WordHouse Reading Series
Wednesday May 20, 6PM
Trace Peterson and Kate Rushin
Reading starts with an Open Mike
Trace Peterson is a poet who learned an enormous amount studying poetry writing with Kate Rushin at Wesleyan University in the late 90s. Peterson's newest book of poems is The Valleys Are So Lush and Steep, which won the 2025 Saturnalia Books Alma Book Award and is a Finalist for the 2026 Foreword Reviews INDIES Book of the Year Award in Women's Studies. She is also author of the 2007 poetry book Since I Moved In, which was reissued in a second edition from Chax Press in 2019, and co-editor of the groundbreaking anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics published by Nightboat Books which is currently in its fourth printing. A former N.E.H. Post-Doctoral Fellow at Emory, she has also taught at Yale, Naropa, Hunter College, and currently teaches in the WGSS Program at UConn.
Kate Rushin is the author of The Black Back-Ups, a New York Public Library, Book for the Teen Age as well as a Finalist for a Lambda Award. She has received fellowships from Brown University, The Massachusetts Artists Foundation, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and The Cave Canem Foundation. Her work has appeared in POETRY Magazine, Poem-a-Day and the anthology, African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, edited by Kevin Young. Kate performs her poetry with jazz bassist, Nat Reeves. She is currently Professor of English and Poet in Residence at Connecticut College in New London, CT.
Noah Webster House
227 South Main Street
West Hartford CT 06107
Free event. Please consider making a donation to Noah Webster House.
https://wordhousereadings.blogspot.com/
For more info, contact:
Jim Finnegan
JforJames@aol.com
860.508.2810
June 17: Shou Jie Eng and Karen Warinsky
WordHouse Reading Series
Wednesday June 17, 6PM
Karen Warinsky and Shou Jie Eng
Reading starts with an Open Mike
Shou Jie Eng is a poet and architectural designer. Originally from Singapore, he runs Left Field Projects, a multi-disciplinary design practice located in Hartford, Connecticut. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Bennington Review, Harvard Review, The Los Angeles Review, Meridian, Passages North, and elsewhere. His chapbook of poems, line weights (Sixth Finch), is forthcoming in June 2026, and he teaches architectural drawing at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Karen Warinsky is the author of four collections including Dining with War (2023 Alien Buddha Press), and her new release Beauty & Ashes (Kelsay Books 2025). Her poem “Mirage” won first place in the 2024 Ekphrastic Poetry Trust, she is a Best of the Net nominee and a former finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Contest. Her work appears in numerous anthologies including Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms in Our Hands, journals including The Naugatuck River Revie and Silkworm, and Worcester Magazine as well as online sites. Coordinator of Poets at Large she creates readings and open mics in CT and MA. Find her at karenwarinskypoetry.wordpress.com.
Noah Webster House
227 South Main Street
West Hartford CT 06107
Free event. Please consider making a donation to Noah Webster House.
https://wordhousereadings.blogspot.com/
For more info, contact:
Jim Finnegan
JforJames@aol.com
860.508.2810 Karen Warinsky and Shou Jie Eng Reading starts with an Open Mike
Wednesday June 17, 6PM
Karen Warinsky and Shou Jie Eng
Reading starts with an Open Mike
Shou Jie Eng is a poet and architectural designer. Originally from Singapore, he runs Left Field Projects, a multi-disciplinary design practice located in Hartford, Connecticut. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Bennington Review, Harvard Review, The Los Angeles Review, Meridian, Passages North, and elsewhere. His chapbook of poems, line weights (Sixth Finch), is forthcoming in June 2026, and he teaches architectural drawing at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Karen Warinsky is the author of four collections including Dining with War (2023 Alien Buddha Press), and her new release Beauty & Ashes (Kelsay Books 2025). Her poem “Mirage” won first place in the 2024 Ekphrastic Poetry Trust, she is a Best of the Net nominee and a former finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Contest. Her work appears in numerous anthologies including Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms in Our Hands, journals including The Naugatuck River Revie and Silkworm, and Worcester Magazine as well as online sites. Coordinator of Poets at Large she creates readings and open mics in CT and MA. Find her at karenwarinskypoetry.wordpress.com.
Noah Webster House
227 South Main Street
West Hartford CT 06107
Free event. Please consider making a donation to Noah Webster House.
https://wordhousereadings.blogspot.com/
For more info, contact:
Jim Finnegan
JforJames@aol.com
860.508.2810 Karen Warinsky and Shou Jie Eng Reading starts with an Open Mike
WordHouse Schedule: Spring 2026
Upcoming readings...
MAY 20
Trace Peterson
Kate Rushin
JUNE 17
Karen Warinsky
Shou Jie Eng
All readings on Wednesdays
Starting Time: 6PM
All readings begin with an Open Mike.
Noah Webster House
227 South Main Street
West Hartford CT 06107
For more info, contact:
Jim Finnegan
jforjames@aol.com
860.508.2810
MAY 20
Trace Peterson
Kate Rushin
JUNE 17
Karen Warinsky
Shou Jie Eng
All readings on Wednesdays
Starting Time: 6PM
All readings begin with an Open Mike.
Noah Webster House
227 South Main Street
West Hartford CT 06107
For more info, contact:
Jim Finnegan
jforjames@aol.com
860.508.2810
WordHouse Reading Series History
-2026-
APRIL 15: Joseph Reynolds and Denise Abercrombie
March 18: Judith Liebmann and Jefferson Singer
Feb 18: Scott Frey and Angela Siew
-2025-
Dec 3: Margaret Lloyd and Benjamin Grossberg
Nov 5: Monica Ong and Virginia Shreve
Oct 15: Ciaran Berry and Srini Mandavilli
Sept. 17: Dennis Barone and Luisa Caycedo-Kimura
June 28: Sarah Wetzel
May 3: Ethan Rutherford and Danielle Chapman
April 5: Julia Paul and Henk Rossouw
March 8: Ginny Lowe Connors and brett a. maddux
Feb 1: Brickwalk Poets: Thirtieth Anniversary Reading
Current and former members of a poetry workshop
with a 30-year history.
-2024-
December 14: D. Walsh Gilbert and V. Penelope Pelizzon
November 9: Victoria Norland and Margaret Gibson with actress Heather Oakley
October 19: Marilyn E Johnston and John L Stanizzi
September 28: Pegi Deitz Shea and Richard Michelson
June 1: Eric Hoffman and Steven Ostrowski
April 6: Pate Hale and Patrick Pritchett
March 23: Daniel Lawless and Clare Rossini
Feb. 17: Martha Collins and Anna V. Q. Ross
-2023-
December 9: David Pontrelli and Terry Blackhawk
November 18: Dennis Barone and Amy Nawrocki
October 21: Haiku poets: Stanford M. Forrester/sekiro, Tom Sacramona and Denise Fontaine-Pincince
September 30: Brad Davis and Sally Van Doren
June 10: Debora Kuan and Charles O. Hartman
May 27: Christine Beck and Sharon Lattig
April 8: Steve Straight and Margot Schilpp
March 18: B. Fulton Jennes and Gian Lombardo
February 18: James Berger and Suzanne Frischkorn
-2022-
December 10: Krysia Jopek and Julie Choffel
November 19: Robert Cording and David Cappella
October 22: Short readings and presentations by contributors to the anthology Imagining Vesalius: An Ekphrastic, Scholarly and Literary Celebration of the 1543 De Humani Corporis Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius, edited by Richard Ratzan. Dennis Barone, Terry Donsen Feder, Rosalyn Driscoll, Jack Coulehan, Jim Finnegan, Noah Ratzan, and Richard Ratzan.
September 17: Present & past West Hartford Poets Laureate: Benjamin Grossberg, Maria Sassi, Ginny Lowe Connors, Dennis Barone, Christine Beck and James Finnegan
Previous series: The Charter Oak Readings
APRIL 15: Joseph Reynolds and Denise Abercrombie
March 18: Judith Liebmann and Jefferson Singer
Feb 18: Scott Frey and Angela Siew
-2025-
Dec 3: Margaret Lloyd and Benjamin Grossberg
Nov 5: Monica Ong and Virginia Shreve
Oct 15: Ciaran Berry and Srini Mandavilli
Sept. 17: Dennis Barone and Luisa Caycedo-Kimura
June 28: Sarah Wetzel
May 3: Ethan Rutherford and Danielle Chapman
April 5: Julia Paul and Henk Rossouw
March 8: Ginny Lowe Connors and brett a. maddux
Feb 1: Brickwalk Poets: Thirtieth Anniversary Reading
Current and former members of a poetry workshop
with a 30-year history.
-2024-
December 14: D. Walsh Gilbert and V. Penelope Pelizzon
November 9: Victoria Norland and Margaret Gibson with actress Heather Oakley
October 19: Marilyn E Johnston and John L Stanizzi
September 28: Pegi Deitz Shea and Richard Michelson
June 1: Eric Hoffman and Steven Ostrowski
April 6: Pate Hale and Patrick Pritchett
March 23: Daniel Lawless and Clare Rossini
Feb. 17: Martha Collins and Anna V. Q. Ross
-2023-
December 9: David Pontrelli and Terry Blackhawk
November 18: Dennis Barone and Amy Nawrocki
October 21: Haiku poets: Stanford M. Forrester/sekiro, Tom Sacramona and Denise Fontaine-Pincince
September 30: Brad Davis and Sally Van Doren
June 10: Debora Kuan and Charles O. Hartman
May 27: Christine Beck and Sharon Lattig
April 8: Steve Straight and Margot Schilpp
March 18: B. Fulton Jennes and Gian Lombardo
February 18: James Berger and Suzanne Frischkorn
-2022-
December 10: Krysia Jopek and Julie Choffel
November 19: Robert Cording and David Cappella
October 22: Short readings and presentations by contributors to the anthology Imagining Vesalius: An Ekphrastic, Scholarly and Literary Celebration of the 1543 De Humani Corporis Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius, edited by Richard Ratzan. Dennis Barone, Terry Donsen Feder, Rosalyn Driscoll, Jack Coulehan, Jim Finnegan, Noah Ratzan, and Richard Ratzan.
September 17: Present & past West Hartford Poets Laureate: Benjamin Grossberg, Maria Sassi, Ginny Lowe Connors, Dennis Barone, Christine Beck and James Finnegan
Previous series: The Charter Oak Readings
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