Community of Writers, November 23

The Hudson Valley Writers Guild has sponsored the The Community of Writers program at the Schenectady County Public Library for about 12 years. The event presents local writers in various genres reading their work & (hopefully) selling their books. This year’s reading included writers of young adult fiction, adult fiction & poetry. The MC was me, Dan Wilcox, President of the Hudson Valley Writers Guild.

Rose Kent first talked about her experience in bringing her books into schools & the kinds of questions the young students asked. She read a section from her most recent novel Rock Road (Knopf Publishers), the narrator a young girl with her brother & mother moving from Texas to Schenectady. She is also the author of an earlier novel Kimchi & Calamari (Harper Collins).

Thérèse Broderick is well-known in the poetry community as a reader, teacher, & former Poet Laureate of Smith’s Tavern. Today she read poems linked by memory & family, -- poems about her childhood, her husband (“Blue Pinto”), baby-sitting & as a recent tourist in the Holy Land. She also read from & offered for sale her poetry “favors,” each a poem written on coffee filters & bound into a fan-shaped chapbook.

Bunkong Tuon has recently been reading his poems at area open mics. He teaches in the English Department at Union College. His poems were about growing up as a refugee from Cambodia, about being educated in the US, & about his family, & confronting racism. A full-length collection of his poems, Gruel, is forthcoming from NYQ Books.

James Pavoldi had the best book display: a full-size suit of armor holding copies of his self-published novel No Fat Knights. It is the story of the adventures of a woman who travels from Brooklyn to England to attend a seminar by on weight loss run by a knighted physician. More information about the book can be found on his website.

Steve Swartz is the first Poet Laureate of Schenectady County & a former host of the Community of Writers reading. He read a selection of his poems, which were often humorous, full of wordplay & rhyme. He began & ended his reading, appropriately enough, with the word “Schenectady.”

This is an annual event at the Schenectady County Public Library, so watch for it again next year at this time. But both the Library & the Hudson Valley Writers Guild has programming throughout the year. Check their websites for more information.