American Poets in Ireland

Chapters and Verse Reading Series
Cassidy's Westmoreland St
On Sunday 11th May 2008, 3.30pm

The readers at this event are three Californian poets – Alanna Alter, Kathleen Flowers and Amber Coverdale Sumrall who are traveling around Ireland in April and May and three American poets – Susan Millar DuMars from Philadelphia, Quincy R. Lehr from Oklahoma and Raven from Philadelphia who live in Ireland and are a vibrant part of the Irish poetry scene.

This event is being organized as part of the Chapters and Verse Reading Series run by the Seven Towers Agency

Alanna Alter has been published in several Monterey Bay area literary journals and anthologies. She has read many times locally in Santa Cruz and in the Bay area. She is working on a manuscript for her first collection of poems.

Susan Millar DuMars was born in Philadelphia in 1966. She holds an MA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. Her poems and short stories have been published widely in the US, UK and Ireland. Her poetry was included in the 2004 Anthology I, published by Ainnir; in 2005, Lapwing published a pamphlet of her poems, the well reviewed Everyone Loves Me. Susan's stories have been short-listed for many awards, and in 2005 she received an Irish Arts Council Bursary for her fiction. American Girls, a volume of her short stories, was published by Lapwing in 2007. Susan lives in Galway, Ireland. Since 2003, Susan and her husband Kevin Higgins have organised the successful Over the Edge reading series, showcasing new writers. Big Pink Umbrella is the first full collection of her poetry.

Kathleen Flowers is a bilingual educator in Santa Cruz, California. Her poems have been published in Harvest from the Emerald Orchard, Good Times, The Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets 2004, Porter Gulch Review, The Matrix, and Moments in the Journey. Her first poetry chapbook Call It Gladness is the recipient of the 2008 In Celebration of the Muse chapbook award.

Quincy R. Lehr was born in Oklahoma. He studied at the University of Texas at Austin and at Columbia University in New York. It was in New York that Quincy began writing poetry seriously and he co-founded the New York based chapbook publisher Modern Metrics with R. Nemo Hill. Quincy relocated to Ireland where he taught for a time in Trinity College, Dublin. He is not based in Galway and teached at the University there. His first collection Across the Grid of Streets was recently published by Seven Towers.

Raven hails from San Francisco. A mesmeric live poet at the very top of his game who has shared the stage with the very best, including American poet Saul Williams, the world's premier live literature and spoken word artist. Raven is a native Californian and perfected his skill at the seminal Sacred Grounds Poetry, San Francisco immediately prior to relocating to Dublin in May 2005.

Amber Coverdale Sumrall is from Santa Cruz, California. She has edited or co-edited thirteen anthologies including Storming Heaven's Gate: Spiritual Writings by Women. She leads Write to the Heart workshops retreats at The Hermitage in Big Sur, St. Francis Retreat in San Juan Bautista, Mission San Antonio in Jolon and in Ireland. For twenty years she has co-produced In Celebration of the Muse, an annual literary event featuring Santa Cruz women writers. Her first book of poems, Litany of Wings, was published in 1998, Her work has been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac.