The Poets' Salon is an all-inclusive group that normally gets together the second Saturday of every month from 10 a.m. - 12 p.m in the Children's Program Room on the 2nd floor. During the pandemic, we will be meeting online, via Zoom. To find the current meeting's Zoom code, please visit our Meetup listing HERE.
We read our poetry aloud, politely critique each others' work (upon request), highlight publishing opportunities, and also talk about local and online poetry readings. So if you write sonnets or haikus, free verse or limericks, quaterns or sestinas, or just want to listen to some great poetry, join your local Connecticut poets via Zoom.
Readings may be limited, based on the number of poets attending and time constraints, so RSVP early if you'd like to read. The group is moderated by Fairfield writers Edward Ahern and Alison McBain.
Edward Ahern
Edward Ahern sometimes detours into literary fiction, but he's best known as a poet and innovative genre writer. He's tucked away several awards and honorable mentions for over two hundred poems and stories and four books. The poems and stories have appeared in a dozen countries and, counting reprints, over three hundred publications. His stories can be listened to through Audible. Ed started writing fiction at sixty-seven, and poetry at seventy.
His editorial skills are based on a degree in journalism from the University of Illinois and extensive experience at the Providence Journal. Ed’s been honing the skills for several years at Bewildering Stories, where he serves on the review board and as review editor with a staff of five. (Bewildering Stories is widely known for the author-friendly quality of its critiques.) Ed is a member of several writing groups, including the Fairfield Scribes, where he’s known for his tough-love comments. He has his original wife, but advises that after more than fifty years together they are both out of warranty. Two children and five grandchildren serve as affection focus and money drain. His work career after university has been an enjoyably demented hopscotch game. U.S. Navy officer (diver and bomb disarmer); reporter for the Providence Journal; intelligence officer living in Germany and Japan; international sales and marketing executive at a Canadian paper company (twenty- three years, seventy four countries visited, MBA from NYU); same job for the company that also owns the New England Patriots; and retirement into writing like hell to make up for lost time. |
Alison McBain
Diversity is one of Alison McBain's passions. With dual Canadian-U.S. citizenship, a Japanese-American mother and a B.A. in African history and classical literature, she has an eclectic background and a wide range of experience. She grew up in California and moved to the East Coast in her mid-twenties, finally settling in Connecticut to raise her three daughters.
She started her writing career at age four with a "self-published" horror story about the monster in the closet. The story was highly lauded by her closest family members. Since then, she's received a number of writing awards and accolades from people not even vaguely related to her, but she still has a soft spot for that first short story. Her interest in diversity also extends to fiction. With nearly a hundred short publications to her name, her stories and poems range in tone from serious to silly. Her work covers nearly every genre, including literary, romance, horror, science fiction, fantasy, history and adventure. Her debut fantasy novel The Rose Queen, a YA retelling of beauty and the beast, was published in July 2018. She was also the lead editor of When to Now: A Time Travel Anthology, published in October 2018. A recent nominee for the prestigious Pushcart Prize award, her fiction has also been honored with the Patricia McFarland Memorial Award, the quarterly award at Bewildering Stories, and received honorable mention for the Roswell Award. When not writing fiction, she follows her own personal mantra of, "Do something creative every day." She serves as the Book Reviews Editor at the magazine Bewildering Stories, and pens a weekly web comic about parenting called "Toddler Times." |
