YSU’s Summer Festival of the Arts is the one of the highlights of our year!
And if that weren’t enough happiness, wait until you see the posters we’re giving away, designed by graphic artist Laura Garvin, featuring Words Made Visible poems by Valentina Ranaldi-Adams, Allison Pitinii Davis, Elliot Nicely, Craig Paulenich, & Laura Grace Weldon. We imagine the posters in classrooms, dorm rooms, writing rooms, waiting rooms, hallways, offices, doors, and everywhere.
At 2:00 Saturday in the Chestnut Room of Kilcawley Center, Words Made Visible finalists Dianne Borsenik and Elliot Nicely of Cleveland, Luke Martinucci of the Lewis School in Youngstown and Craig Paulenich of Salem will read their award-winning poems.
Allison Pitinii Davis is the author of Line Study of a Motel Clerk (Baobab Press, 2017), a full-length collection about small family businesses in the Youngstown area, and Poppy Seeds (Kent State University Press, 2013), winner of the Wick Poetry Chapbook Prize. She holds an MFA from Ohio State University and fellowships from Stanford University’s Wallace Stegner program, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Severinghaus Beck Fund for Study at Vilnius Yiddish Institute. Her work has recently appeared in Best American Poetry 2016, Crazyhorse, and The Missouri Review. She will begin a PhD at The University of Tennessee in Fall 2017.
Luke Martinucci is 13 years old and has just completed eighth grade at the Valley Christian School Lewis Center in downtown Youngstown. He live in Poland, Ohio.
Elliot Nicely is a poet and teacher from Lyme Township, Ohio. In recent years, he relocated to Lakewood, Ohio and released his first chapbook Tangled Shadows: Senryu and Haiku (Rosenberry Books, 2013). Over the last decade, his poetry has appeared across four continents and in more than a dozen anthologies.
Craig Paulenich is Professor of English at Kent State University-Salem, where he has worked since 1989; he lives outside Guilford Lake.
Lit Youngstown will be at the festival all weekend, Saturday 10-6 and Sunday 11-5. Thank you to our volunteers who have offered an hour or two in the tent! Sunday afternoon we’ll choose the winning ticket for a stunning, full-sized, hand-crafted quilt.
Stop by to hear the reading, pick up a poster, and cheer us on.