FREE
Poetry Palooza Kickoff Event
Join IWWG with your host Trish Hopkinson for an evening of celebration and a panel discussion on attention and inspiration for creative writers. We’ll be announcing the upcoming poetry programming, including both paid and no cost virtual events and workshops, and gathering together poets, writers, and educators, to talk about the pursuit of paying attention to ourselves and everything around us as a means for inspiration. Our award-winning panelists include: Kai Coggin, RescuePoetix, Cynthia Manick, Holly Lyn Walrath.
Trish Hopkinson is a poet, blogger, and advocate for the literary arts. You can find her online at SelfishPoet.com and provisionally in Utah, where she runs the regional poetry group Rock Canyon Poets and folds poems to fill Poemball machines for Provo Poetry. Her poetry has been published in several literary magazines and journals, including Tinderbox, Glass Poetry Press, and The Penn Review, and her fourth chapbook Almost Famous was published by Yavanika Press in 2019. Hopkinson happily answers to labels such as atheist, feminist, and empty nester; and enjoys traveling, live music, and her day job as a software product director.
RescuePoetix is a self-taught bilingual poet, with a deep love for knowledge, music, coffee, food, dogs, and the color red (not always in that order). She is twice honored Poet Laureate: The first Puerto Rican woman Poet Laureate of Jersey City, NJ (2020-2022) and State of New Jersey Beat Poet Laureate (2022-2024).
Winner of the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry, Cynthia Manick is the
author of No Sweet Without Brine (Amistad, 2023), editor of The Future of Black:
Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry, and author of Blue Hallelujahs. She currently serves on the editorial board of Alice James Books. She lives in New York, but
travels widely for poetry.
Holly Lyn Walrath is a writer, editor, and publisher. Her poetry and short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Fireside Fiction, Analog, and Flash Fiction Online. She is the author of several books of poetry including Glimmerglass Girl (2018), Numinose Lapidi (2020), and The Smallest of Bones (2021). In 2019, she launched Interstellar Flight Press, an indie SFF publisher dedicated to publishing underrepresented genres and voices.
Kai Coggin (she/her) is the inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Hot Springs, and author of four collections, most recently Mining for Stardust (FlowerSong Press 2021). She is host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Coggin is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review, and serves on the Board of Directors of the International Women’s Writing Guild. She lives with her wife and their two dogs in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.