Caffe Lena Poetry Open Mic Featuring Karen Skolfield & Bunkong Tuon

Takes place on the first Wednesday of every month. Sign ups at 7, readings at 7:30. Open mic poets read two short poems or one longer poem. All ages & styles welcome. Karen Skolfield's book Frost in the Low Areas (2013) won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry and the First Book Award from Zone 3 Press, and was a Must-Read Massachusetts book for 2014. She is a 2014 Massachusetts Cultural Council fellow and winner of the 2014 Split This Rock poetry prize and the 2012 Oboh Prize from Boxcar Poetry Review. Skolfield is the poetry editor for Amherst Live, a twice-yearly production of poetry, politics, and more, and she's a contributing editor at the literary magazines Tupelo Quarterly and Stirring. She teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she earned her Master of Fine Arts. Bunkong Tuon teaches in the English Department at Union College. His poetry and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in The Paterson Literary Review, The New York Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, The Más Tequila Review, Numéro Cinq, Misfit Magazine, Nerve Cowboy, among others. Gruel, his first full-length collection of poems, is forthcoming by NYQ Books.