Join us for an afternoon of poetry featuring local authors Mark Danowsky and Kelly McQuain, followed by an open mic session.

Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry. He is author of the short poetry collections As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press), JAWN (Moonstone Press), Violet Flame (tiny wren lit), and Meatless (Plan B Press). His poems and other writing have been curated by Alba, Sheila-Na-Gig, The New Verse News, The Broadkill Review, anti-heroin chic, Gargoyle, The Healing Muse, Otoliths, Bird Watcher’s Digest, The Summerset Review,  and elsewhere. His most recent chapbook, Meatless, offers poems on food, addressing a range of topics including vegetarianism, veganism, health, hunger and intolerance.

Kelly McQuain is the author of Velvet Rodeo, which won the Bloom chapbook poetry prize, and Antlers, chosen for the Editors Series at Seven Kitchens Press. His prose, poetry and illustrations have appeared in The Pinch, Best American Poetry Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Spunk, Assaracus, Kestrel, and Cleaver, as well as such anthologies as: Best New Poets 2020; Men on Men; Drawn to Marvel; LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry from Appalachia; Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Fiction and Poetry from West Virginia; The Queer South; Rabbit Ears: TV Poems; and Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology. His debut poetry collection, Scrape the Velvet from Your Antlers (2023), was chosen by Texas Review Press for the Southern Breakthrough Award; depicting the richness of a rural West Virginia upbringing as well as contemporary adulthood in the big city and abroad, it unflinchingly explores the dark eddies of coming of age and coming out. Unafraid to push the limits of contemporary sonics, McQuain’s work is rich in music and varied in form, with new riffs on the sonnet, the villanelle, and the persona poem. Accessible and lyrical, this debut collection deftly explores the homes we come from and the homes we create — all the while shining with wonder and resolve.