Join us at the store for a poetry reading featuring Elizabeth Strauss Friedman and Jessica Walsh. Jessica Walsh's Book of Gods and Grudges tells a tale of generational trauma and transcendence. She declares early on that "My first kin were killers," people for whom "burnout was a luxury" they could not afford. In her book, The Lost Positive, Elizabeth Strauss Friedman uses ancient myths and stories of the constellations to highlight the coded and overt misogyny of our culture, and these poems thrum with abuses of women in our own time. This is a book where the speakers do not turn away from any horror or injustice so, at times, it takes its toll on them. This event is free and open to the public.

More About the Poets: Elizabeth Strauss Friedman is the author of the poetry book The Lost Positive, as well as the potery collection The Eggshell Skull Rule and the prose/poetry chapbook Gathered Bones are Known to Wander. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and her work has appeared in Pleiades, Rust + Moth, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Elizabeth earned her MA in Comparative Literature from Northwestern University, and taught English at the college level for ten years. you can find out more bout her HERE. 

Jessica Walsh is a poet and Professor of English at Harper College in suburban Chicago, hails from Ludington, Michigan, a small town on Lake Michigan, and attended Kalamazoo College and University of Iowa. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in all kinds of places, including RHINO, Tinderbox, Sundog Literature, Midwestern Gothic, Ninth Letter online, Whale Road Review, Crab Creek Review, Rogue Agent, and many others. You can find out more about her HERE.