Montclair Poetry Series Features Grisel Acosta, Susanna Rich and Vincent Toro Feb. 2

On Thursday, February 2, the Montclair Monthly Poetry Series will feature readings by featured poets GRISEL ACOSTA, SUSANNA RICH and VINCENT TORO.

Grisel Acosta is from Chicago, and is greatly influenced by growing up in Logan Square, the punk and house movements in the 1980s, her Cuban and Colombian background, and social justice in education. She is an assistant professor in English at a CUNY college in the Bronx. She lives in the Bronx with her husband, poet and playwright Vincent Toro. Her publications include work in these anthologies:"DreamWaterBreathDeath" in El Mundo Zurdo: Selected Works from the Meetings of the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldua (Aunt Lute Books, 2010), "Historia" in El Mundo Zurdo: Selected Works from the Meetings of the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldua (Aunt Lute Books, 2010), "Pressure Mix" in Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees (Lit Noire Publishing, 2006)

Susanna Rich is a 2009 Mid-America Emmy Nominee for her poetry in Craig Lindvahl's Cobb Field: A Day at the Ballpark; author of two Finishing Line Press poetry collections, The Drive Home (2009) and Television Daddy (2008); the recipient of the first joint Fulbright and Collegium Budapest Fellowship in Creative Writing; and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She won both the 20th Century America and 21st Century America Poetry contests of Sensations Magazine. Susanna is Professor of English and Recipient of the Presidential Excellence Award for Distinguished Teaching at Kean University in New Jersey.

Vincent Toro is a Puerto Rican poet, playwright, and performer from New York. He received his MFA in Creative Writing at Rutgers University, and is a Board Member of GlobalWRITES a nonprofit Literacy Arts through Technology organization. Mr. Toro worked as writer/artist in the schools for Teachers & Writers Collaborative, the Dreamyard Drama Project, The Dodge Poetry Foundation, Gemini Ink, and Cooper Union for the Advancement of Arts and Sciences. Prior to that, he was living as a writer and teacher in Turkey. He is winner of the 2015 Ahsahta Press Sawtooth Poetry Prize, is a 2014 Poet's House Emerging Poets Fellow, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry recipient, a member of the Macondo Writer's Foundation, and was a resident associate artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2001. He currently teaches at CUNY's Bronx Community College and for the Dreamyard Project, a nonprofit that places artists in public schools and local communities to teach their craft. His first collection, Stereo.Island.Mosaic (2016) was published by Ahasahta Press.

Acosta

Rich

Toro

The series is hosted by poets Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Laura Boss and held at the Montclair Public Library Auditorium. All readings are free and open to the public and begin at 7 pm. Time allowing, an open reading will follow the featured poets' readings.

Location: Montclair Public Library (Auditorium), 50 South Fullerton Avenue, Montclair, NJ
973-744- 0500 or contact LBoss79270@aol.com or mgillan@pccc.edu