This Thursday, December 11, from 6:00-7:30pm, at Providence Public Library’s Central Library, 150 Empire Street, Downcity Providence, RI, we will host a group of poets & writers to read, sign, and otherwise socialize with all who can come to this free literary soiree.
The event features poets Rosemarie Waldrop, Keith Waldrop, and Ray Ragosta, as well as local fiction writer Alison Bundy (sister of PPL’s artist-librarian Lanham Bundy!). The writers will present selections of their work published in Making the Leap: Paradigm Press At Twenty Years. Founded in 1988 by poet and Brown University’s Assistant Director of Literary Arts, Gale Nelson, Paradigm Press is based in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. It has published approximately 50 poetry and fiction titles, many written by local authors. Help us celebrate its twentieth year this Thursday!
More about the writers:
Rosmarie Waldrop is a contemporary American poet, translator and publisher. Born in Germany, she has lived in the United States since 1958 and in Providence, Rhode Island since the late 1960s. Waldrop is Coeditor and Publisher of Burning Deck Press, as well as the author or coauthor of more than three dozen books of poetry, fiction, and criticism. She has translated the work of Emmanuel Hocquard, Edmond Jabes and Friederike Mayrocker, among others. Her books include Reluctant Gravities, A Key Into the Language of America, and The Reproduction of Profiles, among others. She and Keith Waldrop are both Chevalier of Arts and Letters, an honor conferred on them by the Republic of France.
Keith Waldrop, along with his wife Rosmarie, co-edits Burning Deck Press. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and teaches at Brown University. Keith has authored many poetry collections and is the translator of The Selected Poems of Edmond Jabes, as well as works by Claude Royet-Journoud, Anne-Marie Albiach and Jean Grosjean. His poetry titles include Hegel’s Family, The Opposite of Letting the Mind Wander: Selected Poems and a Few Songs, Shipwreck in Haven, The Balustrade, Light While There is Light, The Locality Principle, Analogies of Escape, and Haunt. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and DAAD (Berlin) and is Brooke Russell Astor Professor of the Humanities at Brown.
Ray Ragosta’s collections of poetry include Varieties of Religious Experience, Grondines Episode, Sherds, and Opposite Ends. His work has also appeared in many literary magazines, including Shiny, Hambone, Shuffle Boil, Lingo, and Oblek. He works as a writer and editor.
Alison Bundy’s works of fiction include three books, Dunce Cap, Tale of a Good Cook, and A Bad Business. Her work has been widely published in magazines including Harper’s, The Chicago Review, First Intensity, Ploughshares, and others.