Poetry Reading & Book Signing Event | July 11, 2015

The Round Rock Public Library will present a Poetry Reading and Book-Signing Event from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., Saturday, July 11.

Schedule:

1:30-2:15—Featured readings
2:15-2:30—Q&A panel moderated by Marian Haddad
2:30-3:00—Community Open Mic
3:00-3:30—Book Signing / Punch & Cookies Meet-and-Greet with Poets (A portion of book sales will be donated back to the Friends of the Round Rock Public Library.)

Featured readers include:

Marian Haddad, MFA is a Pushcart-nominated poet, writer, manuscript & publishing consultant, private writing mentor, lecturer and creative workshop instructor.  Her collection of poems, Wildflower. Stone., (Pecan Grove Press 2011), is the first hardback in the nearly-25-years the press was in existence.

Haddad’s recent collection has been endorsed by Pulitzer Prize poet, Yusef Komunyakaa, who states that this collection, “…celebrates the observable mysteries of daily existence … these poems have dropped all disguises, and each rides the pure joy of music. There are superb leaps and silences that deftly highlight the monumental in simple things.”  This collection has also been endorsed by award-winning-author, Denise Chavez, and by Glover Davis, Professor Emeritus, San Diego State University, who studied under U.S Poet Laureate, Phil Levine.  In Former First Lady Laura Bush’s Spoken from the Heart, she references Marian Haddad’s description of the light in El Paso.

Her work has been covered by The Huffington Post, and The Hallmark Channel featured an extended feature on Haddad’s literary work. Haddad’s chapbook, Saturn Falling Down, was published at the request of Texas Public Radio in correlation with their Hands-on Poetry workshops (2003).  Her full-length collection, Somewhere between Mexico and a River Called Home (Pecan Grove Press, 2004) approached its fifth printing before the passing of editor/publisher H. Palmer Hall.

 

Katherine Durham Oldmixon‘s poems and photographs appear in many anthologies, online and print journals, and in her chapbook Water Signs (No. 67 in the New Women’s Voices series, Finishing Line Press, 2009). Katherine is co-director of the Poetry at Round Top Festival, held annually in the rolling hills between Austin and Houston, a senior poetry editor for Tupelo Quarterly, past president of Austin Poetry Society, a workshop teacher for Writer’s League of Texas, and a regular moderator for Texas Book Festival. She has guest-edited special issues of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and Qarrtsiluni. A poet and scholar, Katherine holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from UT-Austin, M.F.A. in Creative Writing from University of New Orleans, and M.A. and B.A. degrees in English from University of Houston. She has taught for the UNO-low residency MFA program and served on thesis committees for graduate students at St. Edward’s and UNO. At historic Huston-Tillotson University, she teaches writing and literature and directs the writing program. Katherine gardens in Austin, TX, with her husband, musician and videographer. Water Signs was a finalist for the New Women’s Voices Chapbook Award.

 

Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collection, If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014). His work has appeared in Salamander, RHINO, Alaska Quarterly Review, Southwestern American Literature, The Texas Observer, and elsewhere. He is a CantoMundo Fellow and holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas. He is the regional editor for Texas Books in Review and teaches Literature and Creative Writing in the M.A./M.F.A. program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, TX.  Fiction and critical reviews have been published in “Ottawa Arts Review,” “Texas Books in Review” and in “Southwestern American Literature.” He has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.