Join us for a candlelit reading and literary party, celebrating local authors & the Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop community, in celebration of ten years! The festivities kick off around 6:30pm with live music, refreshments, and mingling! At 7pm, guests will gather to hear our Featured Authors. Lineup, bios, and more details will be added here as the event evolves. But for now, please make sure to RSVP at the link here (which links to our Events page) to get updates, and make sure to mark your calendar! Free & open to all! Please spread the word!

FEATURED AUTHORS

MIRA BARTÓK believes that stories are the lifeblood of a culture. She is the author/illustrator of the New York Times bestselling memoir, The Memory Palace, which won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award. Her writing has appeared in many places, including the Massachusetts Review, Jubilat, Another Chicago Magazine, Fourth Genre, the Kenyon Review, Psychology Today, Tikkun, the Bellingham Review, among others. She has also written and illustrated over 35 books for children, most recently, The Wonderling: Songcatcher, which was long listed for the UK’s Carnegie Medal and is currently in development for a feature film. The sequel, The Wonderling: Singing Tree, is forthcoming from Candlewick Press and Walker Books UK. Mira holds an MFA in painting and film from the University of Illinois and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts in Fiction. She has been a professor and lecturer at numerous institutions, including Smith College, the University of Illinois, the University of Chicago’s Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, among others. She is also a Fulbright Scholar in Folklore and Anthropology, specializing in the oral traditions of indigenous circumpolar peoples.

JOY DEVA BAGLIO loves asking "What if?" in her fiction, and in general. She ​is the founder/director of Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop (PVWW) and Pushcart Prize-winning writer of short fiction. Her short stories have appeared widely, in journals such as One Story, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Tin House, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, The Iowa Review, Coast, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere. Recent honors include fellowships, scholarships, and grants from Yaddo, Ragdale, The Elizabeth George Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Sewanee Writers Conference, The Speculative Literature Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, The Porches, The Kerouac Project, and Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Two short stories have been optioned for film/TV. Joy holds an MFA from The New School and is currently at work on multiple novels. She's represented by Peter Steinberg at United Talent Agency (UTA). In her free time, she plays the bagpipes. She writes a free craft Substack (Alone in a Room) and can be found on all social media platforms. Visit her online at www.joybaglio.com.

GAIL THOMAS' books are Trail of Roots, Leaving Paradise, Odd Mercy, Waving Back, No Simple Wilderness, and Finding the Bear. Her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies including CALYX, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, North American Review, among others. Among her awards are the Charlotte Mew Prize from Headmistress Press, the Narrative Poetry Prize from Naugatuck River Review, the Massachusetts Center for the Book’s “Must Read” for Waving Back, the Quartet Journal’s Editor’s Choice Prize, and Seven Kitchen Press’s A.V. Christie Chapbook Series award for Trail of Roots. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and Ucross, and several poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Gail visits schools and libraries with her therapy dog and works with immigrant and refugee communities in Western Massachusetts. You may read more about her work at www.gailthomaspoet.com.

MICHAEL MERCURIO is a poet, editor, and occasional critic who lives and writes in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. His poems, interviews, and reviews have been published or are forthcoming in Palette Poetry, Thrush, The Common, Cream City Review, Sierra, and elsewhere. Michael founded and curates What The Universe Is: A (Virtual) Reading Series, where established and emerging poets read together monthly on Zoom. You can learn more at www.poetmercurio.com.

JULIA MORGAN MCKENZIE leads the memoir section of PVWW's 10-Month Manuscript Program. She went to Bard College before earning a master’s in education at Harvard and—many years later—an MFA at Stonecoast.Her first book, The Book Keeper: A Memoir of Race, Love, and Legacy (Swallow Press, 2020, published under her married name) was called “a carefully crafted memoir for all readers who care about family connections and legacies and about multiracial identity in an increasingly complex world” by Library Journal. Her essays have appeared in Electric Literature, The Masters Review, Solstice Literary Magazine, Inside Higher Education, and elsewhere. She’s hard at work on her second book, a memoir about race, mid-motherhood, and anxiety. She directs the Williams College Writing Center and lives in western Massachusetts.