2019-2020 Hoot

September 4th, 2019: Robert Carr and John Burroughs
*Postponed until further notice*October 2019: Andrew Merton and Jim Rioux
November 6th, 2019: UNH MFA Poets Casey Lynn Roland and Anna Ohara
December 4th, 2019: Adrian Blevins and Carand Burnet

Robert Carr is the author of Amaranth, published in 2016 by Indolent Books and The Unbuttoned Eye, a full-length 2019 collection from 3: A Taos Press. Among other publications his poetry appears in the American Journal of Poetry, Bellevue Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, Massachusetts Review and Rattle. Robert is poetry editor with Indolent Books and an editor for the anthology Bodies and Scars, available through the Ghana Writes Literary Group in West Africa. Additional information can be found at robertcarr.org

Andrew Merton has been a reporter and columnist for the Boston Herald Traveler and the Boston Globe.  His nonfiction has appeared in publications including The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Ms. Magazine, Glamour, and Boston Magazine. His poetry has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Rialto, Comstock Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Louisville Review, The American Journal of Nursing, and elsewhere.  He is the author of three books of poetry: Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs (Accents Publishing, 2012), Lost and Found (Accents Publishing, 2016), and Final Exam (Accents Publishing, 2019).  He is a professor emeritus of English at the University of New Hampshire.

Adrian Blevins is the author of the full-length poetry collections Appalachians Run Amok, winner of the Wilder Prize, Live from the Homesick Jamboree, and The Brass Girl Brouhaha; the chapbooks Bloodline and The Man Who Went Out for Cigarettes; and the co-edited Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean: Meditations on the Forbidden from Contemporary Appalachia. She is the recipient of many awards including a Kate Tufts Discovery Award for The Brass Girl Brouhaha and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, among others. She teaches at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

Andrew Periale is an Emmy-nominated artist, and has toured throughout the US as actor and puppeteer. He’s been the editor of Puppetry International magazine for 33 years, and has written plays that have been performed all over the country. His poetry has appeared in such publications as Light Quarterly, Yellow Medicine Review, Entelechy International, and Burnt Bridge as well as numerous anthologies. A long-time member of City Hall Poets (Portsmouth, NH), he also served for four years as the Poet Laureate of Rochester. In 2013-14 he was the state coordinator for the national poetry recitation competition Poetry Out Loud. He is currently tours a one-man show called “Mano-a-Monolog,” and newly premiered a second show: “Forman Brown, New Hampshire’s Forgotten Poet.”

Charles Coe is the author of three books of poetry: All Sins Forgiven: Poems for my Parents, Picnic on the Moon, and most recently Memento Mori, all published by Leapfrog Press. His novella Spin Cycles, about a homeless man living on the street in Boston, was published by Gemma Media. Peach Pie, a short film by filmmaker Roberto Mighty based on his poem “Fortress,” has been shown in film festivals nationwide. Charles is the recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the St. Botolph Club of Boston, and has been selected by the Associates of the Boston Public Library as a “Boston Literary Light.” In 2017 he served as an Artist-in-Residence for the city of Boston where he created an oral history project that featured people who live and work on Mission Hill. Charles teaches poetry and prose in a variety of settings, including grade schools, high schools, colleges, writing conferences and private workshops. He has served as poet-in-residence at Wheaton College and at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York, and is adjunct professor of English at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, teaching poetry and nonfiction.

Wyn Cooper has published five books of poems, most recently Mars Poetica. His work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Slate, and more than 100 other magazines, as well as in 25 anthologies of contemporary poetry. His poems have been turned into songs by Sheryl Crow, David Broza, and Madison Smartt Bell. He has taught at Bennington College, Marlboro College, the University of Utah, and at The Frost Place, and has given readings throughout the United States as well as in Europe. He worked for two years at the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, a think tank run by the Poetry Foundation, and now lives in Boston and works as a freelance editor. www.wyncooper.com

Bertha Rogers is a poet, visual artist, and educator. Her poems appear in literary journals and anthologies, and her poetry collections: Wild, Again (Salmon, Ireland, 2019), Heart Turned Back (Salmon, Ireland, 2010); Even the Hemlock: Poems, Illuminations, Reliquaries (2005); and several chapbooks. Her translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf was published in 2000, and her translation with illuminations of the Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Poems from the Exeter Book, Uncommon Creatures, was published in 2019. She has won writing and visual arts awards and residency fellowships to the MacDowell Colony, Hawthornden International Writers Retreat, and others. She has received several NYSCA Decentralization and NYFA grants for her interdisciplinary work, including 2014 and 2016 awards for her Natural Catskills series, “The Wild Ones: Creatures of the Catskills.” She has edited more than 100 poetry and visual arts anthologies, and her writings on teaching and cultural diversity in arts education have been published in Open the Door, Education Week, The Poetry Foundation, and others. In 1992, with her late husband, Ernest M. Fishman, she founded Bright Hill Press & Literary Center of the Catskills (www.brighthillpress.org); she retired as executive director in 2017. She serves as Poet Laureate of Delaware County. Her website is www.bertharogers.com.