11th Annual Mad River Literary Festival

All events at Founders Hall Auditorium
Northwest Connecticut Community College, Winsted

Free and open to the public

April 17-20: evening performances, 6:30pm on; Includes Open reading by students and community members, authors and poets.

April 17th - 6:30pm: Readings; 8 pm, 8 featured regional writers

April 18 - 6:30pm Ravi Shankar (Chester, CT)
8pm: Robyn Sarah (Montreal, QC)

April 19 - 6:30pm Kelly Link (Northampton, MA)
8pm: production of Tina Howe’s Painting Churches

April 20 - 8pm: production of Tina Howe’s Painting Churches


BIOS:

Ravi Shankar was born in Washington, DC., grew up in Manassas, Virginia, eventually matriculating at the University of Virginia and Columbia University. He is currently poet-in-residence at Central Connecticut State University and a founding editor of the internationally acclaimed online journal of the arts, Drunken Boat, . His poems have won a number of awards, including Gulf Coast's annual poetry prize. His critical work has previously appeared in Poets & Writers, Smartish Pace, The Iowa Review, and The AWP Writer's Chronicle. Shankar reviews poetry for the Contemporary Poetry Review and is currently editing an anthology of South Asian, East Asian, and Middle Eastern poetry. He lives with his family in the town of Chester, Connecticut. He does not play the sitar.

Robyn Sarah was born in New York City to Canadian parents, and has lived for most of her life in Montréal. A graduate of McGill University (where she majored in Philosophy and English) and of Québec's Conservatoire de Musique et d'Art Dramatique, she is the author of two collections of short stories, A Nice Gazebo, published by Véhicule Press in 1992. The same year, Anansi published The Touchstone: Poems New and Selected, a collection of her poetry spanning twenty years.

Kelly Link's first collection, Stranger Things Happen, was a Salon and Village Voice book of the year. She edited the anthology Trampoline, co-edits the zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and runs Small Beer Press books with her partner, Gavin J. Grant. With Ellen Datlow and Gavin J. Grant, she edits The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (St. Martin's Press). She once won a free trip around the world by answering the question "Why do you want to go around the world?" ("Because you can't go through it.") Link lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.



For further information, please contact

--Jessica Treat
Cultural Planning Committee [CPC] Co-Chair
Northwest Connecticut Community College
Winsted, CT 06098
jtreat@nwcc.commnet.edu
860-738-6340

New Poetry By Ravi Shankar