Join us for a night of poetry, stories, and literary magic under the fairy lights on the lawn of the Florence Civic Center in downtown Florence MA! Hosted by PVWW Founder Joy Baglio, and featuring a lineup of local authors, poets, storytellers, PVWW writing instructors, and special guests! The readings will be followed by an opportunity to meet the authors, mingle, and socialize with other creatives, readers, and writers under the stars.
Live music before the readings begin, by David Clark Carroll of Daring Coyotes.
Where: Florence Civic Center (90 Park Street, Florence MA)
Time: 7 - 8:30pm
FREE TO ATTEND! RSVP here under "Tickets" or visit www.PioneerValleyWriters.org under Events!
Featured Authors / Bios
ALLEGRA HYDE is the author of the speculative story collection The Last Catastrophe, an Editors’ Choice selection for The New York Times and a finalist for the Ohioana Book Award. Her debut novel Eleutheria was named a "Best Book of 2022" by The New Yorker, shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Prize, and featured on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Her first story collection, Of This New World, won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Hyde has received four Pushcart Prizes and an O. Henry Prize. Her work has also been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Travel Writing, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. Her fiction, nonfiction, and humor writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, American Short Fiction, BOMB, and many other venues. Hyde has received fellowships and grants from the MacDowell Artist Residency, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, The Elizabeth George Foundation, the Lucas Artist Residency Program, the Jentel Foundation, The Studios at Key West, VCCA, the U.S. Fulbright Commission, and elsewhere. She lives with her partner, the writer Ariel Delgado Dixon. She currently teaches creative writing at Smith College.
ARIEL DELGADO DIXON was born and raised in Trenton, New Jersey. Her first novel, Don't Say We Didn't Warn You was published by Random House in 2022. Her second novel, Sourland, is forthcoming from Random House. Her writing has appeared in Kenyon Review, O: The Oprah Magazine, The Idaho Review, LitHub, and elsewhere. She lives in Western Massachusetts.
JOY BAGLIO is a writer of speculative-literary fiction and the Founder / Director of Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop. Her short stories are widely published and forthcoming in literary magazines such as One Story, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, The Iowa Review, American Short Fiction, Tin House, and forthcoming this year in One Story. Two of her short stories have recently been optioned for film. Joy has received fellowships from Yaddo, Ragdale, The Elizabeth George Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and The Kerouac Project, where she was a recent writer-in-residence for three months in Jack Kerouac’s bungalow in Orlando, Florida. She’s at work on two novels and a collection of short stories. Joy plays the bagpipes and can be found learning impossibly fast tunes when not writing or at her desk. Visit her online at www.JoyBaglio.com.
MELENIE FREEDOM FLYNN’s memoir-in-progress is currently being supported by grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation and Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, Djerassi Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency, and scholarships to the Community of Writers Workshop. Her essay “Message from Your Inmate” won the annual nonfiction contest at Vela Magazine and her recent work can be seen in Provincetown Arts Magazine and the Straw Dog Pandemic Poetry and Prose Journal. A graduate of the MFA Acting Program at California Institute of the Arts, Melenie has performed in theatres across the country including the New York Theatre Workshop, the Kitchen (NY), Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre (MA), and Majestic Theatre (MA).
PETER MEDEIROS teaches writing and Kung Fu--though never at the same time. His teaching in and around Boston remains a major inspiration for much of his fiction. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. He been publishing fiction since 2013, and was most recently featured in the July 2022 issue of GigaNotoSaurus.
YAGO COLÁS is a former professor of literature and writing. Today he lives in Easthampton, where he drives part-time for Uber and Lyft. A recipient of a Mass Cultural Council Grant for Creative Individuals, He has authored several books of non-fiction, including Crooked Roads, a memoir — initially composed using chance methods — chronicling the transformative encounters he has had while conversing with the strangers he drives.
SARAH LEVINE is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and author of two chapbooks, Take Me Home, a finalist for the New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and Her Man (New Megaphone Press, 2014). Her work has appeared and will be featured in a variety of places including: Poets and Writers, Passages North, Best New Poets anthology, and Green Mountains Review. She earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and MAT from Smith College. Levine has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and Martha's Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing. She teaches 12th Grade AP Literature and Creative Writing at Williston Northampton School where she currently holds the Richard C. Gregory Endowed Chair. Her debut collection, Each Knuckle with Sugar won the 2024 Driftwood Press Open Reading Contest and is nominated for the 2025 Massachusetts Book Award.
GAIL THOMAS is the author of six books of poetry: Trail of Roots, Leaving Paradise, Odd Mercy, Waving Back, No Simple Wilderness, and Finding the Bear. Her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies including CALYX, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, North American Review, among others. Among her awards are the Charlotte Mew Prize from Headmistress Press, the Narrative Poetry Prize from Naugatuck River Review, the Massachusetts Center for the Book’s “Must Read” for Waving Back, the Quartet Journal’s Editor’s Choice Prize, and Seven Kitchen Press’s A.V. Christie Chapbook Series award for Trail of Roots. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and Ucross, and several poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Gail visits schools and libraries with her therapy dog and works with immigrant and refugee communities in Western Massachusetts. You may read more about her work at www.gailthomaspoet.com.
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