Due to the closure of all “non-essential” businesses, our April Poetry Matters! event featuring the contributors of Sandstone & Silver: An Anthology of Nevada Poets at Stinko’s Las Vegas was cancelled.
In celebration of National Poetry Month, enjoy readings from Ashley Vargas, Elizabeth Quiñones-Zaldaña, Samuel Piccone, Emilee Wirshing, Jarret Keene, and Jennifer Battisti in the recordings below.
Heather Lang-Cassera is the Clark County, Nevada Poet Laureate. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry with a Certificate in Literary Translation. Her poems have been published by the Desert Companion, Diode, The Normal School, North American Review, Paper Darts, Pleiades, South Dakota Review, and Witness blog among other publications, and they have been on exhibit in the Nevada Humanities Program Gallery and elsewhere. She serves as a world literature editor and literary critic for The Literary Review, faculty advisor for 300 Days of Sun, and editor-in-chief for Tolsun Books. At Nevada State College, Heather teaches Introduction to Creative Writing, World Literature II, Modern American Poetry, and more.
She is the editor of Sandstone & Silver: An Anthology of Nevada Poets.
Poet, Teacher, Community Organizer & Las Vegas native; Ashley Vargas—Ms. AyeVee—is a performance fireball of metaphor and feeling, flashing light on the struggles of divine average souls. She brings that moment of instant recognition that binds artist to audience, that makes us root for her. Beyond the trash-traps of subjugation commercialism that dominates public messaging, her poems reveal there can be a better way. Her work has been published by Helen: a literary magazine, Other Magazine, Zeitgeist Press, Petite Hound Press, The Red Rock Review & Double Down by Nevada Humanities.
Elizabeth Quiñones-Zaldaña lives and writes in southern Nevada. She earned a B.A. in English from the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Her poetry has been published in From Snowcaps to Desert Flats: An Anthology of Latino Writers in Nevada, Helen: A Literary Magazine; 300 Days of Sun, Nevada Public Radio’s Desert Companion and elsewhere. In 2019, her chapbook, Bougainvillea, was published by Tolsun Books.
Samuel Piccone is the author of the chapbook Pupa (Anhinga Press, 2018). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including, Sycamore Review, Passages North, Denver Quarterly, and The Pinch. He received an MFA in poetry from North Carolina State University and serves on the poetry staff at Raleigh Review. Currently, he resides and teaches in Nevada.
Emilee Wirshing is a librarian and lifelong Nevadan. She advocates for local poets and creativity by hosting various Poetry Open Mic Nights and writing workshops in the community. She has served as a judge for the Library of Congress ‘Letters About Literature’ Contest, and was the founding poetry editor of Noble / Gas Qtrly. Her poetry has been published in 300 Days of Sun, Infinite Rust, Quiddity, Helen, and Thing. Anthologies 'Clark' and 'Legs of Tumbleweed, Wings of Lace' also include her work. Her first chapbook, american dream houses, was published by Tolsun Books in 2020.
Jarret Keene is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the author of two poetry collections, Monster Fashion (Manic D Press, 2002) and A Boy's Guide to Arson (Zeitgeist Press, 2009). Keene's verse has appeared in many anthologies, including Like Thunder: Poets Respond to Violence in America (University of Iowa Press, 2002); Vespers: Contemporary American Poems of Religion and Spirituality (University of Iowa Press, 2003); Red, White, and Blues: Poets on the Promise of America (University of Iowa Press, 2004); Ava Gardner: Touches of Venus (Entasis Press, 2020); City of the Big Shoulders: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry(University of Iowa Press, 2012); and Drawn to Marvel: Poems From the Comic Books (2014, Minor Arcana Press). Keene currently serves as the editor-in-chief of Witness literary magazine, published by the Black Mountain Institute on the UNLV campus.
Jennifer Battisti, a life long Nevadan, is the co-director and Teaching Artist for the Alzheimer's Poetry Project in Clark County. In 2019, she was voted Best Local Writer by the readers of the Desert Companion. Her chapbook, Echo Bay, was released in 2018 with Tolsun Books.