This event will feature readings by:

Nicole Greaves
Amy Small-McKinney

Open mic to follow. Hosted by Sibelan Forrester

Community Arts Center
414 Plush Mill Road
Wallingford PA 19086

Nicole Greaves holds an MFA from Columbia University, an MEd from Chestnut Hill College, and recently completed a Reading Certification program at Rosemont College. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary reviews and was awarded prizes by the Academy of American Poets and the Leeway Foundation of Philadelphia. She was a 2015 finalist for the Coniston Prize of Radar Poetry, who also nominated her for Best of the Net. In 2020, she was a finalist for the Frontier Digital Chapbook Contest and the Dogfish Head Poetry Contest. Nicole is Poet Laureate Emeritus of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and she currently a Learning Specialist and a Literacy Coach in Philadelphia. Nicole’s mother came to the US from Panama at seventeen, and together they lived a life on the margins. Much of her work explores themes relating to this experience, specifically the tensions around acculturation, gender roles, and class. Her book, Having Witnessed the Illusion, from Glass Lyre Press came out in 2022. Glass Lyre nominated the poem, "Prelude," from this collection for a Pushcart Prize. She is working on a new book that focuses on aging as a woman in America. Find her at nicolegreaves.com

Amy Small-McKinney was the 2011 Montgomery County PA Poet Laureate. Her second full-length book, Walking Toward Cranes, won the Kithara Book Prize (Glass Lyre Press, 2017). Her chapbook, One Day I Am A Field, was written during COVID and her husband’s death (Glass Lyre Press, 2022). Alicia Ostriker said, “Here in these poems is a woman whose life is torn into scraps by its proximity to death—and every scrap cries out with its own vibrant and urgent life…This is a gorgeous book. This is what poetry can do. This is why we need poetry.” Her poems have been published in the American Poetry Review, The Baltimore Review, Banyan Review, SWWIM, Tiferet Journal, Literary Mama, Pedestal Magazine, Persimmon Tree, Philadelphia Stories, Vox Populi, and Verse Daily, among others. Her poems have also been translated into Korean and Romanian. Her third full-length book of poems & You Think It Ends is forthcoming 2025 (Glass Lyre Press). Small-McKinney has a degree in Clinical Neuropsychology from Drexel University and an MFA in Poetry from Drew University.