The Middle Distance brings six incredible poets to the Toadstool Bookshop Saturday 5!7 at Noon! Get there early for a spot to listen to some incredible work!
Muggs Fogarty is a writer, performance artist, and vocalist from Providence, Rhode Island. Muggs fronts music acts Lookers and Bittersweet and is the host of “Chaos Hour” on Providence Community Radio. Muggs is a former director of Providence Poetry Slam and is the author of short poetry collections “Unburn” and “Sex Camel”. Muggs is a resident artist of AS220 and practices myofascial bodywork especially tailored to the needs of queer/trans people.
Zenaida Peterson is the author of their first full length book of poetry, Sky Responds to Our Holler. They are a Black southern Quaker mystic and a parent of 5 species of living in a queer coop in Boston. Zenaida is the founding director of Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam (FEMS). They have been on or coached 7 competing teams at national poetry slam competitions; placing in the top 10 each time including Rustbelt’s winning team in 2015. They were accepted into Pinkdoor, Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Incubator and CantoMundo writing retreats. You can find their work at Game Over Books, Pizza Pi Press, Button Poetry, Slam Find and Wusgood Black.
Audrey Zee Whitesides is a poet & musician from Elizabethtown, KY, currently living in Philadelphia, PA. You can find her live or recorded with artists like Speedy Ortiz, Mal Blum, & Mel Stone, or on the internet talking about reality tv, anime, & movies on the Shadow Play Gays podcast. She is the author of the zine Cuck Chronic, & her work has been published in Bullshit, Bone Bouquet, Eoagh, Glittermob, and more.
Sadie Dupuis is the guitarist, songwriter & singer of rock band Speedy Ortiz, as well as the producer & multi-instrumentalist behind pop project Sad13. Sadie heads the record label Wax Nine, edits its poetry journal, and has contributed to Spin, Tape Op, Talkhouse, and more. She holds an MFA in poetry from UMass Amherst, where she also taught writing. Mouthguard, her first book, was published in 2018 (Gramma); Cry Perfume, a second poetry collection, was released in 2022 (Black Ocean). She is an organizer with United Musicians & Allied Workers and its local UMAW Philly.
Sara Mae is a genderqueer raised on the Chesapeake Bay. They are a 2023 Big Ears Artist Scholar and a 2022 Tinhouse Summer Workshops alum. Their work appears in Passages North, the Georgia Review, POETRY and elsewhere. Their second chapbook, Phantasmagossip, won the Vinyl45 chapbook competition and was published with YesYes Books in 2025. They received their MFA from UTK. They write music as The Noisy, and currently live in Philly.
John-Francis Quiñonez (They/Them) is a Desert Flower & Current Resident of Providence, RI/ a Queer Writer & Multimedia Artist/ Chef at Big Feeling Ice Cream / Events Guardian/ Member of the Queer.Archive.Work. project & Binch Press/ has a collection of Poems with Write Bloody Publishing (‘22) entitled Keep Your Little Lights Alive (Poems After Kate Bush’s "Hounds of Love" & Others) / is thinking a lot about Emerging.
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