POETRIO: SEPT. 13 at Malaprops

On Sunday, September 13, 2009, 3:00 p.m., Malaprop's Bookstore/Café

(55 Haywood Street in downtown Asheville, NC) welcomes poets Terri

Kirby Erickson, author of TELLING TALES OF DUSK; Linda Annas Ferguson

reading from DIRT SANDWICH; and John Hoppenthaler with ANTICIPATE THE

COMING RESERVOIR.

A North Carolina native who now lives in Charleston, South Carolina,

Linda Annas Ferguson has published five collections of poetry,

including BIRD MISSING FROM ONE SHOULDER (2007), STEPPING ON CRACKS IN

THE SIDEWALK (2006), LAST CHANCE TO BE LOST (2004), and IT'S HARD TO

HATE A BROKEN THING (2002).  She serves on the Board of Governors of

the South Carolina Academy of Authors, was recognized as the 2005

Poetry Fellow for the South Carolina Arts Commission, became a

featured poet for the Library of Congress Poetry at Noon Series, and

was named the 2003-04 Poet-in-Residence for the Gibbes Museum of Art

in Charleston, S.C.  She is also a former recipient of the South

Carolina Academy of Authors Poetry Fellowship.  Her work is archived

by Furman University Special Collections in the James B. Duke Library,

and her poetry is included in several anthologies.  Linda Annas

Ferguson's most recent book, DIRT SANDWICH(2009), is a Tom Lombardo

Poetry Selection from Press 53.  Fellow poet Chris Forhan writes of

DIRT SANDWICH, "[Linda Annas Ferguson's] work exists at the shimmering

mid-point between an urge to celebrate the world's beauty and a pained

recognition that this beauty is mutable. . . . She has given us a book

of tender, clear-eyed, complex meditations, a lovely book by a poet

whose vision we can trust."

Another poet North Carolina born, Terri Kirby Erickson has traveled

extensively and lived for a time in Louisiana, Virginia, and Texas,

but she has spent most of her life in North Carolina.  Her first

collection of poetry, THREAD COUNT, was published in 2006.  Her

writing has appeared in numerous literary reviews and other

publications, including Pisgah Review, the Christian Science Monitor,

Paris Voice, Smoking Poet, and Wild Goose Poetry Review, among several

others.  In 2006 and 2007, The Northwest Cultural Council selected her

work for an international juried poetry exhibit; and in 2009, her poem

"Oak Tree" earned a 2009 Best of the Net nomination.  Pisgah Review

editor Jubal Tiner has praised Terri Kirby Erickson as "an exciting

new voice in American poetry."  He admires the fact that "Her subject

matter spans the width between a lone Ferris wheel at a county fair,

where 'Coal dust fine and black as pulverized midnight, / covers

everything for miles,' to the vagaries of aging in the face of youth

. . . Erickson's verse is filled with spot-on similes and metaphors,

dotting its distinct and lucid structure with apt and artful

alliteration, telegraphing image upon finer image to the nexus of who

we are."

John Hoppenthaler's career in letters began when he served for several

years as personal assistant to Toni Morrison, whose work has been

recognized with both a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize.  John Hoppenthaler

is currently a member of the writing faculty at East Carolina

University, and he served as poetry editor of Kestrel for eleven

years.  His reviews, interviews, and essays are widely published, and

his poems frequently appear in such distinguished The Southern Review,

Virginia Quarterly Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Laurel Review, and

Chautauqua Literary Journal, among many others.  He has frequently

earned prestigious writing fellowships and grants.  His first book of

poetry, LIVES OF WATER, was published in 2003, and his second poetry

collection, ANTICIPATE THE COMING RESERVOIR, appeared in 2008.  Poet

Natasha Trethewey makes the following observations about his recent

book: "In this aptly titled new collection, ANTICIPATE THE COMING

RESERVOIR, John Hoppenthaler grounds an exploration of longing and

loss in a firm sense of place.  From upstate New York to the Florida

coast, to the landscapes that exist only in memory and dream,

Hoppenthaler knows well the geographies he traverses, and he maps the

lives of the people who inhabit these places with tenderness."

Poetrio: Terri Kirby Erickson, Linda Annas Ferguson, John Hoppenthaler

Sunday, September 13, 2009, 3:00 p.m.

Malaprop's Bookstore/Café

55 Haywood Street

Asheville, NC 28801

(828) 254-6734

www.malaprops.com