Six local poets – Esme Franklin, Benjamin Aleshire, Elizabeth Gross, Brad Richard, Benjamin Morris, and Cassie Pruyn – will discuss and read from their works at 7 p.m., Thursday, April 30, at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon, Metairie.

This event is free of charge and is open to the public.

Esme Franklin earned a master of fine arts degree from Warren Wilson College. Her work is published or forthcoming in The Asheville Poetry Review, Fairy Tale Review, The Comstock Review, Peaxdunque Review, and elsewhere.

Benjamin Aleshire’s poems have appeared in The Times UK, Iowa Review, Boston Review, and an excerpt of his novel-in-progress, Poet for Hire: Kismet of a 21st Century Troubadour, is forthcoming. Aleshire received the Chighizola Award from the University of New Orleans, and a Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council. The second edition of his artist-book of visual poems, Currency, was released in 2017.

Elizabeth Gross is a poet/translator/teacher/artist in New Orleans. This body/that lightning show, her first poetry collection, was selected by Jericho Brown for the Hilary Tham Capital Collection of the Word Works Press (2019). DEAR ESCAPE ARTIST, a chapbook in collaboration with artist Sara White, came out from Antenna in 2016. She teaches interdisciplinary humanities for the Honors Program at Tulane University.

Brad Richard has published four collections of poems: Habitations, Motion Studies, Butcher's Sugar, and Parasite Kingdom (winner of the 2018 Tenth Gate Prize from The Word Works). A former faculty member at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and founder and chair of the creative writing program at Lusher Charter School, he is transitioning to a life of writing and new educational endeavors.

Benjamin Morris is the author of Coronary (Fitzgerald Letterpress, 2011), Hattiesburg, Mississippi: A History of the Hub City (Arcadia/ History Press, 2014), and Ecotone (Antenna/Press Street Press, 2017). His work has received fellowships from the Mississippi Arts Commission, Tulane University, and A Studio in the Woods. Formerly a researcher with the University of Cambridge and the Open University (UK), he is a member of the Mississippi Artist Roster.

Cassie Pruyn is the author of Bayou St. John: A Brief History (The History Press, 2017) and the poetry collection Lena (Texas Tech University Press, 2017), winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry and finalist for the Audre Lorde Award. Her poems, essays and reviews have been published in numerous publications. Born and raised in Portland, Maine, and a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, she lives and teaches in New Orleans.

For more information regarding this presentation, contact Chris Smith, Manager of Adult Programming for the library, at 504-889-8143 or wcsmith@jefferson.lib.la.us.