Tuesday, July 12, 7pm – Poetry

The Moonstone Poetry Series Presents

Wendy Logan & Bojan Louis

Wendy Logan is a member of the Powhatan Nation (Patawomeck band). Logan is a motivational speaker, event planner, child advocate, Native American Indian lecturer and craft workshop artist, writer, model, poet, actor, producer, and social worker in training. She received her BA in Public and Mass Communication from The College of New Jersey. Her poems have been published in The Lion’s Eye, The Gazette, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Moonstone Art Center’s Poetry Ink 2011. Currently she attends the University of Pennsylvania to earn a masters’ degree in Social Work and a Home and School Visitors Certification from the School of Social Policy & Practice. She works as a part-time freelance event planner, is an actor and model represented by Model Management Agency (MMA), and a Native American Indian lecturer. She has taught for the University of Pennsylvania’s Upward Bound Program, but is presently preparing to work for Mastery Charter Schools of Philadelphia.

Bojan Louis is a member of the Navajo Nation—Naakaii Dine’é (Mexican Clan); Ashiihí (Salt Clan); Ta’neezahnii (Tangle Clan); Bilgáana (White man Clan)—and received his MFA in Fiction from Arizona State University.  His poems have been published in The Kenyon Review, Platte Valley Review, and Hinchas de Poesía; his fiction in Alaska Quarterly Review.  Currently he is working as an electrician and in construction while completing a collection of poetry and a collection of fiction.  He also tutors a preliterate adult learner at the Center for Literacy in West Philadelphia.  Recently, he was awarded a fellowship to The MacDowell Colony.

Tuesday, June 28, 7pm – Poetry

The Moonstone Poetry Series Presents

Aziza Zenzile Kinteh & Ewuare X. Osayande

Aziza Zenzile Kinteh is a Poet/Activist, Griot Author, Vocalist, and Educator, who utilizes her gift to uplift her culture, promote black womanhood in a positive light, and cultivate a consciousness for social change. Alumna of Eckerd College and Temple University’s School’s of Journalism and Communication; Azizag was first published at age 10 by the “Weekly Reader” for winning 1st prize in a national contest for a short story about family values and sharing.  She self published her 1st book of Poetry “I Am Aziza” in 2003.  Her poetry has also been included in three “Poetry Ink”  Anthologies including the 10th and 15th Anniversary editions, “The Real News”, ” Hair Stories”, “NOW(then)”, “Howard University’s Amistad Literary Journal”, “The Apiary”, ” Versadelphia‏”, and  “E  Pluribus Unum: An Anthology of Diverse Voices”. She has traveled extensively and performed throughout the United States, coast of West Africa, South and Central America, the Caribbean, Europe, and the West Indies.  Locally, for the past eight years, Azizag has hosted a First Friday venues that provides an outlet for free form expressions of art and culture in the community; now housed at the Sanctuary.  She is featured in a short documentary; The Connection, a film about African American relationships directed by Nisa Ra, and is currently awaiting publication of “Traveling Lite” her second book of poetry.  Please visit her website at www.Aziza-lockdiva.com

Ewuare X. Osayande is a poet, political activist, author and professor. For the past 20 years his work has remained on the front-lines of cultural activism. His published books of and on poetry bear witness to his literal mission: art as a force for social change. They include: So the Spoken Word Won’t Be Broken: The Politics of the New Black Poetry, Caught at the Crossroads Without a Map, Blood Luxury with an introduction by Amiri Baraka, Art at War: Revolutionary Art Against Cultural Imperialism and the spoken word CD, When a Poem is Feared More than a Bomb. Osayande’s poetry has also been included in a number of collections and anthologies including: This Poem is Sponsored by: A Collection of Critical Poetry by Corporate Watch, What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race and the State of the Nation, Mourning Katrina, Dance the Guns to Silence: 100 Poems for Ken Saro-Wiwa. From 2001 to 2004 Osayande served as the first poet-in-residence for the African American Studies Program at Rutgers University in Camden, NJ. In April of 2005 Osayande became the first poet to have a symposium on his body of work at Temple University’s Poet Series sponsored by The Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought. That same year Osayande was paired with poet icon Amiri Baraka for an “Evening of Poetry and Politics” at the Brecht Forum in New York City. In April 2009, Osayande was the featured poet at the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University in Virginia. In June 2009 the Camden County Cultural and Historical Commission celebrated 20 years of his poetry when they featured him as part of their Distinguished Poets Series. Osayande’s forthcoming book of poems is entitled Whose America? that features an introduction by Haki R. Madhubuti,. He also is producer and host of the internet radio sensation “The Resistance with Ewuare Osayande.” Currently, he teaches African American Studies and History at Rutgers University in Camden, NJ. www.osayande.org

Tuesday, June 7, 7pm – Poetry

The Moonstone Poetry Series Presents
Sandra Turner-Barnes & Lamont B. Steptoe

Lamont B. Steptoe is an African American with Cherokee ancestry, born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A graduate of Temple University, he is the author of twelve collections of poetry and the editor of two collections by South African poet, Dennis Brutus. Steptoe is the founder/publisher of Whirlwind Press, a Vietnam veteran, father and photographer. He is the recipient of an American Book Award, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, two fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and an inductee of the International Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent by the Gwendolyn Brooks Center at Chicago State University. His work appears in the Longman/Penguin anthology of African American Literature edited by Keith Gilyard and the Oxford University Press Anthology of African American Literature edited by Arnold Rampersad. His most recent books are A Long Movie of Shadows, Crowns and Halos and Oracular Rumblings and Stiltwalking.

Sandra Turner-Barnes is a proud descendant of former enslaved African Americans — Joshua Sadler who founded Saddlertown in Haddon Township, NJ in the early 1800’s, as well as the Arthur/Still Family of Lawnside — Sandra is extremely honored by her ancestry. Sandra is the winner of the 1995 Ebony Magazine Literary Award for Short Fiction. She is also the author of 3 books of poetry, Always A Lady, That Sweet Philly Jazz, Too Much Woman and her latest book of poetry But, Mostly Love. Additionally, Sandra’s popular poetry and jazz CD, September Will Never Be The Same is available throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. Sandra’s first children’s book, Beyond The Back of the Bus, illustrated by artist, fellow poet, and Lawnside resident, Bernard Collins, Jr., was published in 2010. Sandra is the recipient of the 1993 George Washington Carver Humanitarian Award, the City of Philadelphia’s 2005 “Movers & Shakers” Award; the 2006 Lawnside, New Jersey Heritage Award, the City of Camden/Walt Whitman Vanguard Writers’ Award, and the 2007 Diversity Award, presented by the Camden, New Jersey National Education Association. Sandra Turner-Barnes is an arts administrator as well as an artist, and she was appointed Executive Director of the Camden County Cultural & Heritage Commission in May of 2006. Sandra also serves as an adjunct professor for the Rutgers’ University Roberto Clemente Course, as a member of the New Jersey State Black Cultural & Heritage Initiative, the New Jersey Heritage & Tourism Task Force, and as a member of the International Black Storytellers Group, “Keepers of the Culture.” Sandra is married to Jazz Saxophonist, Robert Bootsie Barnes, and has two daughters, Richelle & Renelle; 2 grandsons, Reginald & Richone; and, 2 granddaughters; Mia & Journee. Contact: Email: Cadillac711@Gmail.com Telephone: 856-547-2848

“Ms. Turner-Barnes jazz poetry is a must have for jazz listeners and poetry lovers…straight from the head, hip, heart & soul she delivers a funky, neo jazz joint, that…like the lady herself, is musically progressive, (a fantastic fusion with Mystic Traveler), poetically pleasing and simply put….all that!” Oni Lasana

Tuesday, May 24, 7pm – Poetry

The Moonstone Poetry Series Presents

Elizabeth Bodien & Le Hinton

Elizabeth Bodien lives near Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania. She taught at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, PA until 2007.  Her poetry has appeared in The Litchfield Review, The Fourth River, Watershed, red lights, Fledgling Rag, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Mad Poets Review, US 1 Worksheets, and Cimarron Review, among other publications. Her chapbooks include the award-winning Plumb Lines, (Plan B Press 2008), Rough Terrain: Notes of an Undutiful Daughter (FootHills Publishing 2010), and the recently published Endpapers (Finishing Line Press 2011).

Le Hinton, who “lives and works, simultaneously, in Philadelphia, Lancaster, and Harrisburg, swims in the third stream that is somewhere between being a spoken word poet and a page poet, and thinks that everyone should own at least one copy of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. Hinton is the author of four books of poetry, including Status Post Hope and Black on Most Days and is the editor and publisher of the poetry journal Fledgling Rag.

Tuesday, May 10, 7pm – Poetry

The Moonstone Poetry Series Presents

W.D. Ehrhart & Nathalie Anderson

Nathalie F. Anderson’s first book, Following Fred Astaire, won the 1998 Washington Prize from The Word Works. Her poems have been singled out for prizes and special recognition from the Joseph Campbell Society, The Cumberland Poetry Review, Inkwell Magazine, The Madison Review, New Millennium Writings, Nimrod, North American Review, and Southern Anthology, and have also appeared in APR’s Philly Edition, Cimarron Review, Cross Connect, Denver Quarterly, DoubleTake, The Louisville Review, Natural Bridge, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, The Recorder, Southern Poetry Review, Spazio Humano, and in the Ulster Museum’s collection of visual art and poetry, A Conversation Piece. A 1993 Pew Fellow, Anderson currently serves as Poet in Residence at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, and she teaches at Swarthmore College, where she is a Professor in the Department of English Literature and directs the Program in Creative Writing. “Nathalie Anderson’s poetry brings to my mind what John Logan’s called “a ballet of the ear.” She appreciates rich, textured language, and has a consciousness of sound as well as movement, elements more rare that you might think in contemporary poets. Her investigations of phobias, in particular, are smart, witty, and—haunting’  –Louis McKee “Philadelphia poets owe Nathalie Anderson endless thanks for her tireless dedication to all that we do here in our city. No one has ever stepped forward with such indivisible scope in such a divisible environment as the poetry of Philadelphia. Her support and sincerity are the lessons for all poets to shift and widen the world view as much and as often as possible. Nothing but the best of thanks to Nathalie Anderson.” – CAConrad

William Daniel Ehrhart was born on September 30th, 1948, in Roaring Spring, Pennsylvania, the third of four sons born to Rev. John H. Ehrhart, a Protestant minister, and Evelyn Marie (Conti) Ehrhart, who, after raising her children, became a special education teacher. Soon after Ehrhart was born, the family moved to Lewisburg, PA, and then in 1955 to Perkasie, PA, where John and Evelyn remained for the rest of their lives. Immediately upon graduating from Pennridge High School in June 1966, Ehrhart joined the U.S. Marine Corps, serving three years, including 13 months in Vietnam. He subsequently earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and (at the age of 52) a doctorate. Over the years, he has held a wide variety of jobs, from merchant seaman to newspaper reporter to high school teacher. Through the 1990s, he made his living primarily as a writer and speaker, but early in the new millenium he returned to fulltime high school teaching. Married since 1981 to the former Anne Senter Gulick, he has lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, since 1985. Their daughter Leela was born in 1986. Ehrhart began writing when he was 15 years old, and has been writing more or less continuously ever since. His first published work, a poem about Swarthmore College, appeared seven years later in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the following year eight of his poems were included in Winning Hearts and Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans. Exclusively a poet until he was almost 30, he has since written and published a wide variety of nonfiction prose from 400-word newspaper commentaries to 40-page scholarly essays to 400-page personal narratives. The influence of Ehrhart’s encounter with the Vietnam War can readily be seen in his writing, but though he is known primarily as a “Vietnam War poet,” in fact his subject matter ranges widely. He has written essays and articles on such topics as radio disc jockeys, tugboats on the Delaware River, the Internal Revenue Service, and a variety of modern and contemporary poets from William Wantling to Daniel Hoffman. His wife and daughter are major sources of inspiration for his poetry. His poems also reflect his respect for nature, his love of friends, his active engagement with the world around him, and his consternation at the human condition.

Tuesday April 12, 7pm – Poetry
The Moonstone Poetry Series Presents
Ernest Hilbert, Timothy Donnelly & Matthew Zappruder

Matthew Zapruder is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Come On All You Ghosts, selected as one of the top 5 poetry books of 2010.

Timothy Donnelly’s The Cloud Corporation was published by Wave Books in 2010. He is poetry editor of Boston Review and teaches in the Writing Program of Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

Ernest Hilbert was the poetry editor for Random House’s magazine Bold Type in New York City and, more recently, of the Contemporary Poetry Review, he hosts the popular blog and video show www.everseradio.com.