoming from Curbstone/Northwestern University Press in 2024. She is a graduate of the University of Washington’s MFA program, which awarded her the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Joan Grayson Award. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Believer, Fence, Lit, and Quarterly West. Her poem “Stagflation” won a 2011 Pushcart Prize, and her poem “Lavender” was featured on The Slowdown podcast. She also creates poetry videos that are on her own Vimeo site and in literary journals including Posit, Triquarterly, Moving Poems Journal, Fence Digital, and Requited. Francesca Bell is the author of Bright Stain, a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Julie Suk Award, and What Small Sound, and the translator of Max Sessner’s Whoever Drowned Here, all from Red Hen Press. Her work appears in B O D Y, ELLE, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, North American Review, Mid-American Review, and Rattle. She is the former poetry editor of River Styx, the translation editor of Los Angeles Review, and the poet laureate of Marin County. She lives with her family in Novato, CA.

ep. 0723: Barb Reynolds, Janet Jennings, Ken Haas, Siân Killingsworth

Barb Reynolds is a Pushcart-nominated poet and author of two poetry chapbooks: Boxing Without Gloves and Drawing Words, both on Finishing Line Press; and the irreverent pandemic trilogy Isolation Journal, Volumes 1-3, on Bookbaby.com. Barb spent 22 years as an emergency response child abuse investigator, and she founded the Second Sunday Poetry Series in 2017. For the first three years of the series, poets read together at a pub — and in 2021 Barb handed the series off to Siân to continue on Zoom. Barb’s poetry has been published widely, and her work can be found on her website: barbreynolds.com [http://barbreynolds.com/] Janet Jennings’ poetry and flash fiction have appeared in 32 Poems, Baltimore Review, Nimrod, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, and Verse Daily, among others. She is the author of the chapbook Traces in Water. For twenty years she owned and ran Sunspire, a natural foods company. Janet lives in San Anselmo, California, with her husband and twin daughters. You can find more of her work here: janetjenningspoet.com/ [https://www.janetjenningspoet.com/] Siân Killingsworth’s poems have been published in The Rise Up Review, Roi Fainéant Press, Typehouse Literary Journal, Stonecoast Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), & other journals and anthologies including When There Are Nine, a Ruth Bader Ginsburg tribute anthology. She holds an MFA in poetry from The New School and is the host/curator of the Second Sunday Readings series. Find her online at secondsundayreadings.com [http://secondsundayreadings.com/] and on Facebook. Ken Haas lives in San Francisco where he works in healthcare and sponsors a poetry writing program at the UCSF Children's Hospital. Ken’s poems have appeared in over 50 journals and numerous anthologies. His first full poetry collection, Borrowed Light, praised by Joe Millar and Ellen Bass, won the 2020 Red Mountain Press Discovery Award, won a 2021 prize from the National Federation of Press Women, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Rubery Book Award. Ken has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has won the Betsy Colquitt Poetry Award, and has participated several times in the Community of Writers, on whose Board of Directors he currently serves. Please visit him online at kenhaas.org [http://kenhaas.org/].

ep. 0623b PRIDE & JOY Special!

ep. 06 523 PRIDE & JOY Special! ft/Nicole Tallman, griffin epstein, Ben Kline, Andrea Deeken, Lannie Stabile, & Dior Stephens Nicole Tallman is a poet, ghostwriter, and editor. Born and raised in Michigan, she lives in Miami, serves as the Poetry Ambassador for Miami-Dade County, Special Projects Editor for Redacted Books, Poetry and Reviews Editor for The Blue Mountain Review, and a reader for South Florida Poetry Journal and The Los Angeles Review. She is the author of Something Kindred and Poems for the People (the Southern Collective Experience (SCE) Press). Her next book, FERSACE, is forthcoming in November 2023 from ELJ Editions. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @natallman and at nicoletallman.com Andrea Deeken was born in rural Missouri. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Beyond Queer Words, The Blue Mountain Review, Ran Off With the Star Bassoon, Spoon River Poetry Review, Valley Voices and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook, Mother Kingdom, won the 2021 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition and was a finalist in the 2022 International Book Awards. A former book editor, she has worked in public libraries for fifteen years. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her wife and daughter. Dior J. Stephens is a proud Midwestern Pisces poet. He is the author of SCREAMS & lavender, 001, and CANNON!, all with Ghost City Press. Dior holds an MFA in Creative Writing from California College of the Arts and is currently a doctoral candidate in the Philosophy program at the University of Cincinnati. Dior hopes to be a dolphin in his next life. Dior’s preferred pronouns are he/they. He tweets at @dolphinneptune and Instagrams at @dolphinphotos. griffin epstein is a non-binary white settler/occupier from NYC (Lenape land) working in education and community-driven research in Toronto (Dish with One Spoon/Treaty 13). They have been featured in Glad Day's Emerging Writers Series, and their poetry has appeared in CV2, Grain, The Maynard, and Plenitude, among others. griffin is the author of the chapbook so we may be fed (Frog Hollow Press, 2021). They are also a musician and a member of the experimental videogame collective shrunken studios. Lannie Stabile (she/her), a queer Detroiter, is the winner of OutWrite’s 2020 Chapbook Competition in Poetry and a back-to-back semifinalist for the Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. Lannie was also named a 2020 Best of the Net finalist. Her debut poetry full-length, Good Morning to Everyone Except Men Who Name Their Dogs Zeus, was published in 2021 by Cephalopress. Her fiction debut, Something Dead in Everything, is now out with ELJ Editions. Find her on Twitter @LannieStabile or @NotALitMag, where she throws random writing contests and open mics. Ben Kline is a poet, storyteller and information professional from the farmlands of Appalachia’s west foothills currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio. He writes about the modern digital existence, his former lovers, the Eighties, assorted concepts in astrophysics, rural-urban dichotomies, and queerness as it was, is and might be. His chapbook of origin/astrophysics poems Sagittarius A* was released by Sibling Rivalry Press in October 2020. His chapbook Dead Uncles arrived in May 2021 from Driftwood Press. He is the host of the outdoor reading series POETRY AFIELD at The Littlefield in Cincinnati’s eclectic Northside neighborhood and Poetry Stacked at the University of Cincinnati. He is a cohost of MLVC – The Madonna Podcast. You can peruse Ben’s recent publications at benklineonline.wordpress.com.