Poets Hanna Fox and Michael Comiskey read from their latest collections and discuss their inspiration and writing process. Refreshments will be served, Book signing to follow.
About the Collections:
"South Of Pittsburgh: Poems from Northern Appalachia" by Michael Comiskey is a volume of Northern Appalachian poetry that employs many traditional and modern poetic forms to survey the human and natural landscapes of that unique and often overlooked region. Featured forms include the sonnet, ballad, haiku, ode, villanelle, elegy, found poem, epigram, narrative poem, and blank and free verse. Topics are as varied as the delicacy of the region's wildflowers, the devastation wrought by mountaintop removal mining, Northern Appalachian folklore, and the state of the region's working class.
"The Mathematics of Age" by Hanna Fox is a poetry chapbook of personal memories and philosophical observations as the poet looks back on her life experiences from the perspective of being in her eighties. The poems also reflect on new concerns from the viewpoint of an octogenarian.
About the Poets:
Michael Comiskey writes short stories but mostly poetry, much of it formal and Appalachian. He wrote his first poem at age fifty. In 2024 he published his debut volume of poetry titled "South of Pittsburgh: Poems from Northern Appalachia". Michael’s poems have won prizes from the Pennsylvania Poetry Society and The Lyric magazine. He earned a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton in 1988. He is retired from teaching political science and economics at Penn State, and lives in his native Connellsville, Pennsylvania with his wife Mary Ann.
Hanna Fox, a longtime resident of Princeton, has been writing since the age of eleven. Her most recent book, published during the lockdown, is "The Mathematics of Age." Her monologue "Dorothea Lynde Dix: Woman with a Mission" was published in 2014. Her poems, feature articles, short stories and excerpts from novels have appeared in numerous publications, including the "Transatlantic Review", "Kelsey Review" and "The New York Times". She received a BA from Smith College and MA from Tufts University. She taught creative writing at the Princeton Adult School and Mercer County Community College, co-founded and ran the Princeton Writers Center a number of years ago. She has received several awards, including two New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowships.
