Please join us April 14 when our featured poets will be Henry Crawford, Lalita Noronha, and Marianne Szlyk, and we will also welcome Mayor Jud Ashman who will be telling us more about the upcoming Gaithersburg Book Festival, upstairs at the Gaithersburg Library, 2-4 pm. The reading is hosted by Lucinda Marshall and will be followed by an Open Mic.
Lalita Noronha was born in India and came to the US on a Fulbright travel grant and earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology from St. Louis University School of Medicine. She is a widely published research scientist, poet, writer, an editor of the Baltimore Review, a former CityLit Board Member and President of the Maryland Writers’ Association. Her work has been published in journals and anthologies in India, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, including The Baltimore Sun, The Christian Science Monitor, Catholic Digest, Crab Orchard Review, The Cortland Review, The Dance of the Peacock: An Anthology of English Poetry from India (Hidden Brook Press) and Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves: A Contemporary Anthology of Asian American Women’s Poetry. She is the author of Where Monsoons Cry (fiction, Black Words Press) which won the Maryland Literature Arts Award and two poetry books (Her Skin Phyllo–thin (Finishing Line Press) and Mustard Seed: Collage of Science, Art and Love Poems (Apprentice House, 2016) Others credits include a poetry award from Arlington Literary Journal, Dorothy Daniels National League of American Pen Women, two Maryland State Individual Artist Awards in Fiction and Poetry, and Pushcart Prize nominations in Poetry and Creative Nonfiction.
Marianne Szlyk is a professor of English and Reading at Montgomery College. She also edits The Song Is… a blog-zine for poetry and prose inspired by music (especially jazz). Her full-length book, On the Other Side of the Window, is now available from Pski’s Porch. Her second chapbook, I Dream of Empathy, is available on Amazon. Her poems have appeared in of/with, bird’s thumb, Loch Raven Review, Cactifur, among others and in the anthologies, Resurrection of a Sunflower, an anthology of work responding to Vincent Van Gogh’s art, and Epiphanies and Late Realizations of Love. She and her husband Ethan Goffman founded It Takes a Community!, a poetry group that meets at Montgomery College.
Henry Crawford is a poet whose work has appeared in several journals and online publications including Boulevard, Copper Nickel, Folio, Borderline Press, and The Offbeat. He was a 2016 Pushcart nominee. His first collection of poetry, American Software, was published in 2017 by CW Books. His poem Blackout was selected by the Southern Humanities Review as a finalist in the 2018 Jake Adam York Witness Poetry Contest.
DiVerse Gaithersburg Poetry Reading and Open Mic provides an opportunity for metro area (Maryland, Virginia, and DC) poets to share their work with the community. In addition to featured poets, there will be a chance for attendees to share a poem of their own at the open mic.
Poetry readings will be held on the 2nd Sunday of every month from 2-4 at the Gaithersburg Library, 18330 Montgomery Village Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 20879. For more information, please email [email protected].