Location
Doug Anderson & Matthew J. Spireng
Join us to hear two distinctive men of letters read from their award-winning books! An open mic will follow. If you have a poem, essay, short story, or song to share, you’re warmly invited to sign-up before the reading.
About the Readers
Matthew J. Spireng of Lomontville is a widely published, award-winning poet. His full-length book What Focus Is was published in 2011 by WordTech Communications. His first full-length book, Out of Body, won the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award and was published by Bluestem Press at Emporia State University. His first chapbook, Inspiration Point, won the 2000 Bright Hill Press Poetry Chapbook Competition. He is also the author of four other chapbooks: Clear Cut; Young Farmer; Encounters; and Just This. Since 1990, more than 900 of his poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies across the United States including North American Review, Tar River Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, Louisiana Literature, English Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Yankee, Chronogram and The Poets Guide to the Birds. Spireng has won five national contests for his individual poems and is an eight-time Pushcart Prize nominee.
Doug Anderson's first full-length book of poems, The Moon Reflected Fire, won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and his second book, Blues for Unemployed Secret Police, a grant from the Academy of American Poets. His most recent book is Horse Medicine (Barrow Street Press, 2015). He has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Massachusetts Artists Foundation and other funding organizations. He has taught at Smith and Emerson Colleges, and in the MFA programs at Bennington College and Pacific University of Oregon. He was for many years a teaching affiliate of the Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at UMASS Boston. His memoir, Keep Your Head Down, was published by W.W. Norton in 2009. Doug has published poems in past and current editions of Poetry, The Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, Field, Cimarron Review, and other publications. A writer and photographer, he lives in Palmer, Massachusetts.
