Poets at the Library
Monday, June 10, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon St.
Newsroom, Second Floor
Featured poets Gretna Wilkinson and Sharon Olson read for 20 minutes from their works, followed by an open-mic session.
Sharon Olson is a retired librarian, a Stanford graduate, with an M.L.S. from U.C. Berkeley and an M.A. in comparative literature from the University of Oregon. Her chapbook Clouds Brushed in Later (1987) won the Abby Niebauer Memorial Chapbook Award, and a full-length book of poems, The Long Night of Flying, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2006. Her second book Will There Be Music? was published by Cherry Grove Collections in early 2019. She has published (with co-author Chris Schopfer) numerous articles about the Sandford family of New Jersey in The Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey. She is a member of the U.S.1 Poets’ Cooperative and also performs with the Cool Women Poets.
Gretna Wilkinson began her career as a missionary teacher in the jungles of her native Guyana. She has performed her poems on radio and television and is published in Saranac Review, The Literary Review, and Poets of New Jersey: From Colonial to Contemporary, among others. She’s been featured in The New York Times, The Star Ledger, Courier News, and others. After 17 years as a college professor, she joined the Visual and Performing Arts Academy of Red Bank Regional High School where she ran the Creative Writing program. Her online literary magazine, theravensperch.com was nominated Top 10 Literary Blog on The Web (Feedspot). She is an honorary Eagle Scout, Monmouth County Art Educator of the Year, Red Bank Regional Teacher of the Year, and was recently named Claes Nobel Educator of Distinction.
