Miriam Levine

The Endicott College and Ibbetson Street Visiting Author series will continue Nov. 18 with the poets, (and Somerville Bagel Bards)  Miriam Levine and Bert Stern. The series directed by Ibbetson Street Press founder and Somerville News Arts Editor Doug Holder will be held at Endicott’s College’s Halle Library at 4 p.m. on Nov. 18. The series is open to the public, and will include an open mike after the features. Endicott College is located in Beverly, Mass. Free admission. Check http://endicott.edu/ for directions to the college.

“I’m interested in people and their stories,”  says Miriam Levine. Her most recent book is The Dark Opens, winner of the 2007 Autumn House Poetry Prize. She is the author of In Paterson, a novel, Devotion: A Memoir, three poetry collections, and A Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England. Her work has appeared in Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares, among many other places.
A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts writing fellowship and grants from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, she was a fellow at Yaddo, Hawthornden Castle, Le Château de Lavigny, Villa Montalvo, Fundación Valparaíso, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.

She is Professor Emerita at Framingham State College, where she chaired the English Department and was Coordinator of the Arts and Humanities Program.
Born in Paterson, New Jersey, Levine now divides her time between Florida and Massachusetts. Currently she is at work on a new novel and a poetry collection.

Bert Stern

Bert Stern is Milligan Professor Emeritus at Wabash College, and has also taught at the University of Thessaloniki and at Peking University. At present, with his wife, Tamlin Neville, he edits Off the Grid Press. Bert also teaches in an alternative sentencing program called Changing Lives through Literature.

Bert’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Hunger Mountain, The American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Review, Ibbetson Street, and in many other journals and anthologies. Steerage, his recent poetry collection, is on the “Must Read” list selected by the Massachusetts Book Award. He has been nominated tfour times for a Pushcart Prize, and is the recipient of an Artist’s Grant from the Somerville Arts Council.