Lido Gallery Poetry and Fiction Reading

Join us for our Summer Poetry and Fiction Series.

Monday August 8th at 7pm we will feature the winners of the 2011 Springfed Arts Writing Contest.

-Sponsored by Lido Gallery & Springfed Arts.  This event is FREE and open to all.

-Hosted by John D. Lamb

Joe Ponepinto - 1st Place Prose

Joe Ponepinto is the Book Review Editor for the Los Angeles Review and a graduate of the MFA program at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, where he studied under award-winning authors including David Wagoner, Bruce Holland Rogers, and Kathleen Alcalá. He was a journalist, political speechwriter and business owner before turning to writing full time. His work has been published in the Los Angeles Review, Vestal Review, Apalachee Review, Tottenville Review, and 100 Stories for Queensland.

Alexander Morgan - 2nd Place Prose

Mary Minock - Honorable Mention Prose

Mary Minock grew up abnormal but it made her creative, and gave her a fine sense of humor. She writes poetry and prose that champions the underdog—whether the dog be a great city like Detroit, or whether the dog be a dog. She’s won some contests—recently Society for the Study of Midwest Literature Gwendolyn Brooks Award. Her latest publications are in Mid-America and the MacGuffin. She’s recently completed a memoir of her girlhood in Detroit entitled: The Way-Back Room, and she may have found a publisher but we'll let her announce that when she's ready.

Zilka Joseph - 1st Place Poetry

Zilka Joseph was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her chapbook, Lands I Live In, was nominated for a PEN America Beyond Margins Award. She was awarded a Zell Fellowship, a Hopwood Award, and the Elsie Choy Lee Scholarship at the University of Michigan. Her new chapbook What Dread (semi-finalist in the New Women’s Voices contest) is available for pre-ordering from the “New Releases and forthcoming titles” link at Finishing Line Press, www.finishinglinepress.com.

Sophia Rivkin - 2nd Place Poetry

Sophia Rivkin has a B.A. and M.A. from Wayne State University. She raised four kids, helped send her husband through school, then returned herself to school. She is published in Wayne Review, Driftwood Review, Garfield Review, The MacGuffin, Rattle, Poet Lore, Comstock Review. Rivkin has won prizes from MacGuffin, Rattle, Garfield Review, Blue Unicorn, Diner, Comstock Review, Passager and is a three-time winner of Springfed Arts poetry contest. She released her chapbook, The Valise. Rivkin's chapbook Naked Woman, will be published this year.

Olga Klekner - 3rd Place Poetry

Olga Klekner is a bilingual, award-winning poet published both in Hungarian and English. Her essays and poetry have appeared in anthologies in the United States and Canada, in The Ambassador Poetry Project, Renaissance City, The MacGuffin, and numerous volumes of Lyceum. She lives in the United States (Dearborn, Michigan), Canada and Hungary.

Linda Nemec Foster - Honorable Mention Poetry

Linda Nemec Foster is the author of nine collections of poetry including: A History of the Body; A Modern Fairy Tale: The Baba Yaga Poems (Trying to Balance the Heart ; Living in the Fire Nest ; Contemplating the Heavens; and Talking Diamonds. Foster has won numerous honors for her poetry including the International Creative Arts Award from the Polish American Historical Association, finalist for the Michigan Governor’s Artist Award, two grants from the Michigan Council for the Arts, fellowships from the Arts Foundation of Michigan and ArtServe Michigan, a teaching fellowship from the National Writers’ Voice Project, and a book award nomination from the Academy of American Poets.

Caroline Maun - Honorable Mention Poetry

Caroline Maun is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Her interests include modern poetry, women's writing, creative writing, and writing pedagogy. She is the editor of The Collected Poems of Evelyn Scott, author of a collection of poetry titled The Sleeping and a poetry chapbook titled Cures and Poisons. She is a songwriter with the pop band Black Hat, which released its first album, Phases of the Sun, in 2009. Pudding House Press published a second chapbook, Greatest Hits: 1999-2010.

Donna Vinstra - Honorable Mention Poetry