Welcome to the second annual Tucson festival of books.
I'm Lisa Bowden, the director of Kore Press.
And I'll be introducing our lovely readers.
We would like to thank the U of A Poetry Center, Chax Press,
Pog, Casa Libre, Sonora Review, and the Tucson Poetry Festival
for sponsoring this year's Poetry Stage.
This reading will last about an hour.
After the reading, we'll do a little Q&A--
we'll have about 10 minutes for Q&A. So our first reader--
and afterwards, books are available for Sheila and Gerry
to sign.
Sheila's are over here, and Gerry's are over here.
So I'm going to introduce both the readers at once,
not to interrupt the reading process.
Gerry Connolly was born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania
in 1947.
She has written three collections of poetry,
"Hand of the Wind" in 2009, "Province of Fire" in 1998,
and "Food for the Winter" in 1990.
She has won many prizes for her work, including two NEA
creative writing fellowships, the Carolyn Kaiser
prize from poetry Northwest, a Maryland Arts Council
fellowship, the Margaret Bridgman Fellowship
to Bread Loaf, and the National Acrostic Poetry Competition
prize.
Her work appears in many magazines and journals,
including Poetry Chelsea, The Gettysburg Review, The Georgia
Review, and Shenandoah.
WPFW's Writer's Almanac broadcast her poem the summer
I was 16.