We Three Invite You!

An evening of poetry and memoir
Denise Bergman
H. Susan Freireich
Molly Lynn Watt

Tuesday, January 13, 2008 at 7 p.m.
Cambridge Central Square Library
45 Pearl Street, Cambridge

Refreshments follow the reading!

Red Line subway to Central Square
Parking garage at the corner of Pearl and Green Streets

DENISE BERGMAN is the author of Seeing
Annie Sullivan, poems based on the early life
of Helen Keller’s teacher (2005), which was
translated into Braille and a Talking Book.
Her poems have been widely published. She
conceived and edited City River of Voices, an
anthology of urban poetry, and she was the
author of Keyhole Poems, a sequence that
combines the history of twelve specific urban
places with the present. Denise was poetry
editor of Sojourner, A Women’s Forum, and
hosted a cable TV show “Women in the
Arts.” She received several grants from the
Massachusetts Cultural Council and the
Puffin Foundation, and her work was
nominated for a Pushcart Prize. An excerpt
of her poem Red is permanently installed as
public art in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

H. SUSAN FREIREICH went back to school
to study public health after twenty-five years
of teaching, community organizing, and
political activism. She worked in the civilian
communities caught in El Salvador’s civil
war and is writing a book about the
experience. She is the recipient of the 1998
Frances Shaw Fellowship at The Ragdale
Foundation, and the 2005 Mildred Sherrod
Bissinger Memorial Endowed Fellowship at
the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She
has also received support and time for her
work from Norcroft, Hedgebrook, Blue
Mountain Center, and Casa Libre en la
Solana. Her work has appeared in Poetic
Voices without Borders and in The Best Women’s
Travel Writing 2007 and The Best Women’s
Travel Writing 2008.

MOLLY LYNN WATT worked for 45 years
with schools for better education and with
communities organizing for peace, justice,
and civil rights. She retired a few years ago
to devote full time to writing. She curates the
Fireside Reading and is the poetry editor of
HILR Review and three anthologies of
Bagels with the Bards. With her husband, she
co-created and performs George & Ruth: Songs
and Letters of the Spanish Civil War, live and on
CD. Ibbetson Street Press published her
book of poems, Shadow People, in 2007. Her
work appears The Boston Globe, Chicken Soup,
Domestic Affairs, Eclipse, Fulcrum, G.W. Review,
Hampden-Sydney Review, Occasional Moose,
Peaceworks, The 2008 Poets' Guide To New
Hampshire, Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine,
South Carolina Review, Spare Change, Teachers &
Writers Collaborative, Westview, Best of Wilderness
House Literary Review, Wisconsin Review, Willard
& Maple, and others.

Suzanne Berger and Ifeanyi Menkiti

CAMBRIDGE COHOUSING PRESENTS
THE FIRESIDE READING SERIES
MOLLY LYNN WATT, CURATOR

Wednesday, January 21, 2009 • 7:30 pm

Note: Change of date from Jan. 20th to Jan. 21st due to Inauguration celebrations!


Suzanne Berger teaches advanced students in poetry at the Lesley Seminars at Lesley University. She has two books of poetry, These Rooms (Penmaen Press, 1979) and Legacies (Alice James Books, 1984) and a book of non-fiction, Horizontal Woman (Houghton Mifflin, 1997). Her work has also appeared in Ploughshares, The New Yorker, AGNI, Harvard Review, and elsewhere, and she has received a Pushcart Prize and a grant from the Somerville (Mass.) Arts Council. (11/2003)

Ifeanyi Menkiti was born in Onitsha, Nigeria and received his undergraduate degree from Pomona College.After further studies at Columbia and NYU he received his Ph.D in Philosophy from Harvard University. He has taught Philosophy at Wellesley College for more than 30 years, and is the owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, the oldest poetry book store in the United States.

Menkiti is the author of four collections of poetry, Affirmations (1971), The Jubilation of Falling Bodies (1978), Of Altair, the Bright Light (2005), and Before A Common Soil (2007). Other poems have appeared in journals and periodicals such as the Sewanee Review, Ploughshares, New Directions, New Letters, The Massachusetts Review, Stony Brook, Bitterroot, the Southwest Review, and Chelsea. The African journals Okike, Transition and Nigeria Magazine have also carried his work. In 1975, he was honored with a fellowship in poetry from Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities through the Artists Foundation, followed in 1978 by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The reading begins with a short open mike. Come at 7 PM to help set up, sign up for open mike and nosh and schmooze. Following the reading you are invited to a wine and cheese reception. (A donation of $3 is requested to help with the cost.)

Walden St. bridge is now open!
The Fireside Reading Committee is Molly Lynn Watt, curator, Richard Curran, Jenise Aminoff and Dan Lynn Watt, webmagicians, Julie Rochlin, Lolita Paiewonsky, Debbie Pfeiffer and many others on logistics, and the writers who come month after month. Thank you all for contributing! The reading is held in the living room in front of the fireplace at Cambridge Co-Housing at 175 Richdale Ave, Cambridge, MA 02140, 3 blocks from the Red Line stop at Porter Square. A request to the City of Cambridge allows out-of-town visitors to park on Richdale Avenue from 6:30-10:30 PM. Contact Molly Lynn Watt, 617-354-8242, mollywatt@comcast.net or Jenise Aminoff, 617-576-2004, jenise@alum.mit.edu, or www.cambridgecohousing.org/Fireside/index.html

George & Ruth: Songs & Letters of the Spanish Civil War: benefit at 8 PM April 18 in Watertown, MA!

In 1937. George Watt, 23, joined thousands of inter- national volunteers who fought against fascism during the Spanish Civil War. George's bride, Ruth, 22, organized support for volunteers in Spain. Their story unfolds through excerpts from their letters to each other, interwoven with songs that capture the spirit of the men and women trying to live their ideals and create a more just world. Trying to stop WWII before it started.

This is a love story. Dan Reads his Dad's letters, Molly reads Ruth's.

Tremedal Concerts, First Parish in Watertown, 35 Church Street, Watertown, MA, Friday, April 18th at 8PM

Tickets: $13 in advance, $15 at door, Seniors $2 off, Advance tickets at Sandy's Music, Cambridge, Information/Reservations 617/782-8718

Proceeds from Tremedal Concerts benefit ongoing work of the Watertown-ElSalvador Sister City Committee. Information? dean@deanstevens.com

Watch this blog for dates to see this 1 1/2 hr performance, or order a 2-CD from CD Baby or Amazon, see link at right!