Stanley Plumly: Barnesville, O

September 19, 2019 Catherine Lee

Stanley Plumly IV.jpg — The late Stanley Plumly was professor and director of the Creative Writing program at the University of Maryland. His writing includes books of poetry (*Orphan Hours, Old Heart, Now That My Father Lies Down Beside Me, The Marriage in the Trees*, and *Against Sunset*); criticism, *Argument and Song: Sources & Silences in Poetry*; and a highly acclaimed biography, *Posthumous Keats*. His many awards include a Guggenheim and three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a National Book Critics Circle Award nomination, and Maryland State poet laureateship.

A poet sees his birth in two states as the beginning of his creative force.

Tabitha Nichole Smith: A Hymn to a Grand Mother

September 19, 2019 Catherine Lee

Tabitha N. Smith was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. She earned her BA in Africana Studies from Wellesley College in 1994 and her PhD in African-American Literature from Howard University in 2006. Tabitha, who taught English literature and composition at Howard University for a number of years, is now employed as a technical editor in Bowie, Maryland. As well, she is enrolled as a student at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., where she is studying to obtain her Master of Divinity. She lives in Bowie with her young daughter Victoria.

During summer vacations from college, Tabitha gained a deeper appreciation for her grandmother in Memphis.

Bonnie J. Toomey: What Is Love?

September 19, 2019 Catherine Lee

Bonnie J. Toomey writes a weekly column called “Parent Forward” for Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise in Massachusetts. Her articles, stories, essays, and poems have been featured in Baystateparent Magazine, New Hampshire Parents Magazine, Baystate Echo, Penwood Review, and Solace in a Book. Bonnie is a part-time professor at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, where she earned a master’s degree in literacy. She writes about life in the twenty-first century and lives in New Hampshire with her husband. Learn more at bonniejtoomey.com.

A columnist considers the meaning of love as the beauty of accepting and cherishing one’s life as complete and fulfilled.

Eleanor W. Traylor: The Provenance of Wonder

September 19, 2019 Catherine Lee

An acclaimed scholar and critic in African-American literature and criticism, Eleanor W. Traylor is graduate professor of English at Howard University. Her work has appeared in essays, biographies, and articles on many prominent African-American writers, including James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Richard Wright. She has held advisory roles with the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, National Black Arts Festival, and Educators for the Advancement of African-American Literature in the (Public) Schools, which she established. The recipient of numerous awards, she has been inducted into the National Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent. She has a BA from Spelman College, an MA from Atlanta University, and a PhD from the Catholic University of America. She is working on a book about emancipation narrative and agency in African-American literature.

A literary scholar explores how James Baldwin and Aretha Franklin changed African American aesthetics.

Lesley Wheeler: Beautiful Mess

September 19, 2019 Catherine Lee

Lesley Wheeler’s books include *Radioland* and *Heterotopia*, winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize, and the chapbook *Propagation*. Her poems and essays appear in *Cold Mountain Review*, *Ecotone, Gettysburg Review,* and elsewhere, and her novel, *Unbecoming,* is scheduled for publication in 2020. Poetry editor of *Shenandoah,* Wheeler teaches at Washington and Lee University in Virginia and blogs about poetry at lesleywheeler.org.

A writer looks at how creativity lives in the chaos of work and family.

Kate Wilson: "Stable Geniuses"

September 19, 2019 Catherine Lee

kate stella color (1).jpg — Kate Wilson double-majored in music and English at Stanford University and has an MA in Medieval Studies and a PhD in English from The Catholic University of America. Her passion is helping others learn to write, which she does on a daily basis in her work teaching first-year writing and argument at American University. Kate lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with her musician husband, Andy, her horse-whisperer daughter, Clara, and is joined during school breaks by her college student daughter, Emily.

A mother sees her daughter's felt intimacy of horse and rider as real beauty versus outward beauty of the animal.

Kathi Wolfe: A Blindista’s Notes on Beauty: Unseeing Stares, Velvet Ears—Espresso-Fingertips

September 19, 2019 Catherine Lee

Kathi Wolfe is a poet and writer. Wolfe’s poetry has appeared in *Poetry* magazine, the New York Times, and other publications. Her most recent collection, *Love and Kumquats: New and Selected Poems* was published by BrickHouse Books. She was a contributor to the anthologies *QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology* and *Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability*. Wolfe was a 2008 Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writer Fellow. Wolfe has been awarded a Puffin Foundation grant and Writers grants from Vermont Studio Center. She is a contributor to the *Washington Blade*, the acclaimed LGBTQ paper.

With a perceptive mind and a generous heart, a writer deconstructs societal views to see a truer beauty.

Baron Wormser: Off the Grid

September 19, 2019 Catherine Lee

Baron Wormser is the author/co-author of eighteen books. Wormser has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bread Loaf, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. From 2000 to 2005 he served as poet laureate of the state of Maine.

Living twenty years off the grid in the Maine woods with his wife and two children, a writer sees beauty as resident in daily life.

Owen Wormser: Foisting Beauty

September 19, 2019 Catherine Lee

Owen Wormser.jpeg — Since receiving his BSLA in 1998, Owen Wormser has been designing and building landscapes with a focus on sustainability and integrating people into the landscape. His work is rooted in perspective and expertise drawn from landscape architecture, horticulture, permaculture, organic agriculture, and ecology. His company, Abound Design, provides design, consulting, and installation services and in 2016, Owen helped found Local Harmony, a non-profit focused on stewardship and self-cultivation.

A landscape architect examines beauty in nature and its potential to persuade people to become stewards of the earth.

Katherine E. Young: My Very Own Golden Horde: Moscow

September 18, 2019 Catherine Lee

Katherine E. Young is the author of *Day of the Border Guards*, 2014 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize finalist, and two chapbooks. She is the translator of *Farewell, Aylis* by Azerbaijani political prisoner Akram Aylisli and *Blue Birds and Red Horses* and *Two Poems*, both by Inna Kabysh. Young’s translations have appeared in *Asymptote*, *LA Review of Books*, *The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry*, and *100 Poems about Moscow*, winner of the 2017 Books of Russia award (Poetry). Young was a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts translation fellow and served as the inaugural poet laureate for Arlington, Virginia, from 2016 to 2018.

A poet/translator reflects on her romance with her first love and with the city of Moscow through the vision of Russian poets.

Deborah Ziska: American Protest

September 18, 2019 Catherine Lee

Deborah Ziska, a native of Washington, D.C., teaches “Museums of the Americas: Facing Challenges in the 21st Century” in the Museum Studies graduate program of Johns Hopkins University. For two decades, she ran the press office of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, which she joined in 1988. Before that she worked in public relations in education, health, television, women’s rights, and international development. She sits on the boards of the U.S. National and Marketing and Public Relations Committees of the International Council of Museums and on the advisory committee of the Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of American States.

An arts administrator recounts her protest experiences, finding inspiration among crowds that gather and rally for change.