Join us for an evening of readings from Cathy Barber and Deborah Derrickson Kossmann.
Cathy Barber’s poetry has been published across four continents, including in Stone Poetry Quarterly, Belt Magazine and The Hopper, and has been anthologized many times. She is a graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program and makes her home in Cleveland Heights, where she serves on the board of Literary Cleveland. Once: A Golden Shovel Collection (Kelsay Books, 2023).
About Once: A Golden Shovel Collection (Kelsay Books)
"Barber’s seamless poems make the difficult golden shovel form seem easy. Lines from Dickinson, Bashō, and Millay mingle with the words of Trinidad, Wright, and Brainard in this eclectic memoir-montage. As the words of beloved writers coil to shape Barber’s right margins, we are shown rather than told that reading and writing are inseparable and that poetry is a vital resource to understand and endure the inevitable changes of what we love—cities, bodies, even television shows—in an increasingly vulnerable natural world. Good-humored and graceful, Once reminds us that poetry, like a satisfying life, is not written alone nor in one direction." - Elizabeth Savage, Poetry Editor, Kestrel
Deborah Derrickson Kossmann won Trio House Press's inaugural 2023 Aurora Polaris Creative Nonfiction Award for LOST FOUND KEPT: A MEMOIR (January 2025). Her essays, feature articles and poetry have appeared in The New York Times, Nashville Review, Memoir Monday, and Psychotherapy Networker to name a few. Deb is a clinical psychologist who lives in Havertown, PA. For more info: lostfoundkept.com
About Lost Found Kept (Trio House Press):
How does a psychologist fail to recognize that her intelligent, sensitive, and book-loving mother has created "the worst hoarder house ever seen?" After making the horrifying discovery that her mother had no water in her house for at least two years, Deborah Derrickson Kossmann begins the otherworldly excavation of a childhood home she hasn't been inside for three decades.
Moving back and forth in time, from this surreal nightmare of an archaeological dig to recollecting her past and long buried family secrets, Kossmann seeks to untangle a web of complicated familial relationships. In her lyrical and unflinching quest, she comes to understand what's been lost, what's been found and what's been kept in both her own and her mother's life.