Please join us on June 12th for a celebration of local poetry, featuring readers from Cleveland, Youngstown, and the Chagrin Valley: Stephanie Ginese, Cherise Benton, Karen Schubert, Virginia Konchan, and Daniel Moysaenko. They will be reading selections from their books and new work, and Daniel from his recently published debut collection, Overtakelessness (Graywolf Press, April 2026), a lauded poetry of witness to the war in Ukraine. All are welcome.
Cherise Benton is yet another poet cliché immodest in her preoccupation with moons and flowers. She’s from Youngstown, Ohio and spends most of her time washing dishes, going to planetarium shows, and conducting elaborate research and art projects no one asked for. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Wilkes University and is a Cave Canem fellow.
Karen Schubert is the author of six poetry collections including chapbooks Dear Youngstown published by Nightballet Press, and Black Sand Beach and Bring Down the Sky published by Kattywompus Press. Her poem “Alex at the Ball Game” was performed at the 2023 Cleveland Humanities Festival. She is a graduate of the NEOMFA at Cleveland State, where she served as Editor-in-Chief for Whiskey Island.
Stephanie Ginese is an author and stand-up comedian from South Lorain, Ohio. Her debut collection of poetry, Unto Dogs, was released in July of 2022 on Grieveland. She was a 2023 Cleveland Arts Prize recipient and a 2024 Creative Impact Fund awardee. She can be found at www.sginese.com.
Virginia Konchan is the author of five books of poetry, including Requiem (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2025) and Hallelujah Time (Véhicule Press, 2021), as well as a short story collection, Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press, 2017). Coeditor of Marbles on the Floor: How to Assemble a Book of Poems (University of Akron Press, 2023), and recipient of fellowships from the Amy Clampitt Poet Residency Program and the National Endowment for the Humanities, her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Atlantic, The Believer, and the Academy of American Poets.
Daniel Moysaenko is the author of Overtakelessness (Graywolf Press, 2026), winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award. His poems have appeared in The Nation, Poetry, The Poetry Review, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. His critical writing has appeared in Chicago Review, Harvard Review, and Kenyon Review. And his translations have appeared in Asymptote, the Financial Times, and several anthologies of Ukrainian poetry. After a decade of teaching writing and international literature in Massachusetts, Florida, and Ohio and working in editorial and programming roles at the Poetry Foundation, BOMB Magazine, and elsewhere, he retrained as a lawyer. Raised in the Ukrainian diaspora, he lives in Ohio's Chagrin Valley.