April 21st thru 25th: 2026 Cleveland Poetry Festival

From our friends at Literary Cleveland:

For more information and to register, please visit https://www.litcleveland.org/events-programs/cleveland-poetry-festival-2026.

2026 Sun & Moon Poetry Festival: May 15–17 in Yellow Springs

The 2026 Sun & Moon Poetry Festival Invites Attendees to “Navigate with Poetry.”

The Ohio Poetry Association (OPA), in partnership with Miami Valley Astronomical Society, presents the fifth Sun & Moon Poetry Festival, May 15–17, 2026, in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Poets and poetry lovers are invited to explore the theme, “Navigate with Poetry,” during a weekend of writing workshops, readings, stargazing, and other activities that culminate in a celebration of poetry and the cosmos. Keynote guest Geoffrey A. Landis is an award-winning poet, science fiction writer, and scientist whose writing has appeared in more than twenty languages.

“At Glen Helen, Poetry and Nature become one in the ravine, the open sky, and our words,” said Susann Moeller, OPA First Vice President and festival chairperson.

Additional workshop leaders for the weekend are renowned poets Lauren Camp, Manuel Iris, Paula J. Lambert, and Dior J. Stephens. A special haiku hike led by Ray McNiece will offer visitors a chance to hear poems in the beautiful setting of Glen Helen Nature Preserve. The weekend also offers street poetry in downtown Yellow Springs, a haiku “death match,” native flute music, sound bathing, and an open-mic for festival attendees to share their own poetry.

"Thanks to the support of our sponsors, we have a remarkable lineup of poets and activities planned for this year's Sun & Moon Poetry Festival, which is a signature OPA event that demonstrates our commitment to expanding poetic craft and community in inclusive spaces," said Holly Brians Ragusa, OPA President.

Sponsors for the festival include the Ohio Arts Council, Full/Crescent Press, Lit Youngstown, LitCincy, Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, and Crisis Chronicles Press.

Complete festival information, a program schedule, and accommodations information is available on the OPA website at ohiopoetryassn.org/sun-moon-festival

Registration is available through April 22th at eventbrite.com/e/sun-moon-poetry-festival-tickets-1892651303999.

The Ohio Poetry Association (OPA) is a nonprofit, educational volunteer organization with a 501(c)(3) Federal designation and a member state of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies.

Registration open for Lit Youngstown's free Winter Writing Camp on February 28th

From our friends at Lit Youngstown:

Winter Writing Camp
Registration is Open

Winter Writing Camp 2026 will be Saturday, February 28, for writers ages 5 and up.

Warm up and write at the 9th Annual Winter Writing Camp! Spend the day engaged in interesting writing activities led by regional writers.

Registration is required for this free event, and includes a delicious catered lunch.  Registration is open until February 1 or all seats are filled.

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​Register at https://www.lityoungstown.org/winter-writing-camp.

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Please note that children in Kindergarten and First Grade require an adult to be with them all day, and children 10 and under require an adult in the building.

 

Adult campers can select sessions on the art of letter writing, telling your own story, adult-child journaling, writing haiku, traditional vs. self-publishing, and more, with workshop leaders Christopher Barzak, John Burroughs, Russell Brickey, JRW Case, Meghan Cliffel, Makenn Liller Dahman, Bella Davis, Teresa Leone, Isabella Moreno, Trennae Roe, Abby Vandiver, Shaunda Yancey & Kara M. Zone. 

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Many thanks to our host the Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County.

November 15th: Get Sharp! 2025 Ohio Poetry Publishing Conference

Join the Ohio Poetry Association on November 15th from 10 to 4:30 at the Cuyahoga County Public Library's South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch for an absolutely free Ohio Poetry Publishing Conference. Registration and more details at https://attend.cuyahogalibrary.org/event/13881294.

Get Sharp! will include an Ohio small press book fair and fab workshop presentations by Dianne Borsenik, Geoff Anderson, Michael Salinger, and Susan Grimm.

1/11: Ohio Poetry Association Workshop featuring Yalie Saweda Kamara

In my new role as 2nd vice president of the Ohio Poetry Association, I would like to invite you to join us virtually on Saturday 11 January at 1 p.m. for a fantastic workshop with Yalie Saweda Kamara.

OPA Workshop featuring Yalie Saweda Kamara

For our first poetry workshop of 2025, we are thrilled to welcome the current Poet Laureate of the City of Cincinnati, Yalie Saweda Kamara. Kamara is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, educator, and researcher originally from Oakland, California, and the 2022–2024 Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate. Invited for a third year of poet laureate service, her tenure will conclude in 2025. She is an assistant professor of English at Xavier University, where she specializes in creative writing and global and diasporic literature. Winner of the 2022–2023 Jake Adam York Prize, Kamara’s debut full-length poetry collection is Besaydoo (Milkweed Editions, 2024).

About the Workshop: “i am running into a new year”

In this workshop, whose title is based on the famed Lucille Clifton poem, poets will reflect on the gifts, struggles, and revelation of 2024 and engage in creative activity that considers world making in 2025. Through a multimedia exploration of surrender, embrace, confession, and celebration, we will endeavor to investigate the following query: How do the vestiges and blossoms from the previous year inform our understanding of and proximity
to "possibility" in the newest year?

This hybrid workshop will take place following the 10 a.m. OPA quarterly business meeting at the Mercantile Library in Cincinnati and also via Zoom. 

To attend, please register at www.ohiopoetryassn.org/events. 

To learn more about Yalie Saweda Kamara, visit her website at www.yaylala.com.

September 19 thru 21: The Wick Poetry Center Celebrating 40 Years

From our friends at the Wick Poetry Center in Kent:

In honor of the Wick Poetry Center’s 40th anniversary, we invite you to join us for a celebration at Kent State University. Over two days and three nights of festivities, our keynote speakers, Padraig Ó Tuama, Naomi Shihab Nye, Jane Hirshfield, and Adrian Matejka will give readings and host engaging panels. As we celebrate four decades of creativity and community, we are also delighted to feature poet and founding director Maggie Anderson, along with our accomplished Wick prize-winning authors.

Register by September 13th at WickPoetry.com.

 

Cleveland Inkubator - a free writing conference - begins soon!

Hosted by our friends at Literary Cleveland. Click the pic for more information.

Lit Youngstown Fall Literary Festival This Weekend

 

From our friends at Lit Youngstown:

The 7th annual Fall Literary Festival will feature Ross Gay, Jill Christman, Alison Stine, and the Craig Paulenich Endowed Lecture on Literary Community by Lit Cleveland Executive Director Matt Weinkam. This will be an incredible conference, with thanks to our sponsors the Centofanti Foundation, the Youngstown State University Center for Working-Class Studies, WYSU-FM, the Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley, Lake Erie Golf Cars, the Thomases Family Foundation, KO Consulting, the Grace Ruth Memorial Endowment, Ohio Humanities, the Wilkes University Master of Fine Arts, the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts, Eastern Gateway Community College, the Ohio Arts Council and the Youngstown Foundation.

Registration for daytime events is now closed. Please join us for the free evening readings! For more information including a full schedule of events, please visit https://www.lityoungstown.org/fall-literary-festival-2023.

5/27 in Columbus and Online: the Ohio Poetry Association presents a Beat Poetry Workshop

May 27th, Ohio Beat Poet Laureate Sandra Feen and U.S. Beat Poet Laureate John Burroughs will present "You've Got the Beat," a unique Beat poetry workshop sponsored by the Ohio Poetry Association. Attend either online or in person at the Cooperative Chess Cultural Center in Columbus, Ohio. Please register at https://www.ohiopoetryassn.org/events.

Self-Publishing Roundtable, April 6th in South Euclid

Curious about or considering self-publishing? Join us this Thursday, 6 April at 7 pm, at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library for A Self-Publishing Roundtable featuring panelists

* Juliet Cook (Blood Pudding Press publisher and co-author of Short Poems About Violence and Chickens),
* Michelle R. Smith (Literary Cleveland Programming Associate and author of The Vagina Analogues), and
* John Burroughs (Crisis Chronicles Press publisher and  author of The Wrest of the Worthwhile).

Please register here: https://cuyahoga.libnet.info/event/7616134.

1876 S Green Road
South Euclid, Ohio 44121

Poem for Cleveland workshops strive to inspire Clevelanders with anthology release

Read the rest at https://www.cleveland.com/news/2023/01/poem-for-cleveland-workshops-strive-to-inspire-clevelanders-with-anthology-release.html.

Lit Youngstown Fall Literary Festival: October 20th through 22nd

Lit Youngstown's 6th annual Fall Literary Festival will be centered around the theme “The Places That Make Us,” a conversation about writing, publishing, teaching, community outreach, and inclusion.

Supported by Ohio Humanities, the conference aims to sustain and enhance discussion on real and imagined literary places that shape our memory, experience and identity.

This year’s featured presenters are film scholar & screenwriter Laura Beadling, fiction writer Kelly Fordon, filmmaker Karla Murthy, children’s author Candace Fleming & poet Joy Priest.

For more information, to register, and to view the full schedule, click here.

This week in Kent, Ohio

 From our friends at the Wick Poetry Center:

Join Us This Week for Events and Workshops

We are excited to share this week's events and workshops. Come and celebrate design and poetry with us at the Akron Art Museum this Thursday at 6 pm. A Mapping Akron workshop will follow at 7 pm. On Friday, the Wick students and interns will facilitate our weekly workshop, Wick Weekly, from 1-2 pm in the May Prentice House. Find us on Friday from 3-7 pm at the Black Squirrel Festival at Risman Plaza with fun games and Wick swag. On Saturday, we will host our Market Stanzas project at the Haymaker Farmer's Market. More details are below and on our webpage:

Wick Events and Workshops 2022/23

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the "Celebrating Our Own & Open Mic" event has been rescheduled to Wednesday, September 28!  CELEBRATING OUR OWN & OPEN MIC NEW DATE, SAME LOCATION:  WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 28, 7 P.M. | WICK POETRY CORNER IN THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, 2ND FLOOR   This event will spotlight the 2022 Wick Poetry Center scholarship winners. Each winner will have the opportunity to share their work. An open mic, in which anyone is welcome to read, will follow. Come celebrate poetry with us by sharing your poems and discovering the new voices around you.

More information about this week's event: MARKET STANZAS Saturdays, September 3, 17, 24, and October 22 | from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. | Haymaker Farmers’ Market Market Stanzas is a community arts project created by the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University in partnership with Haymaker Farmers’ Market in celebration of their 30th anniversary. Community members can share memories about the market, its vendors and volunteers, and the important way it serves the Kent community to the online gallery or by visiting the Traveling Stanzas Poetry Makerspace at the market. Each visitor's contribution will add to a growing community poem: haymaker.marketstanzas.com.   Market Stanzas is funded by generous grants from the Kent Rotary Foundation and the Ohio Arts Council.   TRAVELING STANZAS POETRY & DESIGN TALK  Thursday, September 15, 6:00 p.m. | Akron Art Museum (1 S High St, Akron) For 13 years, the Traveling Stanzas project with Wick Poetry Center has translated the creative expression of poets in our community into stunning works of visual art. New posters from this project will be on display starting 9/2. Join us for a conversation between the young poets and the poster designers.   MAPPING AKRON - EXPRESSIVE WRITING WORKSHOP Thursday, September 15, 7:00 p.m. | Akron Art Museum (1 S High St, Akron) Following the presentation about Traveling Stanzas (see above), join Teaching Artists from the Wick Poetry Center for a writing and placemaking workshop from its new initiative “Mapping Akron.” In a yearlong series of creative writing and placemaking workshops with everyday Akronites, the Wick Poetry Center will build an interactive, digital map of Akron, which will explore individuals’ sense of place and home and contribute to the vital artistic ecosystem of the city.   EVERY FRIDAY: WICK WEEKLY POETRY WRITING WORKSHOPS Every Friday, 1:00 p.m. | Wick Poetry Center (in May Prentice House) Starting September 2nd Join the Wick Poetry Center student workers and interns for a free workshop each week. Wick Weekly invites Kent State students and community members to engage in informal writing prompts and activities. No prior writing experience is required.  Wick Weekly follows the Kent State University Academic Calendar, and will not take place on days when the University is closed. No registration is necessary.

We hope to see you at the events. Wick Poetry Center

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Literary Cleveland’s Inkubator Writing Conference: September 6 through 10

 

 

Do you write stories or poems? Want to learn more about fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry? Looking for ways to share your story or publish your work?  

 

Check out this free writing conference! 

 

Literary Cleveland’s Inkubator Writing Conference is one of the largest free writing festivals in the country. Free virtual panels September 6-8 will lead up to a two-day in-person conference at the Cleveland Public Library on September 9-10.

• Draft new writing with workshops in each genre

• Improve your craft with talks by expert authors

• Connect with fellow writers and publishers at events, readings,
  and a book fair

• Learn how to publish your work with sessions on finding an agent,
  developing a book proposal, and submitting to journals

Whether you are new or experienced, dedicated or curious, and even if you don't consider yourself a writer—you should attend! In addition to fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and publishing events, there are also sessions on starting a podcast, reviewing books, posting about books on YouTube, dealing with impostor syndrome, and much more.

This conference is free to attend but registration is required. Register today before workshops fill up!

View the full schedule and register for free at: https://inkubator.litcleveland.org/ 

 

National Federation of State Poetry Societies Convention: June 23-26 in Columbus

 

You now have until June 19th to register for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies Convention that is happening in central Ohio on June 23rd through 26th, hosted by the Ohio Poetry Association. 

Hanif Abdurraqib will be their convention Keynote speaker. If you can't attend in person, there is also an option to attend virtually.

More info: https://www.ohiopoetryassn.org/nfsps-2022-convention.

Writers Conference in Lorain on March 19th

All writers, whether new to the craft or a veteran, are welcome to join us for this year's Lorain Public Library System Writers Conference on Saturday March 19th, 2022. This fantastic opportunity to network with other local writers will also include door prizes and refreshments. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Register here.

Dec. 1st - Last Day to Register for Lit Youngstown Poetry Intensives

Lit Youngstown is offering a monthly, in-depth poetry writing workshop from January to September, 2022. Each participant will set their own goals for writing, publishing and participating in other opportunities in the literary community. Workshop leaders will offer a variety of topics and influences.

The workshops will meet from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on the second Saturday of each month (after January's session on the 15th), in Lit Youngstown's office at St. John's Episcopal Church, 323 Wick Ave. The course cost is $200 per participant; the course will run when we reach a minimum of ten participants.

Register here by December 1 to save a seat. For more info, including FAQ and presenter bios, please click here. Feel free to reach out with any other questions: LitYoungstown@gmail.com.

January 15
10-12 Morning topic: contemporary poetry books
1-4 Guest Workshop Leader Robert Miltner & Molly Fuller, on the sounds of music in poetry

February 10
10-12 Morning topic: craft books on poetry writing
1-4 Guest Workshop Leader Mary Biddinger, on inviting strangeness into your poems

March 12
10-12 Morning topic: journals, submissions
1-4 Guest Workshop Leader Steve Reese, on abstract vs. concrete in poetic language

April 9
10-12 Morning topic: chapbooks
1-4 Guest Workshop Leader Marion Boyer, on revision

May 14
10-12 Morning topic: full-length books
1-4 Guest Workshop Leader Barbara Sabol, on beginnings and endings

June 11
10-12 Morning topic: residencies, contests, retreats, conferences
1-4 Guest Workshop Leader Allison Pitinii Davis, on linebreaks

July 9
10-12 Morning topic: creating a workshop group
1-4 Guest Workshop Leader Diane Kendig, on time

August 13
10-12 Morning topic: performance reading
1-4 Guest Workshop Leader Susan Grimm, on how the poem happens: thinking about the parts and the whole

September 10
10-12 Morning topic: trade magazines
1-4 Guest Workshop Leader David Hassler, on finding the hidden energy in language