Afternoon of Poetry

The Friends of the Mattapoisett Library’s annual Afternoon of Poetry will be held on Saturday, April 14, 2:00 PM at the library. This year’s guests are Grey Held and Clara Silverstein.

Grey Held holds a BS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MFA from Temple University. He is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has had poems included in numerous anthologies including “Rough Places Plain,” edited by Mattapoisett’s own Margot Wizansky, and magazines including Potomac Review and Slipstream.  His poem “Vending Machine” was set to music by Paul Carey and has been performed by a cappella groups all over the country. Held’s book of poems, “Two-Star General” is being published by Brick Road Poetry Press. Through a prison outreach program he has led poetry writing workshops for prisoners in the Northeastern Correctional Center. He is currently Director of Client Services at Forrester Research in Cambridge.

Clara Silverstein, a long-time food writer in the Boston area, is the author of three cookbooks. Her latest, “A White House Garden Cookbook” (Red Rock Press), looks at the many ways that First Lady Michelle Obama is inspiring a nation of healthy eaters.  Recipes come from past and present White House kitchens, as well as kid-friendly community gardens nationwide. Clara’s first cookbook, “The Boston Chef’s Table” (Globe Pequot Press), presents more than 100 contemporary recipes from the city’s top chefs.  Clara is also co-author, with chef and company founder Marjorie Druker, of “The New England Soup Factory Cookbook” (Thomas Nelson).

Clara has published articles in Health magazine, Prevention, Runner’s World, American Heritage, and the Boston Globe. Formerly a food writer at the Boston Herald daily newspaper, Clara for 13 years informed readers about the city’s chefs, restaurants, and food trends. She also contributed to the “Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America.” Her poems and essays have been published in many literary journals.

Clara’s memoir “White Girl: A Story of School Desegregation” (University of Georgia Press) chronicles her experiences as a white child bused to predominantly African-American schools in the 1970s under a court desegregation order in Richmond, Virginia.  She teaches at Grub Street, Inc., consults with individual writers, and tutors students in history and English. During the summers, she directs the Chautauqua Writers’ Center, a series of creative writing workshops and author programs at the Chautauqua Institution. Clara recently completed an M.A. in History from the University of Massachusetts-Boston.

Come celebrate National Poetry Month with the Friends. Refreshments will be served and books will be available for purchase and signing.

Leave A Comment...

*