Two poets with close ties to Woods Hole will be reading from their work.
David Epstein, a life-long Woods Hole summer resident, grew up winters in Lexington, Massachusetts. Since 2000, he has been a resident of West Hartford, Connecticut. David has a Ph.D. in literature from Brandeis University, specializing in 19th and 20th century poetry and fiction. He has published articles for the At-Home Dad Newsletter; poems in Poesia, Poetic Hours, The Lyric, Blue Collar Review, and Shofar. He has also built some small boats and taught school. These days he works fixing up old multifamily buildings in New Britain, Connecticut. Every summer he races small sailboats in Woods Hole and publishes “entertaining accounts” of the races in the Enterprise. He helps out on several boards, including The Hartford Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens. He adds that he has “ recently been publishing a few poems, but a book-length volume of my poetry has yet to occur.”
Lee Parpart also has spent most of her summers in Woods Hole. She was born in Boston and raised “all over”, including Colorado, Zambia, and Woods Hole. She has had a “funny sort of patchwork career “ in journalism, academe, and creative writing. She wrote poetry and fiction as a teen, even winning an Olivetti once, then veered into newspaper reporting for a time, covering conservation issues for the Cape Cod Times and writing film and visual arts columns for two Canadian dailies.
Never fully at home in journalism, Lee explored film studies for a long while, earning an MFA in Film & Video from York University in Toronto, teaching cinema studies at York and the University of Toronto, and publishing widely in books and journals on Canadian, American and Irish cinema and TV. Since returning to creative writing in 2015, she has published eight poems and stories, won an emerging writer award through Open Book: Ontario, and published a short story in a literary collection about Nancy Drew. Lee is a frequent contributor to Silver Birch Press’s monthly themed calls for poetry and prose, and an active member of the Toronto literary scene, organizing and appearing in readings and launches with other members of the East End Writers’ Group. She splits her time between Toronto and Woods Hole.
The poetry reading is free and open to the public. It will be held in the lower level of the library with its readily accessible entrance on the eastern side of the building. For more information, call the library at 508-548-8961.