For Immediate Release

Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival as part of the Woodstock Arts Consortium is sponsoring the following poetry event as part of the Woodstock "Second Saturdays" Art Events. For a full listing of "Second Saturday" events, see: www.artsinwoodstock.org

Poets Bruce Weber and Laurie Byro will be the featured readers when the Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival meets at the Woodstock Community Center, 56 Rock City Road, on Saturday, January 9th at 2pm. Note: WPS&F meetings are held the 2nd Saturday of every month.

The readings will be hosted by Woodstock area poet Phillip Levine. All meetings are free, open to the public, and include an open mike.

Bios:

Bruce Weber - Bruce Weber is the author of five published books of poetry, "These Poems are Not Pretty", "How the Poem Died", "Poetic Justice", "The First Time I Had Sex with T. S. Eliot", and the just released "The Break-up of My First Marriage". Bruce's work has appeared in numerous magazines, as well as in several anthologies including recently in Up is Up, But So Is Down: Downtown Writings, 1978-1992, and Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers (New Paltz, NY: Codhill Press, 2007). He has performed regularly in the tri-state area, both alone and with his performance group, Bruce Weber's No Chance Ensemble, which has produced the CD "Let's Dine Like Jack Johnson Tonight". He is the organizer of the Unorganicized Sunday Reading at ABC NO RIO, editor of the broadside Stained Sheets, and the producer of the long running Alternative New Year's Day Spoken Word/Performance Extravaganza. By day, Bruce is Senior Curator at the National Academy Museum, and splits his time between his homes in New York City and Saugerties, New York.

Laurie Byro - Laurie Byro's short stories and poetry have appeared in a dozen or so small presses. Additionally, her work has been published in The Literary Review, Single Parent, Redactions, Aim, Chaminade Review, Chronogram, Grasslimb, Re:al Journal, The New Jersey Journal of Poets, Red Rock Review, The Paterson Literary Review among others. Her work can be googled in on-line e-zines and in the Guardian Unlimited on-line workshop. She was thrice nominated for “The Pushcart Prize” and has won or placed in 27 IBPC competitions. Her work was recently published in The Poetry of Place Anthology (honoring William Carlos Williams). Her children's poem "A Captain's Cat" has appeared in Cricket Magazine and a textbook "Measuring up to the Illinois Learning Standards". In 2009, Mayor Barra proclaimed Laurie Byro as the “Official Poet Laureate of Allendale, NJ.” Her work draws on myth and fairytale and her experiences of foreign places in the years she worked as a travel agent. Her poetry insists upon the continuing importance of fantasy, mystery and “the other” in our lives. Laurie is head of circulation at a library in New Jersey where she facilitates a poetry circle.

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