Straw Dog Writers Guild Author Interview Series: María Luisa Arroyo

Boricua poet and feminist intersectional educator María Luisa Arroyo’s poetry collections include Gathering Words: Recogiendo Palabras (Bilingual Press 2008), and the chapbooks Flight (2016) and Destierro Means More than Exile (2018). Her poems and essays have been published in a number of journals and magazines, and among her many awards, she was named Springfield’s Inaugural Read More

Voices for Resistance online program on May 19

VOICES FOR RESISTANCE PROGRAM TO FEATURE SIX REGIONAL WRITERS WHO TACKLE ISSUES OF SOCIAL JUSTICE Six regional writers will be featured at the Voices for Resistance May 19 event. Sponsored by the Straw Dog Writers Guild and Forbes Library, the readings will begin at 7 p.m. The event is online and open to the public Read More

The “A” and “B” Stories of Our Lives

by Stephanie Shafran Did you know each of us has an “A” story and a “B” story to our lives? I first heard about this concept at a featured reading by Ann Averill, a talented local author who recently published her memoir “Teacher Dropout: Finding Grace in an Unjust School”. Summarizing these main ideas from Read More

If a Dog Shows Up in Your Story

By Jacqueline Sheehan I never intended to include a dog in my 2007 novel, Lost & Found, but once a barrel-chested black lab showed up in the story line, there was no going back. He had a big personality and kept muscling his way into each scene. And I am so glad that he did. Read More

Tribute to Lesléa Newman

Friends, this is the final post of the Pandemic Poetry & Prose Project (PP&PP). We thank everyone for participating in the Project – all those who submitted, those whose pieces were published, those who read the posts every day, and those who worked behind the scenes to make it happen. Particularly, we would like to Read More

THE VISIT by Lesléa Newman

Lesléa Newman’s poetry books include Still Life With Buddy; October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard (novel-in-verse); I Carry My Mother, and I Wish My Father (forthcoming, January 2021). A past National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellow and former Northampton Poet Laureate, she lives in Hampden county. (Leslea is the person who had the Read More