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Three Award-winning Poets Celebrate National Poetry Month and National Library Week at the Bristol Public Library

April 07, 2014

Three regional award-winning poets will appear at the Bristol Public Library on Sunday, April 13th at 2:00 PM. As part of the celebration of April as National Poetry Month and National Library Week, poets Janice Hornburg, Gretchen McCroskey, and Jane Bird will perform readings of their works and discuss the poetic process from their perspectives. This program is free and open to the public. For more information please call the Library at (276) 645-8780.

Janice Hornburg is a native Texan who moved to Tennessee in 1997. She is a member of the Poetry Society of Tennessee—Northeast Chapter, the North Carolina’s Writers’ Network, and the Lost State Writer’s Guild. She has won first place awards from the Poetry Society of Tennessee, the Poetry Society of Texas, the Poetry Society of Virginia, the Watauga Branch of the National League of American Pen Women, and Green River Writers. Her chapbook Perspectives was released in April, 2013. Her award-winning poem “Fall’s Fabric” is included in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Gretchen V. Moran Laskas, Volume 5. “My Father’s Room” will appear in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI: Tennessee.

Gretchen McCroskey grew up on a farm near Abingdon, Virginia, and has lived in Bristol, Virginia, since graduating from King College in 1967. She taught eighth grade English at Virginia Junior High School before returning to graduate school where she earned her Master’s degree from Hollins College. She taught at Northeast State Community College until she retired in 2011. McCroskey’s poetry has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies including Now & Then, Appalachian Heritage, Clinch Mountain Review, Number One, Wind, Sow’s Ear, and Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel. She has placed in several regional contests including Mountain Heritage Literary Festival Contest at Lincoln Memorial University, Tennessee Mountain Writers Contest, and Appalachian Home. She is the author of the chapbook Finding My Way, published in 2009.

Jane Hicks is a native of Upper East Tennessee. Besides her award-winning poetry Hicks is a quilter. Her poetry appears in both journals and numerous anthologies including Southern Poetry Anthology: Contemporary Appalachia. Her first book Blood and Bone Remember was nominated for and won numerous awards. Her “literary” quilts illustrate the works of playwright Jo Carson and novelists Sharyn McCrumb and Silas House: one became the cover of her own book. The quilts toured with these authors and were the subject of a feature article in Blue Ridge Country Magazine. The University of Kentucky Press will publish her latest book of poetry, Driving with the Dead, in the fall of 2014.