All-Star Poetry Line-Up September 27 at Midtown Scholar!

Christine O’Leary-Rockey, John Destalo, Julia Tilley Featured at Midtown Scholar 

Christine O’Leary-Rockey, John Destalo, Julia Tilley star September 27 at Midtown Scholar’s Poetry Thursdays.

The Midtown Scholar is located smack-dab in the center of Harrisburg’s vibrant Midtown "cultural corridor" at 1302 North Third Street.

This all-star literary event is hosted by the Almost Uptown Poetry Cartel. A brief open reading, which begins at 7pm, will precede the feature presentation.

Bios & Pix for the features:

Julia Tilley hosted the Almost Uptown Poetry Cartel’s Poetry Thursdays for several years, was poetry editor of Steel Point Quarterly, and served as part of an editing group for the Harrisburg Review. She currently edits Treasure Trove Poetry Project, a poetry vending machine journal, and is currently a writer in residence for Megan’s Closet, an online poetry journal. She was co-founder, with Maria Thiaw, of T&T Press.

Tilley was Creative Director for A Poets’ Tour of Harrisburg (Good Sport Press, 2006), a print and spoken word CD anthology of poems inspired by Harrisburg, PA. Tilley was art editor for Hard Reality, a Paco-book by Marty Esworthy. She edited the anthology, Herstory, 2003, sponsored by the Center for Women’s Creative Expression in Harrisburg.

Anticipating You (Crosstown Press) her first chapbook, debuted in February 2003. Her work has been published in Shirazad, Magera, Haggard and Hallo, the People’s Poet, City Beat, Experimental Forest, Tarnhelm, Beauty for Ashes, Harrisburg Review, The Sunday Suitor, Tucumcari, Steel Point Quarterly, and other journals.

John Destalo lives in Harrisburg but is originally from Pennsburg, PA a small town in Montgomery County. It was an industrial community with railroad tracks running right through the community, but when John was growing up the tracks weren’t used very much so he spent many hours wondering along the tracks thinking to himself, dreaming of being either Socrates or a hobo.

He first started writing his thoughts down about ten years ago using simple words to explore complex ideas, creating what he calls his expressions. He began this exploration as a conversation with himself and then eventually started sharing his conversation with others through the Almost Uptown Poetry Cartel Open Readings and has become a regular participant.

He then expanded his interests in writing to creating ways of displaying his work through postcards, bookmarks, brochures, and booklets. He has self-published a few booklets including I want to be a star, Being Human, and Afterbirth which are available through Lulu.com and recently published his first book through PostDada Press titled Raw: Exposing the Untamed Mind which is available at The Midtown Scholar Bookstore on the bottom shelf of the local authors where they place their most dangerous and disturbed minds.

Christine O’Leary-Rockey is a poet, philosopher and a professor and with a tendency to lose things and incur student loans for frivolous subjects. Greatly influenced by W.B. Yeats, e.e. cummings and mystics such as Julian of Norwich, St. Francis of Assisi and Shel Silverstein, she has failed to come to terms with any real religious identity and is open to suggestions…. She’s been published in a variety of state and local publications, including The Fledgling Rag, The Experimental Forest, Steel Pointe Quarterly, Harrisburg Magazine, and Megaera.

Christine is a charter member of Harrisburg’s infamous (almost) Uptown Poetry Cartel and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in November 2007 by Iris G. Press.

You can read her poetry in The Fox Chase Review at this link: http://www.foxchasereview.org/11June/ChristineOLeary-Rockey.html

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