On Sunday, April 7, come to The Word Barn at 4 pm (doors at 3:30) for a reading featuring Anders Carlson-Wee, Sarah Anderson, and Matt W. Miller. Come celebrate these authors, check out their books, and engage with each other during the social break.
$5 suggested donation | Doors at 3:30pm | Reading at 4:00
Anders Carlson-Wee is the author of DISEASE OF KINGS, out now from W.W. Norton. He is also the author of THE LOW PASSIONS (W.W. Norton, 2019), a New York Public Library Book Group Selection, and DYNAMITE (Bull City Press, 2015), winner of the Frost Place Chapbook Prize. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Washington Post, Harvard Review, BuzzFeed, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Sun, The Southern Review, and many other publications. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writers, the Camargo Foundation, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, he is the winner of the Poetry International Prize. His work has been translated into Chinese. Anders holds an MFA from Vanderbilt University and is represented by Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents.
DISEASE OF KINGS is out now from W.W. NORTON.
THE LOW PASSIONS was recently selected for the New York Public Library Book Group. If you’d like to use it for your book group, feel free to contact Gina Savoy at Norton.
As a visiting writer, Anders has been hosted by universities, high schools, bookstores, and book festivals across the country, including Emory University, Vanderbilt University, Rutgers University, Penn State, University of Portland, Pacific Lutheran University, Auburn University, Western Washington University, California Lutheran University, Carleton College, University of Hartford, NC State University, Washington & Jefferson College, Phillips Exeter Academy, the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, the Nightingale-Bamford School in NYC, the Southern Festival of Books, Wisconsin Book Festival, the Marin Poetry Center, Powell’s Bookstore, Greenlight Poetry Salon in Brooklyn, Poetry Society of New Hampshire, the Fourth Sundays Reading Series at Claremont Library in Los Angeles, and the New York Public Library Book Group.
Anders has taught at Vanderbilt University, Western Washington University, the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and the Solstice low-residency MFA program at Lasell University. He has also taught classes at The Loft Literary Center, The Porch Writers Collective, The Midwest Writers Center, and Pioneer Valley Writers Workshop.
Anders’ work has been reviewed and discussed in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, The Kenyon Review, Rain Taxi Review of Books, Entropy Magazine, West Branch, The Sewanee Review, and on Slate’s podcast Lexicon Valley with John McWhorter, among many other places.
Anders recently served as THE CONNECTICUT POETRY CIRCUIT TOURING POET, offering readings from THE LOW PASSIONS at Connecticut universities. Founded in 1964, the Connecticut Poetry Circuit has featured a long list of esteemed poets, including Frank Bidart, Natasha Trethewey, Charles Simic, Adrienne Rich, Mark Strand, James Merrill, Robert Pinsky, Edward Hirsch, Richard Hugo, Galway Kinnell, Mark Doty, Marilyn Nelson, Mary Jo Salter, Donald Justice, Aracelis Girmay, Martín Espada, James Tate, Tom Sleigh, Mark Jarman, Safia Elhillo, Brian Turner, and Charles Wright.
Anders is co-director of the award-winning film, RIDING THE HIGHLINE, which traces a freight-hopping trip across the nation. A hybrid project—half documentary, half poetry video—RIDING THE HIGHLINE has won numerous prizes at film festivals, including the Napa Valley Film Festival, Rochester International Film Festival, and the Arizona International Film Festival. Anders often pairs screenings of RIDING THE HIGHLINE with his poetry readings to create multidisciplinary events.
Sarah Anderson holds an MFA in poetry from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. She has 20 years of high school teaching experience, and currently teaches 8th grade and 10th grade English at Berwick Academy in southern Maine. With her husband, she owns and operates The Word Barn in Exeter, NH, a gathering space for literary and musical events, where she runs a reading series (The Silo Series) as well as various creative writing workshops. Her poems have appeared in various journals, including December Magazine, Raleigh Review, and North American Review. She is the author of We Hold On To What We Can (Loom Press, 2021).
Matt W Miller was born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts. He is the author of Tender the River (Texas Review Press), shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Provocateur Award, and a finalist for the Jacar Press Julie Suk Award, Poetry by the Sea Book Award, and the New Hampshire Poetry Society Book Award. He is also author of The Wounded for the Water (Salmon Poetry) , Club Icarus (University of North Texas Press), selected by Major Jackson as the 2012 Vassar Miller Poetry Prize winner, and Cameo Diner: Poems (Loom).
He has published work previously in Slate, Harvard Review, Notre Dame Review, Southwest Review, Southeast Review, Florida Review, Third Coast, The Rumpus, Poetry Daily, and other journals. He was a winner of the 2019 Nimrod International Review’s Pablo Neruda Prize, the 2015 River Styx Micro-Beer, Micro-fiction Prize and Iron Horse Review’s 2015 Trifecta Poetry Prize. He has been awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry and a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship in Poetry from Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He has taught creative writing and literature at Stanford University, University of Massachusetts Lowell, New England College, Harvard Extension and the Concord State Prison for Men.
He teaches English and coaches football at Phillips Exeter Academy where he also co-directs the Writers’ Workshop at Exeter. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife Emily Meehan and their children Delaney and Joseph.