JOINT POETRY READING: Victoria Redel is the author of three books of poetry most recently Woman Without Umbrella and three books of fiction with a new collection of stories, Make Me Do Things forthcoming in fall 2013. Her latest novel, The Border of Truth (Counterpoint 2007) weaves the situation of refugees and a daughter’s awakening to the history and secrets of her father’s survival and loss. Loverboy (2001, Graywolf /2002, Harcourt), was adapted for a feature film directed by Kevin Bacon. Swoon (2003, University of Chicago Press), was a finalist for the James Laughlin Award. Victoria is on the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College. She has taught in the Graduate Writing Programs of Columbia University, Vermont College and at Davidson College and the New School. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment For The Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center. She currently serves as vice president of PEN American Center. 

Elizabeth Jacobson’s first book of poems Her Knees Pulled In, is described by Tony Hoagland: “At once stoical and lush, full of terse, piercing, mindful observations of daily life, these poems look telegraphic on the page, but they are intricate and thoughtful and wild, like the winding skeleton of a  ‘A lyre snake/ its back of petroglyphs/ designed to cloak/ his detective life/ of eating things still alive’ Her Knees Pulled In is a highly skilled, no-bullshit, sexual and creaturely poetry, accounting for the earthly life of a woman.”  Elizabeth has taught writing in New York at CUNY, and in New Mexico at SFCC, Warehouse 21, and most recently as a teaching artist with ArtWorks in Santa Fe.  In 2001 Turtle Path Press published a collection of her poems in a chapbook, Four Hot Days.  She is the recipient of the Jim Sagel prize for poetry.