Watershed Literary Events Poetry Reading December 8

Watershed Literary Events, a spoken-word series sponsored by the Department of Recreation and Cultural Affairs and the Meadowland Park Conservancy, will host its final reading of 2024 on Sunday, December 8 at 3 pm in The Loft, Baird Community Center, 3rd floor, located at 5 Mead Street, South Orange.

Four outstanding poets will join us in celebrating The Night Heron Barks and Ran Off With the Star Bassoon, two online literary journals based in New Jersey that have become essential reading. The event is free and open to the public.

Rogan Kelly is the founder and editor of The Night Heron Barks and Ran Off With the Star Bassoon, two online literary spaces where poetry and short form prose, music, and art converge. His work has appeared in Diode, New Orleans Review, The Penn Review, Plume, RHINO, and elsewhere.

Bruce Lowry is a reader, writer and searcher in the vein of Walker Percy. His poetry and prose have been published widely, including in Poet Lore, Dos Passos Review, and Louisiana Literature, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, as well as “Best of the Net.”

Rachelle Parker is a Lyrical Poetic Storyteller. She is the author of Together We Remember the Gazelle, a winner of the Digging Press Chapbook Prize. Rachelle won the Furious Flower Poetry Prize in 2019 and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Rachelle was invited by master poet Cheryl Boyce Taylor to recite her work at the Brooklyn Museum 200th Anniversary Celebration.

Cheryl Vargas is the assistant editor at Ran Off With the Star Bassoon and The Night Heron Barks. She was the Poetry Prize Judge for the 2024 Poets of Kean University.

Now in its sixth year of programming, Watershed Literary Events promotes the work of a talented and diverse array of writers with a New Jersey connection.