The Salem Witch Trials remain a source of fascination and horror, as well as a reminder of the dangers of intolerance, fear, and mob mentality. The Salem Athenaeum, partnering with the Peabody Essex Museum, presents an evening of poetry responding to this resonant and dark era in our colonial history. Join us on Saturday, March 20, at 7:00 pm, to hear award-winning poets Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez, James R. Scrimgeour, and Cindy Veach read from their work that gives voice to the victims of this time.

Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez, a poet and novelist from Vilches, Chile, is the author of the novel La Pava (Ediciones Inubicalistas, 2016). They hold an MFA in Poetry from Cornell University and teach creative writing at Clark University. Their current documentary poetry project on the Salem Witch Trials, Salem Songs, treats the court examination as poetic form, a hybrid of legal language and lyric utterance.

James R. Scrimgeour is Professor Emeritus at Western Connecticut State University. He has published ten books of poetry and a critical biography of Sean O’Casey. His most recent book, Voices of Dogtown: Poems Arising Out of a Ghost Town Landscape (Loom Press, 2019), was listed as a “must read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

Cindy Veach is the author of Her Kind (CavanKerry Press, forthcoming) and Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press), a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a Massachusetts Center for the Book ‘Must Read.’ Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere.

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