Oppression: A Community Reading
Oppression: A Community Reading
We are in an era of systemic oppression, a time in which authoritarian practices have eroded our civil liberties. In 2025, 32 people died in ICE custody. Religious bigotry, constraints on reproductive rights, restrictions on voting rights, as well data and surveillance of individuals, have become not the exception but the norm. Please join Judith Skillman as she reads some poems from her new book Oppression. Bring your own poems or prose pieces on the subject of tyranny, despotism, and/or exploitation to share with the audience. There will be ample time for discussion and Q&A.
Free admission to this event is made possible with support from 4Culture.
Mary Ellen Talley
Mary Ellen Talley’s poems have appeared in many journals including Louisville Review, Deep Wild, and Trampoline as well as in multiple anthologies. Her chapbooks are: “Postcards from the Lilac City” from Finishing Line Press, “Taking Leave” from Kelsay Books, and “Infusion” online at Red Wolf Journal. She worked for many years as a school-based speech/language pathologist (SLP) in public schools. Her website is www.maryellentalley.com.
Michael Spence
Michael Spence served a hitch as a naval officer aboard an aircraft carrier then drove public-transit buses in the Seattle area for thirty years, retiring from the latter job on Valentine's Day, 2014. His poems have recently appeared in Alabama Literary Review, Arkansas Review, Catamaran, The Hopkins Review, Lousiana Literature, North American Review, Tampa Review, Tar River Poetry, and Terrain.org. New work is forthcoming in The Hudson Review, The Madrona Project, The Southern Review, and the anthology, Transformations. His latest book, Umbilical (St. Augustine's Press, 2016), won The New Criterion Poetry Prize. His new volume, Brine Evaporates to Salt on Blacktop, is slated for publication this fall by Able Muse Press.
Katherine Grace Bond
Katherine Grace Bond is a poet, novelist, and developmental editor whose work explores family, history, and the rifts in our culture and ourselves. She is the author of seven books, including the YA novel The Summer of No Regrets (Sourcebooks), the children’s book The Legend of the Valentine (Zondervan), and, most recently, the Twentieth Anniversary Edition of Considering Flight (Goldfish Press).
She has taught writing for more than three decades and has held residencies at Jack Straw Cultural Center and Camac Centre d’Art in Marnay-sur-Seine, France. She is the founder of Labyrinth: A Writers’ Haven, providing community, craft, and coaching to writers at all stages.
David Horowitz
David D. Horowitz founded and manages Rose Alley Press. His latest poetry collection, from Rose Alley Press, is Slow Clouds over Rush Hour. He recently edited Purr and Yowl, a cat-themed poetry anthology published by World Enough Writers. His poems have been published in many journals and anthologies, including The Lyric, Raven Chronicles, Terrain.org, Better Than Starbucks, Coffee Poems, Asses of Parnassus, and Sparks of Calliope, and his essays regularly appear in Exterminating Angel. Visit rosealleypress.com.
Judith Skillman
Judith Skillman’s new collection is Oppression, Shanti Arts. Her work has appeared and/or is forthcoming in Bracken, Commonweal, The Southern Review, Zyzzyva, and other literary journals. She has received funding from The Academy of American Poets and Artist Trust. Oscar the Misanthropist won the 2021 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. Visit www.judithskillman.com
https://www.facebook.com/judith.skillman
jskillman54.bsky.social
https://www.instagram.com/judithskillman54
https://mobile.twitter.com/judithskillman
