Write Action Spotlight Reading 2019

Check out Brattleboro’s vibrant writing community at the Write Action Spotlight Reading! Six local writers will read from their recently published books. Plus the two first-place winners of this year’s Write Action poetry and prose annual contest will read their winning pieces. Readings will be approximately ten minutes each. Book sale and signing will follow.

Ea Burke was born, raised and educated in Philadelphia. In 1980 he settled in Vermont, where he has raised his family and practiced law. Ea’s poetry has been published in a number of literary journals and poetry collections over the years. His novel, “Christine, Released,” about a sixteen year old girl’s odyssey that takes her into the punishing world of cocaine, is published by Running Wild Press, and due out this October. His short story, Maia’s Call appears in the Running Wild Short Story Anthology, Volume 3, and will be released in September.

Charles Butterfield has turned his attention to creative writing since retiring from teaching science.  A new book of his poems, Morning Watch, will be released from Finishingline Press in mid-October. He has published two previous collections.   Charles will read Terran, awarded first place in the 2019 Write Action prose-writing contest. Of this piece, the judge has written, “In Terran physical detail is balanced with introspection in this sketch which touches on the awkward, tender comradery of two relative strangers joined in a common task.“

Elayne Clift, a Vermont Humanities Council Scholar, is an award-winning writer and journalist whose work appears in numerous publications internationally. Clift, who formerly worked internationally on public health, communications, and gender issues, published TAKE CARE: Tales, Tips and Love from Women Caregivers, her 4th anthology, in 2017. Her latest book, Around the World in Fifty Years: Travel Tales from a Not So Innocent Abroad appeared in 2019 (BraughlerBooks).

Terry Hauptman is the author of five full length poetry collections. She has taught World Art, Poetry, and Ethnopoetics at several universities. Most recently she taught intensive Poetry workshops and Multicultural Art History classes at Green Mountain College. She will be reading from The Tremulous Seasons, the third book in the triptych from North Star Press. The vision is historic, imaginative, and revelatory in depth and vision.

Christian McEwen is a writer, educator and cultural activist, currently based in Williamsburg, MA. Her book World Enough & Time: On Creativity & Slowing Down is now in its seventh printing. Her most recent book is Legal Tender: Women & the Secret Life of Money. Lively and surprising,  with a focus on childhood memories, adult challenges,  the joys of generosity and abundance, and the inequities of  race and class and gender, it is the fruit of more than 50 hands-on interviews. 

Lynn Martin‘s poetry has appeared in numerous journals including Calliope, River City Review, South Florida Review, The Garden State, and Green Mountains Review. She also has work in the anthologies, Heartbeat of New England, My Lover Is A Woman, Tail Feathers, and Connections:New York City Bridges in Poetry. She has four poetry books: Visible Signs of Defiance, Talking to the Day,  Birds of a Feather. and Living Diversity, her most recent book. Of her work, Martin says, “My hope is my writing opens doors for women just beginning, and speaks to the world as family.“

Charles Monette, Winner of the 2019 Write Action Poetry Contest, is a father, poet, playwright, director, actor, carpenter & storyteller.  Born in Manhattan, he haslived in the Brattleboro area since 1980.  Charles has written 7 plays, and has actedin two and directed five.  Charles writes a column, Meanderings, for a local online magazine, vermontviews.org that is a prose/poetry hybrid chronicling his hikes on Black Mountain in Dummerston, Vt. Of his winning poem, the judge wrote,  “An Bian’s Bullet Ballet was chosen for the subtly complex emotions in poet and reader, both unpleasant and pleasant – daring.”

Toni Ortner has had 26 books published by fine small presses. She hosts the Write Action Radio Hour the fourth Sunday of each month. Her recent writing  can be seen at vermontvviews.org under Old Lady Blog. Ortner will read from her most recent book, Daybook I published by Deerbrook Editions. It combines dream.. thought memory, and events to create a fluid landscape that captures the interstices between a rich inner life …and its outer manifestations.