News & Events
My blogs have been archived in favor of a newsletter (sign up here), but you can still view the old posts for Five Doors, Three Windows and Little Red Writing Desk.
NEW BOOK ALERT:
The Orchard Street Press is very pleased to announce the release of Stronger When We Touch, the remarkable and engaging collection of letter-poems exchanged by Cathy Cultice Lentes and Wendy McVicker (both of Southeast Ohio) during the time of the Covid pandemic.
About Stronger When We Touch, Richard Hague, author of Public Hearings and its sequel Continued Cases, writes: “This heartfelt volume of letter-poems stands out among the many records—poems, essays, memoirs, stories—arisen during the quarantine times of the pandemic, not only intimate glances of constrained daily life, but reflections of the plight of mothers, wives, and children, the life challenges of achieving selfhood as women and writers, vividly aware of the woods, the seas, the flora and fauna of their world.”
Pauletta Hansel, author of Friend and Heartbreak Tree, notes: “These letter-poems are remarkable for both their intimacy and accessibility, reaching into the joy and pain of memory and speaking of the loss, uncertainty, and political unrest from which they grew, but always with the awareness of the miracles around us…”
Wendy McVicker and Cathy Cultice Lentes admired each other’s work from afar before becoming good friends and have often published in the same literary journals and anthologies, most recently, I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing, Ohio’s Appalachian Voices (Sheila- Na-Gig Editions, 2022).
Stronger When We Touch is available for $17 both online and via the mail from:
The Orchard Street Press
P.O. Box 280
Gates Mills, Ohio 44040
Orchard721@gmail.com ; orchpress.com (web)
Other Updates:
After ten years of participation with the Women of Appalachia Project/Women Speak series, I took a break to devote time to new writing projects, but for 2024, I’m back, and it’s going to be a fabulous time as we celebrate 15 years of this amazing project and these incredible women. Click the link above for all upcoming appearances.
Here’s where you will be able to hear me read with WoAP:
April 6, 2023, 1-3PM EST
Berea College, Loyal Jones Appalachian Center, 205 N Main St.,Berea, Kentucky 40403
May 4, 2024, 1-3PM
Reece Museum, East Tennessee State University, 363 Stout Drive, Johnson City, TN 3761
May 17, 2023, 7PM EST
Dairy Barn Arts Center, 8000 Dairy Lane, Athens, OH 45701
Blasts from the Past:
The Ohioana Book Festival 2017:
The Athens Author Fair at the Athens, Ohio Public Library 2017:
The Poetry of Place Program at the Athens,Ohio Public Library 2016:
Getting the Mail Book Launch Party, August 26, 2016 at The Maple Lawn Brewery in Pomeroy, Ohio:
My chapbook, Getting the Mail, was accepted by Finishing Line Press in Georgetown, Kentucky in November, 2015.
My friend, Sally Stanton, who graduated with me from the Solstice MFA Program in 2013 created the amazing cover art for my book.
I received my MFA in July of 2013 from the Solstice MFA Program in Chestnut Hill, MA
