Three local poets – Gina Ferrara, Jonathan Kline, and Ralph Adamo – will discuss poetry and their latest works at 6 p.m., Monday, April 12, via video conference online. Visit www.jplibrary.net/adults for more details, including how to join the discussion.

Launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, National Poetry Month reminds the public that poets have an integral role to play in our culture and that poetry matters. Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers, students, K–12 teachers, librarians, booksellers, literary events curators, publishers, families, and poets, marking poetry's important place in our lives.

Gina Ferrara

Gina Ferrara was born and raised in New Orleans. Her most recent collection is titled The Weight of the Ripened. Her other works include: Fitting the Sixth Finger; Carville: Amid Moss and Resurrection Fern; Amber Porch Light; Ethereal Avalanche; and The Size of Sparrows. Ferrara teaches English and writing at Delgado Community College as an associate professor. Since 2007, she has curated the Poetry Buffet, a monthly reading series sponsored by the New Orleans Public Library.

Jonathan Kline

Poet, playwright, storyteller and visual artist Jonathan Kline grew up in Northern Michigan. He received an M.F.A. from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in Time Art. Kline has presented his works at venues in Boston, Chicago, New York, Seattle, New Orleans, Dublin and Cork Ireland. For more than a decade, Kline's works, including When I was Twenty, The Terminal Hotel, The Nude Questions, and Six Eggs, have garnered praise from scholars, peers and audiences in the United States and overseas. His latest work is The Wisdom of Ashes. Kline teaches in the New Orleans community as an art coordinator for elementary and middle schoolers.

Ralph Adamo

A native New Orleanian, Ralph Adamo has published seven collections of poetry, most recently All the Good Hiding Places. He received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in Creative Writing in 2003, a Louisiana Division of the Arts Individual Artist Grant in 1998, and the first Marble Faun award in poetry from the Faulkner Society in 1997. In addition to work in general anthologies (Contemporary American Poetry, and The Made Thing, among others), his poems have been featured in two recent specialized anthologies, one about rivers and the other about the moon.

For more information regarding this presentation, contact Chris Smith, Manager of Adult Programming for the library, at (504) 889-8143 or wcsmith@jplibrary.net.