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
