The Writer’s Center welcomes poets Carol Jennings, Bonnie Naradzay & Ellen Sazzman for a reading and discussion of their work, followed by a Q&A session. Refreshments will be served.
Free and open to the public, limited space, registration required below.
Carol Jennings grew up in western New York, attended The College of Wooster, graduated from NYU, lived for more than a decade in New York City, and now resides in Washington DC. In New York, she worked at both the United Nations and the ACLU before earning a J.D. from the NYU School of Law. For much of her legal career, she served in the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Her poems have appeared in journals including The New York Quarterly, Chautauqua, The Broadkill Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Potomac Review, Medical Literary Messenger, Loch Raven Review and Gargoyle Magazine, as well as three anthologies. Her first poetry collection, The Dead Spirits at the Piano, was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2016. Her second collection, The Sustain Pedal, was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2022.
Bonnie Naradzay’s poems and essays have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Kenyon Review Online, Tampa Review, Florida Review Online, EPOCH, Episcopal Theological Review, Colloquy, Birmingham Poetry Review, Deep Beauty, Split This Rock, Northern Virginia Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Innisfree, WWPH, and others.  While in graduate school, she participated in a class taught by Robert Lowell: “The King James Bible as English Literature.” In 2010, she won the University of New Orleans MFA Program’s Prize: a month’s stay in the castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter, Mary, in the Italian Dolomites. While there, she enjoyed having tea with Mary, hearing cuckoos call out during mating season, and viewing the suit Pound wore when he lived in the castle. For many years she has led poetry sessions for homeless people in day shelters and at a retirement community, all in Washington DC.
Ellen Sazzman has lived in Washington, D.C. and Montgomery County, Maryland for the last forty years where she raised her family and practiced law for the federal government. Her poetry has appeared in many journals including Another Chicago Magazine, the 2020 Mizmor Anthology, Poetry South, A3 Review, PANK, Connecticut River Review, Paterson Literary Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Sow’s Ear, Lilith, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Moment, Miramar, Common Ground, and CALYX. She was a finalist in Ekphrastic Review‘s 2022 Fifty Shades of Blue contest, received an honorable mention in the 2019 Ginsberg poetry contest, was shortlisted for the 2018 O’Donoghue Poetry Prize, and was awarded first place in Poetica’s 2016 Rosenberg poetry competition. She was also a 2012 Pushcart Prize nominee and a 2010 Split This Rock finalist. Her poetry collection The Shomer (Finishing Line Press 2021) was selected as a finalist for the 2020 Blue Lynx Prize, a semifinalist for the 2020 Elixir Press Antivenom Award, and a semifinalist for the 2019 Codhill Press Poetry Award.