Studio Series Poetry Reading and Open Mic

Featuring Kelly Lenox and Donna Henderson

Kelly Lenox writes because there’s a part of her that only breathes when her pen moves across paper. She studied environmental science, worked as a hazardous waste regulator for federal and state governments, then owned up to a secret love of poetry. In her day job, Kelly is a science editor for the National Institutes of Health who returned to Oregon in 2018 after a 7-year sojourn in North Carolina. Kelly writes, plants, and harvests in Milwaukie, OR. Her poetry collection, The Brightest Rock, received honorable mention for the 2018 Brockman-Campbell Book Award. She has completed the manuscript for a second collection, Straddling the Rift Zone, that is a hybrid work with both poetry and lyric essay. In January 2023 she launched “Mama Ephemera’s Muddy Feet” on Substack (kellylenox.substack.com), where monthly she publishes brief original essays reflecting on nature, science, personal stories, and literature. Her poetry, translations, and prose appear in Poetry Daily, Black Warrior Review, Cold Mountain, Timberline Review, Hubbub, EcoTheo Review, and elsewhere in the U.S. and Europe. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, with an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Donna Henderson is a founding member of Airlie Press, and the author of four collections of poems, two of which were finalists for the Oregon Book Award in Poetry. Her poems, essays, reviews, song lyrics and cross-genre collaborations have appeared widely in journals, recordings, and performance venues. Send Word, her most recent collection of poems, was released in 2022. Professionally, Donna practices psychotherapy, and lives with her husband, Rich Sutliff, in Maupin, OR, where she also teaches writing, and sings jazz in various Columbia Gorge venues as often as anyone will let her. She is currently completing a fourth collection of poems, probably entitled “Advice to Guest Residents.”

The Open Mic is open to all audience members. Participants can sign up before the start of the reading or during the break. In the interest of time, Open Mic readers are asked to limit their readings to three minutes.

Did you know you can view clips of featured poets reading on our Facebook page? https://www.facebook.com/groups/1281329966139780/