Buffalo Area Poetry & Literature Calendar (week of May 19-May 25)

Tuesday, 6 p.m.: Spring Writer's Night at Lock City Books featuring readings by Patricia Bond, Mark Hannon, Benjamin Joe, Rachel L. Joe (nee Johnson), Jane Sadowsky, and Ben Sherman.

Patricia Bond is the author of an award-winning contemporary romance From My Balcony and 3 soon-to-be-rereleased historical romances, By Love’s Honor Bound, Building a Christmas, and Arms of an Angel.
 

Mark Hannon is a retired firefighter who grew up in Buffalo. He is the author of the crime novels Every Man for Himself and The Vultures; a history, The Fire Laddies; and numerous short stories. He and his family make their home in Baltimore.
 

Benjamin Joe works at the local newspaper and when he is not doing journalism, he likes to write his own stories. Check out his work at http://linktr.ee/benmanjoe.
 

Poet & artist, Rachel L. Joe (nee Johnson) received an M.A. in English from SUNY University at Buffalo. Her poetry book, A Granddaughter's Memories (Foothills Publishing, 2021) honors her deceased grandparents. Her current writing project is based on her personal archive of a national historical event in 1992. She lived in Hawaii for 4 years and enjoys the writing life with her husband, Ben Joe.
 

Jane Sadowsky’s poetry has appeared in Beyond Bones, Earth’s Daughters, ACelebration of Western New York Poets, Poets Speak (while they still can), and the Buffalo News.

Ben Sherman is a local author dedicated to writing character driven stories about people being people. He is the author of Talons and Fangs, the first book in the Nightingale Chronicles series, and is well into writing the sequel Diamonds in the Rough. The series is High Fantasy but Low Adventure with a good dash of beginner level Xenofiction. It focuses on how characters that aren't some chosen hero or big bad evil live their lives when powerful magic suffuses every element of the world.

This event is for ages 18 and up. No registration required. Lock City Books is located at 8 Market Street Lockport, NY 14094. Parking available in marked Visitor spaces in the Bewley Building parking lot and along Market Street.

Thursday, 6 p.m.: Jennifer Kambat reads from her new memoir The Eighth Moon (Milkweed Editions) and joins in a conversation following the reading with Buffalo-based writer Laura Marris

When Jennifer Kabat moves to the Catskills in 2005, she has no idea it was the site of the Anti-Rent War, an early episode of American rural populism. Prompted to leave London following a mysterious illness that seems to be caused by life in the city itself, she finds in these ancient mountains—at once the northernmost part of Appalachia and a longtime refuge for New Yorkers—a place “where the land itself holds time.” She forges friendships with her new neighbors and explores the countryside on logging roads and rutted lanes, finding meadows dotted with milkweed in bloom, saffron salamanders, a blood moon rising over Munsee, Oneida, and Mohawk land. As the Great Recession sets in and a housing crisis looms, she supports herself with freelance work and adjunct teaching, slowly learning of the 1840s uprising, when poor tenant farmers fought to redistribute their landlords’ vast estates. In the farmers’ socialist dreams, she discovers connections to her parents’ collectivist values, as well as to our current moment. Threaded with historical documents, the natural world, and the work of writers like Adrienne Rich and Elizabeth Hardwick, Kabat weaves a capacious memoir, where the past comes alive in the present. Rich with unexpected correspondences and discoveries, this visionary and deeply compassionate debut gives us a new way of seeing and being in place—one in which everything is intertwined and all at once.

Fitz Books and Waffles, 433 Ellicott St., Buffalo. Free and open to the public.

Thursday, 7:30 p.m.: Pure Ink Poetry's Southern Fried Send-Off performance and fund-raiser at Just Buffalo Literary Center . In the middle of June, in Pompano Beach, FL over thirty teams from across the U.S. will compete in the 32nd Annual Southern Fried Poetry Slam Festival, one of the largest regional slam poetry festivals in North America. Buffalo’s own, Pure Ink Poetry will be one of those teams competing in this tournament.

In this send-off event, Team Pure Ink, which consists of Brandon Williamson, Yamilla Tate, Jheanelle Kerr, Dallas Taylor, and  J.B. Stone, will showcase some of the poetry they’ll be bringing with them from the Buffalo area in an effort to raise some last minute funds for their trip. This event will be free and open to the public. Vendors tables will be available as well as other opportunities to donate what you can. Proceeds will go to the team’s funding for ground transportation, portion of accommodations,and other expenses related to the event.

Just Buffalo Literary Center, 46 Washington St., 2nd floor., Buffalo. Free and open to the public.