This special event for National Poetry Month highlights new work by several authors who are members of the Athenaeum or North Shore residents — the poetry of your talented neighbors. We are very pleased to announce that Liana Galvin, Salem’s first Youth Poet Laureate, will be one of the featured writers. Most authors will have copies of their books will be available for purchase too!
Check back here for updates to the line-up!
Bonnie Bishop is a poet, social activist and educator who taught high school in Somerville for more than thirty years. She has been a member of the long running Every Other Thursday Poets workshop for decades. Patience is her fourth poetry collection. She lives in Nahant with her husband, Con Squires, and two orange tom cats. In these stormy times, she relies on poetry, music, friendship, and activism to keep her afloat.
Liana Galvan is Salem’s first youth poet laureate who goes to Salem High. She enjoys music, literature, and activism. She is thankful for God, her family, and friends, for their support throughout the years. She enjoys sharing others’ works as well: feel free to reach out to her Instagram, salemyouthpoet, to see your works republished for her Salem 400 Creative Works challenge!
Kali Lightfoot, is a queer poet. Her poems in journals and anthologies, have been nominated for Pushcart prizes and Best of the Net. Before retirement she worked as Executive Director of the National Resource Center for Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes. Her first book, Pelted by Flowers (CavanKerry Press) was chosen a “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Second book, Big Band Night at the Good Life Bar, is available from Moon Pie Press.
Casey Lynn Roland is a writer, artist, and maker from Peabody, Massachusetts, and who also spends much of her time on Lake Winnipesaukee—her poetry attempts to reconcile her relationships to those places, the people in them, and how they’re always changing. If the House is Inclined to Collapse is her first full length poetry publication, conceptualized during her time at the University of New Hampshire, where she earned an MFA in Poetry in 2020. Her work has previously appeared in Plainsongs, Red Ogre Review, Rougarou Journal, West Trade Review, and Soundings East among others. For more, visit www.caseyroland.com.
Melissa J. Varnavas (1973-2022), an award-winning journalist and editor for The Beverly Citizen, was a gifted and accomplished poet,with publications in Amethyst Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Blast Furnace, End Times, Margie, The New Guard, Oberon, and Oddball Magazine. Melissa earned an MFA from the Solstice program at Pine Manor College and was active in Tin Box Poets of Swampscott and the Salem Writers Group. After she succumbed to breast cancer at age 48, a committee from Tin Box, including her husband Chris Terrell, assembled, selected, arranged. and edited her poems and oversaw the design, production, and publication of Instructions for Performing Cartwheels, released in December 2025.
Clay Ventre lives and writes in New England.
Tickets: $20 | Free to Members | Card to Culture
This is a hybrid event. Zoom link will be sent to all registrants an hour before the program starts.
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Ticket Policies
Tickets are refundable if canceled up to 24 hours before the event.
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We are not currently wheelchair accessible. Walking a flight of stairs is required to enter and exit the building.