Kathy Allen's poems are staged in unadorned city-suburban landscapes and feature unglamorous (or is it non-glamorous?) players who face and deal with isolation and loss. Her poems aim to cover beauty in the ordinary. She is a graduate of Kansas University, Lawrence, KS, a longtime resident of Kansas City, KS, and a member of writing groups The Collaborators and Diversifiers. She is employed in customer service/sales and home care where she stresses and scours.
Z. Hall began writing poetry in 2004 with her first published piece, "Lawrence Leaves," appearing in the Lawrence Journal World in 2006. She has a special interest in ekphrastic poetry that engages the senses. Branching into visual art, assemblage, and performance, much of Hall's art articulates social and political realism as critique. She approaches her research and scholarship on rhetoric and art with disciplined creativity to interrogate notions of culture, identity, race and intersections of these as expressed through art, popular culture, and society. She has blogged about related subjects since 2011. In her blog's inaugural year, she presented "Shaken Not Stirred: Conversations with Friends." It is the early online version of Salon~360, a monthly event she produces that brings together artists, business people, scholars, scientists, activists, and the broader community in dialogue on some of society's most pressing issues.
Following the featured readers, there will be an open mic on earth/nature themes.