MoSt Poetry On Saturday featuring Susan Kelly-DeWitt & Mary Mackey

Please join us at the Carnegie Arts Center, 250 North Broadway in Turlock, for a MoSt Poetry reading featuring Susan Kelly-DeWitt and Mary Mackey on Saturday, February 24, 2024 at 2:00 p.m. PST.  An open mic will follow the featured poets, and light refreshments will be available. This reading, hosted by Gary Thomas, is free and open to the public.

Susan Kelly-DeWitt is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow and the author of Gatherer’s Alphabet (Gunpowder Press, CA Poets Prize, 2022), Gravitational Tug (Main Street Rag, 2020), Spider Season (Cold River Press, 2016), The Fortunate Islands (Marick Press, 2008) and a number of previous small press collections. Her work has also appeared in many anthologies, and in print and online journals at home and abroad. She is currently a member of the National Book Critics Circle, the Northern California Book Reviewers Association and a contributing editor for Poetry Flash. A new book, Frangible Operas: Selected Uncollected is forthcoming from Gunpowder Press. For more information, please visit her website at www.susankelly-dewitt.com.

Mary Mackey became a writer by running high fevers, tramping through tropical jungles, being swarmed by army ants, and reading. She is the author of eight poetry collections, including Sugar Zone, winner of a PEN Award, and The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams, winner of a the 2019 Eric Hoffer Award for Best Book Published by a Small Press. Her poetry has been praised by Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield, D. Nurkse, Al Young, Rafael Jesús González, and Maxine Hong Kingston for its beauty, precision, originality, and extraordinary range. She is also the author of 14 novels including The New York Times bestseller A Grand Passion.  Recent honors and awards include:

2023 City of Angels Women’s Film Festival Award Official Selection for Best Feature Screenplay for “The Stand In.” The screenplay is an adaptation of Mary Mackey’s novel of the same title, published under her pen name “Kate Clemens.”

Northern California Book Reviews Award Finalist for “Creativity: Where Poems Begin, Best Book of Creative Nonfiction Published in 2023.

Winner of City of Angels Film Festival for Best Short Screenplay for “Time Piece “ 2022.

“Lady Danger,” Nominated for Best Feature-Length Screenplay, City of Angels Womens Film Festival, 2022.