Book releases:
Melting in Your Mouth by Chocolate Waters
Harlow/Smith Postcards by Stephanie Dickinson
Three women writers (two from Hell’s Kitchen, one from Washington Heights) share their work in poetry and memoir, drawing from their work together in a writing group that met for over ten years. Chocolate Waters, one of the earliest published lesbian poets, will read selections from her latest book, Melting in Your Mouth, a collection of her early work and her recently published memoir. Stephanie Dickinson, a gifted lyric writer who writes of both rural and urban life and of violence against women will read from her autobiographical novel Half Girl and her most recent poetry collection Harlow/Smith Postcards: Icons in Black and White. Sharon Silber will read autobiographically based early poems from her collection The Canadian Geese Consider Their Situation and some of her current work. We will also read a brief selection from the work of our late colleague Nicholas Johnson, a noted poet and a member of the group, who lived in Washington Heights.
This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 50 max attendees. Please register in advance.
In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees are encouraged to stay masked at all time.
Recirculation, a project of Word Up Community Bookshop, is located at 876 Riverside Drive (near 160th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 157th St., A/C train to 163rd St., and the M4 and M5 to Broadway and 159/160th.
Chocolate Waters has been publishing her poetry for over four decades. She was one of the first openly lesbian poets to publish her work and her contribution has been documented in Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975 (U of Il. Press, Barbara Love, Ed.). Her first three collections: To The Man Reporter From The Denver Post, Take Me Like A Photograph and Charting New Waters are considered classics of the early women’s movement and are collected in the forthcoming Melting in Your Mouth: The Early Work of Chocolate Waters. In addition to her work as a writer, Waters was also a founder of the early feminist newspaper, Big Mama Rag, which was produced in Denver, Colorado from 1972-1982. Her poetry, which has won many individual awards in addition to being nominated for several Pushcart prizes, is widely published and anthologized. Hailed as the “Poet Laureate of Hell’s Kitchen,” Waters is also a pioneer in the art of performance poetry. Her memoir, Muddying the Waters was published last year.
Stephanie Dickinson lives in New York City. Her novels Half Girl and Lust Series are published by Spuyten Duyvil Press, as is her feminist noir Love Highway. Half Girl, searing and gorgeously written, presents an autobiographically-based account of her experience being shot in the face as a victim of intimate partner violence. Stephanie has published 14 books (thus far) and has had her poetry and short stories appear in over 150 literary journals. Her latest published book is Harlow/Smith Postcards: Icons in Black and White, published in 2024.
Sharon Silber is a retired child and adult psychologist and long-time human rights activist who had the privilege of joining the Hudson Pier Poets writing group, meeting together for about ten years. During that time, she published poems in Mind the Gap, Salonika and Skidrow Penthouse and performed her poetry around the New York metropolitan area. Her chapbook, The Canadian Geese Consider their Situation was published by Linear Arts Press. She has participated in human rights missions to Bosnia and she taught a course at the University of Tuzla, Bosnia on treating trauma in children and their families. She has taught psychology courses at Tulane University, Boston University, and the University of Michigan. She is currently writing an autofictive memoir of her grandmother, who was murdered at the age of 70 in the summer of 1941 in Keidan, Lithuania, killed by a fascist paramilitary unit composed of her neighbors. Sharon lives in Washington Heights with her husband and son.
Nick Johnson (1944-2019) was an accomplished poet who was also a member of the Hudson Pier Poets. His verse was published in journals including American Poetry Review, Shenandoah, American Letters and Commentary, The Journal, Pivot, Yearbook of American Poetry. and The Paris Review. His book Degrees of Freedom was published by Bright Hill Press. “Nicholas Johnson is a poet of incandescent wit… I love his work for its dark, sotto voce originality.”-Dennis Nurkse. For the last ten years or so of his life, Nick lived in Washington Heights.
