PUTNEY-The Putney Public Library Writers Salon is a Zoom series that brings writers across the country together with an enthusiastic audience online at tinyurl.com/yck6n8dc.
The session on Wednesday, Jan. 15, at 6:30 p.m. will feature readings by Claudia Putnam, Ivy Schweitzer, and David W. Berner.
Putnam grew up in New England, lived a few decades in Colorado, then joined her adult son in the Pacific Northwest. A sense of place is critical in all of her poems, essays and stories, she says; she "is getting to know this new, quite wet context." She has three books out and two underway.
The Land of Stone and River won the Moon City Press Poetry Award. Double Negative, a chapbook exploring the dimensions of grief, won the Split Lip Press chapbook award. A novella set in New Hampshire, Seconds came out from Neutral Zones Press in 2023. Putnam's writing appears in dozens of literary journals, and she has been awarded residencies including the George Bennett Fellowship at Phillips Exeter Academy.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Schweitzer has lived many years in Vermont and taught English and Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies at Dartmouth College. She is the creator of "White Heat: Emily Dickinson in 1862", a weekly blog, and writes about women's issues, social justice, and identity. Most recent poems appeared in Mississippi Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, ritualwell.org, and New Croton Review.
A collection of poems titled Within Flesh: In Conversation with Ourselves & Emily Dickinson, co-written with Al Salehi, appeared in 2024 from Transcendent Zero Press. They are working on another collection, titled Broken Open: Practicing Humanity with Rumi, about the conflict in Israel and Gaza. Her solo collection of poetry, Tumult, Whitewash, and Stretch Marks will be published in 2025 by Finishing Line Press.
Berner. who lives in Chicago, is the author of several personal narrative and fiction publications. His writing has received many awards, including the NYC Big Book Award, the Hawthorne Prize, and Readers' Choice Awards. His short stories, creative nonfiction, and poems have appeared in many magazines; he was Writer-in-Residence at the Jack Kerouac Project in Orlando and at the Ernest Hemingway Birthplace Home in Oak Park, Illinois.
Toni Ortner, the host of this series, is the author of 31 books published by small presses. The most recent is The Girl in the Yellow Dress by Kelsay Books. In 2025, Passing Through by Deerbrook Editions and The Van Gogh Notebook by the Dancing Girl Press will be published. She was vice president of Write Action Inc. for many years and taught in the English Department of the University of Connecticut.
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