Join us for the Eastern Shore Voices annual poetry reading in collaboration with Thursdays with ESWA programming!   This year, we will introduce you to the three finalists for Salisbury Youth Poet Laureate, enjoy readings from Wendy Mitman Clarke, Tina Raye Dayton, Christopher T. George, Sharon K. Sheppard, & S. Scott Whitaker, as well as Salisbury Poet Laureate, Nancy Mitchell, and 2021 Salisbury Poet-in-Residence, Christopher Salerno!   

This reading is free and open to the public due to generous grants from MD Humanities and The Community Foundation of the Eastern Shore as well as support from Wicomico County Public Libraries, Eastern Shore Writers Association, Maryland Writers Association,  and The City of Salisbury, Maryland.  Programming for the Youth Poet Laureate was provided by Fenix Youth Project as well as an education grant awarded by the Salisbury Wicomico Arts Council awarded by the Maryland States Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.  This event is brought to you on Zoom courtesy of the Eastern Shore Writers Association. 

Please note: A Zoom link will be emailed out to all registrants 24 hours before the session begins.

CHRISTOPHER SALERNO

Christopher Salerno is the author of five books of poetry. His forthcoming book, The Man Grave, won the Lexi Rudnitsky Award from Persea Books and will be published in 2021 (pre-order here). Previous books include Sun & Urn (UGA Poetry Prize, 2017), ATM (Georgetown Poetry Prize, 2014), Minimum Heroic (Mississippi Review Poetry Prize, 2010), and Whirligig (2006). A trade book, How To Write Poetry: A Guided Journal, was published by Calisto Media in 2020. His poetry has received the Glenna Luschei Award from Prairie Schooner, The Founders Prize from RHINO Magazine, the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Award, the Laurel Review Chapbook Prize, and a New Jersey State Council on the Arts fellowship. His poems have appeared in New York Times Magazine, New Republic, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Jubilat, and elsewhere. He teaches in the B.A. and M.F.A programs in Creative Writing at William Paterson University in New Jersey.

NANCY MITCHELL

Nancy Mitchell is the inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Salisbury, MD, and a 2012 Pushcart Prize winner. She is the author of three volumes of poetry, The Near Surround, Grief Hut and The Out-of-Body Shop and co-editor of Plume Interviews 1. She was a 2019 guest on The Poet and The Poem broadcast from the Library of Congress.  Her poems have appeared in Agni, Green Mountains Review, Poetry Daily, Washington Square Review and other journals and have been anthologized in Last Call (Sarabande Books) The Working Poet (Autumn House Press) and Plume 3, 4, 5,6 and 7.  She has received artist-in- residency fellowships at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in San Angelo, Virginia and in Auvillar, France, and at the Shotpouch Creek in Oregon. Formerly a professor of Creative Writing at Salisbury University, Maryland and producer of the annual literary/fine arts festival WORDSTOCK, Mitchell taught in the Maryland Summer Center for the Arts. Mitchell is a book discussion facilitator, and teaches poetry workshops in the Worcester County Library System.  She serves as Associate Editor of Special Features for Plume Poetry.  For more information about Nancy Mitchell, visit: https://www.nancymitchellwriter.com

WENDY MITMAN CLARKE

Wendy Mitman Clarke’s poetry has been published in Blackbird, Rattle, Little Patuxent Review, Summerset Review, The Delmarva Review, Blue River Review, and MUSE/A Journal. She won the Pat Nielsen Poetry Prize in 2015 and 2017, and her poem “The Kiss” was a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her nonfiction has been published in River Teeth and Smithsonian. Her novel Still Water Bending was released in October 2017. You can read and view her work at www.wendymitmanclarke.com. 

TINA RAYE DAYTON
Tina Raye Dayton grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and received her MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She was the 2012 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize winner and author of the chapbook, The Softened Ground. Tina’s poems have appeared in The Bay to Ocean Anthology, The Delmarva Review, Potomac Review, The Broadkill Review, and a number of other journals. She is thrilled to have received her first Pushcart Nomination in 2020 for her poem “The Shell.” 

CHRISTOPHER T. GEORGE

Christopher T. George was born in Liverpool, England, in 1948. He emigrated to the US in 1955 but returned home to experience the “Swinging Sixties.” He re-emigrated to the US in 1968 and studied poetry with Sister Maura Eichner and Elliott Coleman. He has been published in literary journals worldwide. Chris has a poetry site at http://chrisgeorge.netpublish.net/

SHARON K. SHEPPARD
Sharon K Sheppard has resided in Magnolia, DE for nearly 5 years.  She was born in Iowa, and lived most of her life in the mid-west states of South Dakota and Minnesota. Sharon has written poetry for 40 years, and has self-published 6 books, with a 7th, To Make the Darkness Sing, upcoming this summer.  Her poems have appeared in Bay to Ocean Anthology 2020, Lun'Allure (an anthology celebrating the Apollo 11 lunar landing), and Rehoboth Reimagined.  Two of her poems will appear in the fall 2021 edition of Gargoyle Magazine. 

S. SCOTT WHITAKER

Stephen Scott Whitaker (@SScottWhitaker) is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the co-editor of The Broadkill Review.  A teaching artist with the Virginia Commission for the Arts, an educator, and a grant writer, Whitaker’s poems have appeared in Fourteen Hills, The Shore, TQ Quarterly, Image/Out, & The Citron Review, and other journals. Mulch, a novel of weird fiction is forthcoming from Montag Press in 2021.