Author Showcase at Word Fest

Join Straw Dog Writers Guild for our 9-1/2th Annual Author Showcase at Word Fest* on April 2, 2023 1:00-2:00pm at the Gateway City Arts, 92 Race Street, Holyoke, MA. Featured authors are: Lindsay Rockwell, D. Dina Friedman, Michael Favala Goldman. Kelsey Socha. Grant Carrington, and Ellen Meeropol.

* The Entire Word Fest event runs from 10-5. See schedule HERE.

Lindsay Rockwell is poet-in-residence for the Episcopal Church of Connecticut and hosts their Poetry and Social Justice Dialogue series. She’s published, or is forthcoming in, CALYX, Gargoyle, River Heron Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, among others. Her collection GHOST FIRES is forthcoming from Main Street Rag Press, spring/summer ’23. She’s received writing fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and Straw Dog Writers Guild/Edith Wharton The Mount. Lindsay holds a Master of Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of Arts and is an oncologist.

D. Dina Friedman has published in many literary journals and received two Pushcart Prize nominations. She is the author of two YA novels, Escaping Into the Night (Simon and Schuster) and Playing Dad’s Song (Farrar Straus Giroux), and one book of poetry, Wolf in the Suitcase (Finishing Line Press). Her short story collection, Immigrants, will be published by Creators Press in Fall 2023. To learn more about Dina, visit her website at www.ddinafriedman.com and subscribe to her blog on living a creative life in a creatively challenged universe at ddinafriedman.substack.com.

Michael Favala Goldman (b.1966) is an award-winning poet, jazz clarinetist, and translator of Danish literature. Michael’s five books of original poetry include Small Sovereign, which took first place at the 2022 Los Angeles Book Festival. He has been running poetry critique groups since 2018. MORE

Kelsey Socha once wrote and staged a performance piece about lobsters before subsequently quitting theatre to become a librarian. She is originally from Kalamazoo, Michigan, but now lives in western Massachusetts with her wife and two cats.

Grant Carrington is the author of 4 sci fi books from Brief Candle Press of Beaverton, Ore., 2 CDs of original songs, 5 plays given full productions, and 40-50 published stories, mostly sci fi (one of which was a Nebula finalist). Member Clarion 68-69, Tulane 71. Associate Editor Amazing/Fantastic 1972-74, Contributing Editor Eternity 1977-79. Computer programmer for Goddard Space Flight Center, the US Navy, University of Florida, Savannah River Ecology Lab, Westinghouse, and the US Treasury Department. BA (NYU) and MA (Univ. of Fla.) in mathematics.

Ellen Meeropol is the author of the novels The Lost Women of Azalea Court, Her Sister’s Tattoo, Kinship of Clover, On Hurricane Island, and House Arrest, and guest editor of the anthology Dreams for a Broken World. Essay and short story publications include Ms. Magazine, Lilith, The Writer Magazine, Lit Hub, Guernica, and The Boston Globe. Her work has been a finalist for the Sarton Prize, longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award, and a Group Reads selection of the Women’s National Book Association. Ellen is a founding mother of Straw Dog Writers Guild and coordinator of the revived WriteAngles Writers Conference.