Join us on Wednesday, May 6th for the latest edition of the Hoot, featuring Linda Bratcher Wlodyka and Meg Smith! See you at Laney & Lu!
Linda Bratcher Wlodyka retired as an educator from Mt. Greylock Regional School District in Williamstown in 2020. She served as the Massachusetts Beat Poet Laureate (2023-2025). Linda was commissioned in 2025 to write an ekphrastic poem to a sculpture titled, In Sync, sculpted by Kathy Ruttenberg from Hudson Valley, NY. The statue was on loan to The Mount in Lenox, MA, the summer home of writer Edith Wharton. Linda’s poem, “Secret Cottage,” was voted Best in the Berkshires (2012). Linda self-published 3 chapbooks: Her Spirited Cameo, Voices from the Blue Room and Tick Tock. Her first full-length poetry collection released September 2023 is titled, If Brambles Were Bookends Collected Poems© 2023, published by Human Error Publishing. Linda represented The National Beat Poetry Foundation at the 2024 Lowell Celebrates Kerouac. She featured her original poems written in the vein of Jack Kerouac and participated in an all-women panel discussing the past and current beat poetry movements. She has been featured as poet of the week and poet of the month in Beatlife, an online magazine, and her poetry has been widely anthologized. She is a member of The Florence Poet’s Society and is on their editing board for their yearly anthology, Silkworm.
Meg Smith is a poet, journalist, dancer and events producer living in Lowell, Mass. Her poetry has appeared in Cafe Review, The Lowell Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, and many more. She was a 2025 nominee for the Stanley Kunitz Poetry Medal. She is creator and director of Poe in Lowell, celebrating Edgar Allan Poe’s three visits to Lowell, and senior board member of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac!, which honors Lowell-born author Jack Kerouac. Her journalism work has been honored with first-place awards from the New England Newspaper and Press Association.
Meg has been a longstanding presence in the world of horror and gothic literature, and has been published in The Horror Zine, Dark Dossier, Dark Moon Rising, and many more, and has been nominated for St. Martin’s Press Year’s Best Horror. She is author of six poetry books and a short fiction collection, The Plague Confessor. She welcomes visits to megsmithwriter.com. Instagram: megmsithwriter, poeinlowell, lowelcelebrateskerouac, midnightmews
