Pen Parentis Literary Salon Hosts Winter Poetry Night Tonight

The Pen Parentis Literary Salon opens its thirteenth season with its annual Winter Poetry night! Five notable poets -- Diana Whitney, Adam Penna, Sarah Gutowski, Jared Harel, and Jennifer Michael Hecht -- will read from new works and discuss how they balance a career in poetry with an active young family at home. The conversation will be moderated by novelists M. M. De Voe (founder of Pen Parentis) and Christina Chiu (Salons Curator). The networking begins at 7pm with wine and appetizers compliments of the Hotel Andaz Wall Street. Pen Parentis Literary Salons were founded to celebrate the creative work of writers that are also parents, and is a great place to meet industry notables. Winter Poetry is an annual event.

The celebration takes place tonight, January 13th at the elegant Hotel Andaz at 75 Wall Street. The night kicks off at 7:00 pm, and admission is free. RSVP is recommended, but not required -- the Pen Parentis Literary Salon is open to adults over the age of 21. Many of the poets' books will be available for purchase.

January 13th's Salon features:

Diana Whitney's first collection of poetry, Wanting It, was released in August 2014 by Harbor Mountain Press. She graduated from Dartmouth College and Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and attended the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. Diana's essays and poems have appeared in many publications, including The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Numero Cinq, Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, and the Crab Orchard Review. Her irreverent parenting column, Spilt Milk, was syndicated for four years in several newspapers, garnered a loyal readership, ran as a commentary series on VPR, and is now being collected into a book. Diana lives in Brattleboro, VT with her husband, two daughters (ages 7 and 9), and fourteen chickens. www.diana-whitney.com

Adam Penna is the author of two books of poems, Little Songs & Lyrics to Genji and The Love of a Sleeper. His forthcoming book, Talk of Happiness, will be published by S4N press in late 2015. He has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been featured on Verse Daily. He is an associate professor of English at Suffolk County Community College and lives in East Moriches with his love, six cats and two wonderful stepchildren.

Sarah Kain Gutowski is the author of Fabulous Beast: The Sow, a chapbook published by Hyacinth Girl Press, and an Associate Professor of English at Suffolk County Community College. Her work has been published in Stirring: A Literary Collection, Verse Wisconsin Online, Verse Daily, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Epiphany, The Threepenny Review, and So to Speak: A Feminist Journal. She keeps a record of her writing life, experience in academia, and motherhood at http://mimsyandoutgrabe.blogspot.com.

Jared Harel is the author of 'The Body Double', a narrative long poem published by Brooklyn Arts Press. His poems have recently appeared in such journals as Tin House, American Poetry Review, The Southern Review and The Threepenny Review. He teaches writing at Nassau Community College, plays drums for the rock band, The Dust Engineers, and lives in Astoria, NY with his wife and two-year old daughter.

Jennifer Michael Hecht is a poet, intellectual historian, and commentator. She has published three books of poetry, most recently Who Said, with Copper Canyon in 2013. Her first book, The Next Ancient World won the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award, and Publisher's Weekly called her second poetry book, Funny, "One of the most original and entertaining books of the year." She has also written award-winning history and philosophy books. She has been a guest on Hardball MSNBC, The Brian Lehrer Show, and On Being, and her work appears in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Poetry, American Poet, Politico, and The Washington Post. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, NPR puzzle guru John Chaneski, and their two school-aged children.

More biographical info, RSVP link and photos at penparentis.org/calendar.

Transportation info: Take the 2/3/4/5/J/M to Wall Street. The Salon takes place in the soaring lobby of the Andaz Hotel, at 75 Wall Street.

Upcoming Salons (on the second Tuesday of each month at the Andaz at 7pm):

February 10th, Pen Parentis will present authors Andrew Lewis Conn, Siobhan Adcock, and Stephanie Lehman.

March 10th: authors Cara Hoffman, Nic Esposito, and Chris Tarry

April 14th: Lev Grossman, Kelly Link, and Marly Youmans

May 12th: Charles McNair, Liz Rosenberg, and the bestselling author Sarah Pekkanen.

Pen Parentis, Ltd, is a New York City-based 501c3 nonprofit literary organization that provides resources to authors who are also parents, to help them stay on creative track after starting a family.

Pen Parentis Literary Salons are made possible in part with public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. They are also funded in part by The Fund for Creative Communities with public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and by a generous one-time grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation.

For more information, visit www.penparentis.org/calendar/ or email info@penparentis.org.