Join co-editors Michelle Duster and Trina Sotira along with several contributors for a reading of Shifts: An Anthology of Women's Growth Through Change. This anthology includes poems, essays and short stories by 35 different women from around the country. They write about how they grew personally as a result of experiencing some type of change in their lives.
You can learn more about the book at www.musewrite.com. Trina and Michelle are both professors (Trina at College of DuPage and Michelle at Columbia College Chicago) as well as writers and, between the two of them, have published five books.
Contributors to the anthology who will be reading at this event include:
Patricia Feeney lives in St. Louis, where she teaches at the St. Louis Community College. She is a member of the Crooked Tree Writers, which serves as her writing-mommy-and-daddy: challenging her to eliminate the trite and explore the heart of her essays. To relax, Feeney kick-boxes (her only movement from a sitting position), and spends time with her friends, her husband and their two adult children (when they’re in town, not online, not asleep, not with friends, and when all the stars align). Another of Feeney’s personal essays, “Complicated Footwork,” appeared in the 2014 issue of The Lindonwood Review.
Jessica Glover teaches for the English and Gender and Women’s Studies programs at Oklahoma State University while pursuing a PhD in creative writing. Her latest work has appeared in American Literary Review, Aesthetica, REED Magazine, and Moon City Review. She won the 2013 Mississippi Valley National Poetry Contest, the 2013 Rash Awards, and the 2012 Edwin Markham Prize for Poetry. Her work is currently forthcoming in EDGE, Weave Magazine, Spillway,Comstock Review, Off Channel, Broad River Review, and Pinyon. “Tsebrochener: A Story for the Broken” won the 2013 Hard Times Writing Contest for Creative Non-fiction sponsored by The Writers’ Workshop (Asheville, NC).
Marianne Taylor is a recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award, the Helen A. Quade Memorial Writer’s Award and an Iowa Woman Poetry Prize; and her manuscript, Salt Water, Iowa, has been a finalist in a half dozen contests. Her poetry appears widely in anthologies and national journals such as Nimrod International, North American Review, Connecticut Review, Alaska Quarterly and Alehouse. She also writes and directs plays, and teaches creative writing and literature at Kirkwood Community College. She lives in the small town of Mount Vernon, IA, with her husband and four sons, where she serves on the city council.
Susan Winstead is a native of Chicago, Illinois and a veteran of the U.S. Army. She is the 2010 recipient of the Ann Darr Scholarship for Female Veterans and Active Duty Military Personnel awarded by the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Her other writing credits include winning the novel competition at Sand Hills Writer’s Conference and the non-fiction category of the Porter Fleming Writing Competition – both in Augusta, Georgia. She has had numerous short articles published. She serves on the board for Off-Campus Writers Workshop and Jane’s Stories Press Foundation. She lives and works in suburban Chicago.
