Local poets Deborah Schwartz and Lisa DeSiro will read from their work and discuss their writing process, the road to publication, the collections themselves, as well as how poetry can work as medicine to heal and connect us in this troubling world.

A Girl Could Disappear Like This explores coming of age in a female gendered-body, lesbian love, and the many meanings associated with breaking out of a traditional immigrant household into a sense of self-hood. For this collection hands us “a report from the frontlines of our time, part belly-wail, part full- throated praise song; disarmingly plainspoken even as it flips our expectations on end with unnervingly
original vision.”

In Labor, Desiro’s poems “keep their eyes peeled, their ears open, and their hearts receptive. (Boston street bustle comes vividly alive in many of these poems.) But receptivity demands a tolerance for
paradox, and Desiro’s poems plumb the secrets of the world’s contradictions.”

Deborah Schwartz lives in Somerville, MA and is an Assistant Professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College. Her poetry and fiction have most recently been published in Slippery Elm Review, and Pittsburgh Review. Her poetry collection, A Girl Could Disappear Like This (Kattywompus Press, 2019) won finalists with Elixir Press, Carolina Wren Press and Still House Press. www.deborahcecileschwartz.com

Lisa DeSiro is the author of the poetry collections Labor (Nixes Mate, 2018) and Grief Dreams (White Knuckle Press, 2017). Her poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies, and have been set to music by several composers. She works for a non-profit organization and is an assistant editor for Indolent Books. She is also an accomplished pianist.