A Poetry Reading presented by the Cape May County Art League will be held Saturday at 7 p.m. (11/12/05) at the Cape May Stage, Bank and Lafayette streets featuring gifted poets Renée Ashley and Elinor Mattern.
This event will be followed by reception, book signing and opportunity to talk to the poets . Admission is free, donations accepted at the door to support Cape May Art League and Cape May Stage.
Renée Ashley is the author of three volumes of poetry: Salt, Brittingham Prize in Poetry, Univ. of Wisconsin Press, The Various Reasons of Light, and The Revisionist’s Dream, Avocet Press.
Her novel, Someplace Like This, was published by The Permanent Press in 2003. She has received creative writing fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the NEA. She is on the faculty of Fairleigh Dickinson University’s low-residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and is poetry editor of Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature. She was Distinguished Poet-in-Residence at Wichita State University in 2005.
Elinor Mattern teaches English as a Second Language/Writing at Atlantic Cape Community College. Her poems have appeared in Washington Square, Wilthout haloes, Footwork: Paterson Literary Review, The Sow’s Ear, and the anthology, 25 Women’s Perspectives.
Her non-fiction has appeared in the newspapers: The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Current. She received her MFA in Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 2004, and was the recipient of that program’s Director’s Award in Poetry in 2001. Her poems are posted at their website, which can be accessed through www.webdelsol.
Ms. Mattern is also a visual artist, has exhibited her photographs and paintings, and speaks to groups on many aspects of creativity, culture and communication.
