Help ring out National Poetry Month with a reading by four local-area poets at the Urbana Free Library.
Champaign-Urbana’s “Quintessential Poets” — John Palen, Elaine Fowler Palencia, Frank Modica and Mary McCormack — will read from their work at 7:15 p.m. Monday, April 27, in the library’s Lewis Auditorium on the ground floor. The reading is open free to the public.
Palencia has published two chapbooks of poetry and six books of fiction. Recent work won the Clear Creek Writers Poetry Prize and is appearing in Pentimento, Pegasus and Still. She is the moderator of the Red Herring Fiction Workshop in Champaign-Urbana.
Palen has published two full-length poetry collections and five chapbooks. He has recent work in Bluestem, Delmarva Review, North Dakota Quarterly, The Heron Tree, and Off the Coast.
Modica, a retired special education teacher, has work appearing in Blackheart Magazine and The Tishman Review. McCormack, a poet and story teller, is a 2012 University of Illinois graduate in creative writing.