THIS MONTH'S CALENDAR . SERIES & PROGRAMS . SPECIAL EVENTS . PUBLICATIONS

 
 

Sarah Schecter graduated in 2000 from Swarthmore College with a major  in English and a serious commitment to community-based social justice. She is  currently working at Penn, finishing a documentary film and planning a long-term  investigation of religious life in small towns.

Kevin Dugan is a senior at Philadelphia's High School for the Creative and  Performing Arts. He has been writing poetry since childhood, focusing on family, neighborhood and classic African-American themes including the responsibility  of the writer to his community.

Collyn Hinchey is a high school senior from Wilkes Barre. Her work is narrative, almost anthropological in its depth of detail. She presents a  sympathetic view of young people who feel isolated and ignored by family and community.

Amy Knight is a senior at Conestoga High School. Her years of ballet and music study have affected the shape and sounds of her poetry. She particularly interested in negotiating the lines between formal and free verse.

Nicholas Hall is a student at the Creative and Performing Arts High School  in Pittsburg. He writes about finding oneself in a new place, or in old places with  new demands. He has mastered the craft of revision.

Kacie Fagan, finishing high school in northwest Pennsylvania, give voice to those who live at the extremes of quiet fear: her narrators are afraid of dogs, and of people with wrists.

Lauren Kubiak will graduate this spring from Seneca Valley High School.  Her poems explore the intersection of landscape and consciousness, sometimes  showing that a field or street holds visible marks of the pain left there by human presence.

Sarah Smith draws her generous and patient stories from a city family transplanted to the country, and her rhythms from their speech, and the jazz  she pumps from her trombone.

Rebecca Steffy writes from the overlap of worlds in Lancaster Country -- the suburban high school, the economic and emotional deprivation of the city,  and her Mennonite family. She can draw our attention to those we usually ignore,  and she can make us laugh.

Sara Watson's musical short-lined poems make us wonder if it's ever necessary to go on at length. She writes of veterans who can't forget the  war, kids who will never forget their friends who died on the road, and  families who can't remember good times.

Alison Shaffer applies an athlete's discipline to language. Her poems grow from the eyes of an observer who does not interrupt, who pays close and  precise attention to light, whispers and the movement of muscle and bone.

Dan Klotz makes poems from his work -- building houses in Central America, playing soccer, mowing and cutting, camping and listening. If there is  ever an Eagle Scout badge for poetry, he will be the first winner. He can write poems that are clearly about himself, and, just as easily, write from the  point of view of someone twice his age.