Acclaimed poet Lisa Sewell kicks off the Spring Wordsmiths Reading Series at Bucks County Community College on February 21. (Credit: BCCC)
The Bucks County Community College Wordsmiths Reading Series continues this spring by welcoming acclaimed poets Thomas Devaney and Lisa Sewell who will read their new works on Friday, February 21 at 7:30 p.m. in room 142 of the historic Tyler Hall on the Newtown Campus. The event is free and open to the public and will be followed by a book signing and dessert reception.
Thomas Devaney is a Pew Fellow in the Arts and author of five books, including Getting to Philadelphia (Hanging Loose Press), Calamity Jane (Furniture Press), and The Picture that Remains, a collaboration with photographer Will Brown (The Philadelphia Print Center). He wrote and co-directed the film “Bicentennial City,” exploring the legacy of Philadelphia’s 1976 bicentennial celebration. Devaney’s work has been published in Best American Poetry, The American Poetry Review, and The Brooklyn Rail. The literary hub “Blue Stoop: A Home for Philly Writers” was named after his poem “The Blue Stoop.”
Acclaimed poet Thomas Devaney kicks off the Spring Wordsmiths Reading Series at Bucks County Community College on February 21. (Credit: BCCC)For twelve years, Devaney taught creative writing at Haverford College. He now works at the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation at Drexel University, where he recently completed a master’s degree in urban design. His thesis, “Reimagining Urban Parks: Philadelphia’s FDR Park as a Space for People and Nature” (2024), reflects his ongoing engagement with urban spaces and explores the intersection of people and place through civic storytelling.
Lisa Sewell is the author of The Way Out (Alice James Books), Name Withheld (Four Way Books), Long Corridor, which received the 2009 Keystone Chapbook award from Seven Kitchens Press, Impossible Object, which won the 2014 Tenth Gate prize from The Word Works Press, and Birds of North America (Drawing Room), a collaboration with artist Susan Hagen and poet Nathalie Anderson. A new book of poems, Flood Plain, was just published by Grid Books. She is co-editor, with Claudia Rankine, of American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics (Wesleyan 2007), Eleven More American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Poetics Across North America (Wesleyan 2012), and North American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Beyond Lyric and Language (Wesleyan 2021) with Kazim Ali.
Sewell has received grants and awards from the Leeway Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, and held residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Fundacion Valparaiso, The Tyrone Guthrie Center and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. She lives in Philadelphia and teaches contemporary literature and creative writing at Villanova University.
The final reading of the spring series will feature Carolyn Kuebler on Thursday, April 3 at 12:30 p.m. in 142 Tyler Hall.
About the Wordsmiths Reading Series
The first Wordsmiths reading was in the 1960s, and featured Allen Ginsburg strumming on his guitar, and chanting verses to the audience as they swayed sitting on top of cushions on the floor. Since then, the series has featured dozens of outstanding and respected poets over the years. In recent years, the series has also featured renowned fiction writers. Poets featured in the series have won a host of awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book award, and the PEN Literary Award.
As the founder and leader of the renowned Wordsmiths series, Bucks County Community College has distinguished itself among Philadelphia-area colleges and universities and has become the home of a vibrant community of writers, poetry lovers, and supporters of the arts.
Ethel Rackin, PhD, a Language and Literature professor at the College, is the director of the Wordsmiths Reading Series and Poet Laureate Program. Dr. Rackin has been organizing these public collaborations since 2010, shortly after she began her teaching career at Bucks.
For more information on the Wordsmiths Reading Series, visit bucks.edu/wordsmiths or contact Dr. Rackin at [email protected].
