A Straw Dog member from Franklin County, Amy Laprade is a writing coach and author of “So Nice To Finally Meet You…,” “Behind the Magic 8 Ball,” and “Silence Is Premeditated: A Collection.” Her poem “Deafening” will be forthcoming in The 64: Best Poets Of The Year, Black Mountain Press. Waiting everything that ever mattered Read More
Pandemic Poetry & Prose Project
Kazhuo Ohno Dancing Through my Quarantine by Maddy Leue
Maddy Leue is a poet from Franklin County (Ashfield) and is a member of the Cloud Saddle Writers. She is a single parent, a graduate student of public policy, an artist, a caregiver, a wanderer of woods, a tea-drinker, a tinkerer, a meddler. (Kazhuo Ohno, who is referenced in the title of this poem, was Read More
VIRUS by Eileen Gloster
Eileen Gloster teaches second grade in her hometown of North Adams, Massachusetts. She is a former owner of Papyri Books, where she hosted readings and open mics. Her poetry has been published in local journals. Grateful for this opportunity and incentive, she recently joined Straw Dog Writers Guild. VIRUS 1. Safe, alone, I kneel in Read More
Is This the New Normal? by Peggy Winnett
Peggy Winnett lives in retirement in Leeds, Ma (Hampshire Co.). She has been delighted to find herself in an active writing community, as it stimulates her own late stirrings in that direction. Is This the New Normal? I seem to have disappeared I can’t find myself anywhere I’ve looked in all the usual places But Read More
FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH by Walter E. Kielbowicz
Walter Kielbowicz: I am from Hatfield, MA. and am a graduate of Smith Academy. I was introduced to poetry in my freshman year by a challenge from our teacher. I have had poems published before but I am working to put together a book of my own soon. Read More
Shaken Faith by Kristin Rivers
Kristin Rivers is a published short story/fiction writer, blogger and book reviewer from Chicopee who loves cats, music, travel and nature photography. She graduated from Smith College in 2016 and recently contributed to The Poetry Center’s renga project examining life in the time of COVID-19. Shaken Faith Everywhere I turn, worship falls silent around me. Read More
World War Corona Gardening by Nancy Saporta Sternbach
Nancy Saporta Sternbach lives in Northampton, is a Straw Dog member, and is a recently retired member of Smith College’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Her current projects include a Sephardic cookbook, Sefarad, and a memoir of growing up in New York, Bellydancing in the Bronx. She loves to travel, cook, and garden. World War Read More
May Comes Tomorrow by Melenie Freedom Flynn
Melenie Freedom Flynn’s essay “Message From Your Inmate” recently won the annual nonfiction contest at Vela Magazine. A recipient of a MacDowell Colony Fellowship and Djerassi Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, she lives in Easthampton, Massachusetts and is a member of Straw Dog Writers Guild. May Comes Tomorrow I’m grateful for the creak and moan of our winter-weary Read More
Metamorphosis – What Changing Seasons Mean for Our Changing World by Maya Laur
Maya Laur is a rising first-year at Brown University, from Wendell, Massachusetts. She is proud to have grown up in Western MA – a place that’s shaped her passion for arts and activism. Maya is spending the summer working with children and writing about the world around her. Metamorphosis – What Changing Seasons Mean for Read More
New Skin by Joan Kalus
Joan Kalus: I am a retired psychotherapist living in Western Mass and Florida who started writing poems at a memorial for a partner seven years ago. Poetry has become my medium: my way of staying connected to myself and the world. I have to write to feel my humanity and compassion for suffering. Read More