About the Readers for the 2016 Meeting
Stacey Balkun is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Jackalope-Girl Learns to Speak (dancing girl 2016) and Lost City Museum (ELJ 2016), which is being released concurrent with Words & Music, 2016. Her new poems are right on point for the festival theme, The Dark Side of Literature & Life, as they explore loss and darkness through imagery of cities (old and new) as well as museum installations. She has been named a finalist in the poetry category of the 2016 William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, the 2016 Two Sylvias Poetry Chapbook Prize, the 2016 Event Horizon Science Poetry Competition, and the Center for Women Writers’ 2016 Rita Dove Award. Her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Gargoyle, Muzzle, Bayou, and elsewhere, and she holds an MFA from Fresno State. A 2015 Hambidge Fellow, Stacey served as Artist-in-Residence at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2013. She is the Chapbook Series Editor at Sundress Publications and teaches poetry online at The Poetry Barn.
Leslie Daniels is a well-known Canadian environmental and social activist having worked for the government and citizens alike on the contentious issues of hazardous and household waste management. Her first book Boundaries will put her back into the public arena as it deals with her personal experiences in historic child sexual abuse and the institutions who propose to deal with survivors. “Institutions,” says Ms. Daniels based on long interaction with institutions, “whether they be government agencies dealing with war veterans and their horrendous experiences, or private agencies with a mission of treating abuse..they have one thing in common. They don’t know how to treat victims, survivors, of trauma.” Ms. Daniels placed as a finalist in the narrative non-fiction category of
the 2016 William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition.