Features

Upcoming Features

Friday, August 23, 2013 @ 7:00PM:  Stephanie Monahan
Stephanie Monahan received her degree in English Literature and Rhetoric from Binghamton University. She is a firm believer in the healing powers of a good night’s sleep and British pop music. 33 VALENTINES, her first book, was published in January 2013 by Entangled Publishing. THE MEAN GIRL APOLOGIES will be published in 2014. Born and raised in upstate New York, Stephanie now lives in central Massachusetts with her husband.

Friday, September 27, 2013 @ 7:00PM:  Special One Year Anniversary Celebration with 3 Features!
More details to follow.

Friday, October

Past Features

Friday, July 26, 2013 @ 7:00PM: D.M. Roberts

D.M. Roberts self-published her first novel, Letting Go and Holding On, in February of 2011. After four mass suicide shootings between 2007 and 2008, where all of the shooters were in their mid-twenties or younger, she began to question if there was a disturbing trend forming. The media offered little answers, so she decided to study the topic of teenage violence and past shootings. After two years of extensive research, she wrote a fictional account based on those events. One of the characters includes a reporter whose investigation in the book mirrors the author’s own experience.

Even though Letting Go and Holding On was published over two years ago, its theme unfortunately remains relevant today. Roberts wrote the novel, a rare topic in the fiction world, in the hopes of maintaining a discussion of all the issues encompassing teen violence. These include prescription medication, gun control, sexual identity, the Internet, sensationalized media coverage, and feelings of isolation in a culture where everyone is linked.

Roberts worked as a reporter for the North Adams Transcript from 2001 to 2004. Among her daily articles she also wrote a weekly column,“From Donna’s Desk”. She left the position to pursue a career in writing, which currently includes one completed novel, one novella from a 3-day novel writing contest, and an outline for a third book. The career that actually pays her is copy editor/paginator for GateHouse Media. She lives in Worcester with her boyfriend, a quantum physicist who inspired her next novel to be a work of science fiction. Complete with genetic manipulation and a many worlds theory, it will examine the scientific method versus religious belief.
 

Friday, June 28, 2013 @ 7:00PM: Robert Steele
Robert Steele is a current member of the Worcester Storytellers. He writes fiction and poetry. And he's an excellent driver.

Friday, May 24, 2013 @ 7:00PM: Michael Land
Mike Land has published creative nonfiction, fiction, journalism and poetry in places ranging from Brevity and So To Speak to the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Worcester Telegram. Land grew up in Alabama and spent more than a decade as a sports and features reporter before earning the masters and doctorate in creative writing at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He directs the Community Service Learning Program at Assumption College, where he also teaches journalism, creative writing, and literature.

Friday, April 26, 2013 @ 7:00PM: Michael Fisher
Michael Fisher holds an MFA from New England College. He has completed post-grad work at Vermont College. His work has appeared in several publications, including 5am, The Worcester Review, Mad-hatter Review, specs, and Calibon. His first collection, "The Wolf Spider," received two honorable mentions for best first book of poetry before being published by plan b press in April 2010. His second collection, an exploration of quantum physics as a metaphor for human existence, entitled "Libretto for the Exhausted World" will be published by Spuyten Duyvil press in fall/winter of 2013. He currently resides in conversations heard in dive bars and coffee shops.

Friday, March 22, 2013 @ 7:00PM: Student Reading
Tonight's reading features five students from North Brookfield Jr-Sr High School. Each are currently enrolled in Creative Writing with Heather Macpherson. They will read and perform their own work, consisting of poems and flash fiction. We are grateful to Ms. England for this opportunity! Guest host: Dave Macpherson.

Friday, February 22, 2013 @ 7:00PM: Heather Macpherson
Heather J. Macpherson writes from New England. Her work has appeared in The Worcester Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, Spillway, Blueline, Pearl, OVS, Wicked Alice, Nerve Cowboy and other fine publications. She has poems forthcoming in Weave and CLARE Literary Magazine. She is the founding publisher and editor of Ballard Street Poetry Journal, now under the auspices of the lovely and talented Jenith Charpentier. Heather is also the features editor for the fall 2013 issue of The Worcester Review.

Friday, January 25, 2013 @ 7:00PM: Jennifer Grosser
Having grown up in a mono-cultural family with a cross-cultural focus, Jennifer Anne Grosser has loved travel and interacting with other cultures from a very early age. As the daughter of pastor/missionaries, she spent six of her earliest years in Honduras, although her own cultural transition there was rather unsuccessful. In college, she traveled to India for five weeks, where she worked mainly with children. After paying off education-incurred debts by working as a nanny in Connecticut, she moved to London, England, to work with refugees and other migrants in the East End. Jennifer's experiences with refugee families influenced the writing of Trees in the Pavement, her first book. The author hopes Trees will open a window onto a segment of society which, in any country, is often forgotten or viewed with suspicion. Ms. Grosser has written freelance articles for regional publications, and is currently seeking representation for Favored One, a novel about a woman in first century Palestine. Newly married in 2012, Ms. Grosser lives with her husband, two dogs, a cat and many fish in a cozy little house in New England.

Friday, December 28, 2012 @ 7:00PM: Diane Vanaskie Mulligan
Diane Vanaskie Mulligan's debut teen novel Watch Me Disappear was released in August, 2012. She teaches high school English in central Massachusetts, directs the Betty Curtis Worcester County Young Writers' Conference, and is managing editor of The Worcester Review. Originally, from Northeastern Pennsylvania, Diane is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and Simmons College. She lives with her husband Todd, her cat Taco, and her dog Amelia in Worcester, MA. When not writing or teaching, Diane loves to garden, bake, play her guitar, swim, hike, and ski. In other words, she doesn't sit still unless she's reading or writing.

Friday, October 26, 2012: Jessica Bane Robert
Jessica Bane Robert grew up off the grid on a mountain in Maine in a log cabin built by her father. This experience informs much of what she does as a teacher and writer. An essay from her memoir has been published in Ecotone, a literary journal about place. Her poems have been published and anthologized by a variety of journals and presses including Naugatuck River Review, Cider Press Review, and Outrider Press. She won the Writecorner Press editor’s prize for her villanelle entitled “Family Plot”. Her poems were recently awarded an international merit award from the Atlanta Review and won Salem College’s International Rita Dove Poetry Award. Her first chap book of poems, Scarred Seasons, was published by Finishing Line Press and was nominated for a Mass Book Award and a Pen New England Literary Award. Jessica currently teaches Writing and Literature courses at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts and she is the proprietor of the Barred Owl Retreat: A Writing and Learning Center in Leicester, MA. (www.barredowlretreat.com)

September 28, 2012:  David Macpherson
Dave Macpherson is a writer and spoken word performer who has been in the Worcester Poetry scene for over a decade. He is a co-winner of the Jacob Knight Award for Poetry, a member of 2 National Slam Teams and has had nearly a hundred stories and poems published. He is funny, energetic and has been keeping cornfields crow free since 1999.