CavanKerry Poets Reading in Montclair April 4

On Thursday, April 4, 2019, the Montclair Monthly Poetry Series will feature four poets published by CavanKerry Press: Tina Kelley, Danny Shot, Margot Taft Stever and Joan Cusack Handler.

Margo Taft Stever’s book, Cracked Piano, will be published by CavanKerry Press and her chapbook, Ghost Moose, will be published by Kattywompus Press in 2019. Her four additional poetry collections include The Lunatic Ball; The Hudson Line, 2012; Frozen Spring, 2002; and Reading the Night Sky. Her poems have appeared  or are forthcoming in Canary, Plume, Blackbird, Salamander; Poem-A-Day, The Academy of American Poets, Cincinnati Review, Salamander, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Connecticut Review, Poet Lore, Seattle Review, and No More Masks. She is the founder of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and the founding and current co-editor of Slapering Hol Press. Her website is margotaftstever.com.

Tina Kelley’s third poetry collection, Abloom and Awry, came out in 2017 from CavanKerry Press, joining Precise (Word Press), and The Gospel of Galore, winner of a 2003 Washington State Book Award. Ardor, her first chapbook, won the Jacar Press chapbook competition and appeared in 2017. Winner of the 2014 New Jersey Poets Prize, she co-authored Almost Home: Helping Kids Move from Homelessness to Hope, and reported for The New York Times for ten years, sharing in a staff Pulitzer. Her writing has appeared in Poetry East, Southwest Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Best American Poetry 2009. She lives with her husband and two children in Maplewood, NJ.

Danny Shot was longtime publisher and editor of Long Shot arts and literary magazine, which he founded along with Eliot Katz in 1982 in New Brunswick, NJ. Born in the Bronx and raised in Dumont, NJ by German Jewish refugees, Danny graduated Rutgers College in 1980 with a B.A. in English. Shot’s poetry has appeared in: bum rush the page (Def Poetry Jam) Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe (Henry Holt), and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (Thunder’s Mouth) among other anthologies and numerous journals. Shot has, and continues to read his poetry throughout the United States. He was featured on the television show State of the Arts, NJ in July 2018. His play Roll the Dice, co-written with Lawrence Kelly was performed at the NYC Theater Summerfest in September 2018. Danny is currently Head Poetry Editor of Red Fez, an online magazine. He has spent over 30 years as a NYC public high school teacher, serving in the South Bronx, Harlem and Brooklyn. Mr. Shot lives in Hoboken, NJ (home of Frank Sinatra and baseball) where he was the most recent poet-in-residence of the Hoboken Museum. WORKS (New and Selected Poems) was published in March 2018 by CavanKerry Press.

Joan Cusack Handler is a poet, memoirist, publisher and psychologist whose creative project in her own writing and the work she publishes is the exploration of the emotional and psychological underpinnings of human experience. Her combined professions put her in a natural position to do that.  Her  poems have been widely published in over 40 literary journals and have received the Sampler Award from The Boston Review and five Pushcart nominations. She has four published books: three poetry and one prose memoir: GlOrious, The Red Canoe: Love in Its Making; Confessions of Joan the Tall, and Orphans. In her other lives, she’s the founder and publisher of CavanKerry Press Ltd, a literary press committed to art and community and author of the PsychologyToday.com blog, “Of Art and Science.”

An open reading from 6-7 pm will precede the featured readers who will begin at 7 pm.



This series is held at the Montclair Public Library Auditorium and hosted by Maria Gillan and and Laura Boss.

All readings in this series are free and open to the public.

Location: Montclair Public Library (Auditorium), 50 South Fullerton Avenue, Montclair, NJ    For location information, contact the library at 973-744-0500.