Search People:


Student Engagement & Inclusion

Poetry Reading & Workshop with Jen, Jason & Scott

Everyone is invited to join us for a reading and workshop with Jen Ashburn is the author of The Light on the Wall (Main Street Rag, 2016) and has work published in numerous venues, including the podcast The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. Her poem "Our Mother Drove Barefoot" was selected for the 2018 Public Poetry Project by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book and distributed on posters across the state. She holds an MFA from Chatham University, where she taught creative writing to women in the Allegheny County Jail through Chatham's Words Without Walls program. She's currently working on her second full-length poetry collection, tentatively titled Our Own Thin Ways, and a memoir.

 

Here are some links to published work:

 

https://www.thefourthriver.com/issue/2018/10/22/mountain-split-fern-hollow-creek-falls-ravine-trail

 

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=our+mother+drove+barefoot+jen+ashburn&&view=detail&mid=E5DD4ADBD98DDB1AB0E4E5DD4ADBD98DDB1AB0E4&&FORM=VRDGAR

 

https://www.writersalmanac.org/index.html%3Fp=9586.html

 

Jason Irwin is the author of A Blister of Stars (Low Ghost, 2016), Watering the Dead (Pavement Saw Press, 2008), winner of the Transcontinental Poetry Award, and the chapbooks Where You Are (Night Ballet Press, 2014), and Some Days It's A Love Story (Slipstream Press, 2005). He grew up in Dunkirk, NY, and now lives in Pittsburgh.

 

http://jasonirwin.blogspot.com/

 

 

BIO for Scott W. Williams

 

SUNY University at Buffalo Professor Emeritus Dr. Scott W. Williams is a poet and author of short stories. He has been featured in New York, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Ontario and Virgin Islands. His poems appeared in "Sunday Review", "Coffeehouse Writings From the Web", "Juniper", "Peach Mag", "Ground & Sky", "Scryptic Magazine", "Le Mot Juste", "Punch Drunk Press", "Journal of Humanistic Mathematics."  The most recent of his six books are "Bonvibre Haiku" (CWP Press-2017) and a book of micro-fiction "Natural Shrinkage" (Destitute Press-2018). Scott edits the syfy poetry&flash-fiction anthology series, "A Flash of Dark" (Writers Den-2018) and "A Flash of Dark vol 2" (Writers Den-2018). Williams hosts workshops of the poetic forms Ghazal and Haiku and co-hosts the series Second Stage Writers (with Dr. Max Stephen in Buffalo, NY) and Poets Soup (with Victoria Hunter in Canandaigua, NY).

Musician Dez Duron

Dez Duron is an artist and songwriter from Shreveport, LA. He began singing at a young age in his parent’s church, even touring with different singing groups made up of his siblings. After taking a break from the football team at Yale University to pursue music in Los Angeles, Dez reached National Prominence on NBC’s hit series The Voice. His old soul crooner style mixed with pop sensibilities gained him a spot in the Top 8 and made him the last man standing on team Christina Aguilera.

Since The Voice Dez Duron has traveled the world singing and speaking. He is currently living in New York City and continues to travel and sing while working on new music set to release in 2018.

 

“I’m impressed with the fact that you can sing as well as you can”

— Cee Lo Green

“There’s a true star quality that you have” 

— Christina Aguilera

“We’ve all known you’re a star” 

— Blake Shelton