An Evening of Poetry with Rosa Lane and Stephen Haven

Join us for an evening of poetry with Rosa Lane and Stephen Haven. Rosa will read from her 4th poetry collection, Called Back, a title memorializing the last two words Emily Dickinson wrote. Her poems give voice to the LGBTQ+ dimension of one of America's greatest poets, which draws from most recent research by Dickinson scholars. Pulitzer finalist Henri Cole had this to say about Called Back: "What marvelous, feral, eccentric, sweetly erotic poems [that]...illuminate--with electrifying language --the shadows of human love." Stephen Haven will read from his latest work, The Flight from Meaning, which contains meditations on American History, on the nature of religion in our time, and on racism and its legacy in the post-Civil Rights era. T. R. Hummer in praise of Stephen's work had this to say: "Stephen is a poet of incisive discipline deployed in the service of a passionate, humanistic ethos."

Rosa Lane is author of four poetry collections including Called Back (Tupelo Press, 2024) in queer conversation with Emily Dickinson and winner of the 2025 Maine Literary Book Award; Chouteau's Chalk, winner, Georgia Poetry Prize (University of Georgia Press, 2019); Tiller North, winner, 2017 National Indie Excellence Award (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2016); and Roots and Reckonings, a chapbook. Her most recent work won the 2023 Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Prize, was named Best of Poetry for the 2024 Geminga Prize and selected finalist for the 2023 Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Competition among other awards. Lane’s poems have appeared in Cloudbank, Five Points, Nimrod, RHINO, Third Coast, and elsewhere.

Website: www.rosalane.com

Stephen Haven’s fourth book of poems, The Flight from Meaning (Slant Books, 2025), was a finalist for the International Beverly Prize for Literature. His earlier work, The Last Sacred Place in North America, won the New American Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, American Poetry Review, Salmagundi, Arts & Letters, North American Review, and elsewhere. Founder of the MFA Program at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio, Stephen served as director there for ten years. Stephen later directed the Lesley University MFA Program. He has received grants and residencies from the Fulbright Foundation, Yaddo, MacDowell, the Ohio Arts Council,  the Djerassi Foundation, and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center.

Website: www.stephenhaven.com

The discussion and Q&A will take place downstairs at Bookends & Beginnings and will be followed by a book signing. Doors and the MiniBar will open at 5:00 PM for this event.