Bucks County Community College’s long-running Wordsmiths poetry reading series continues a proud tradition at 7:30 p.m. on April 29, with an event featuring two acclaimed poets: Jane Hirshfield and Luray Gross.

The authors will read at the college’s Zlock Performing Arts Center on the Newtown campus.

The reading will be preceded by a VIP reception in the lobby area outside the auditorium and will be followed by a book signing and dessert reception.

Ticket Information

Reserved general admission tickets are free (but registration is required); they include access to the book signing and a dessert reception.

VIP tickets are $15 and include reserved seating and entry to the reception from 6:00 to 7:20 p.m. outside the auditorium. The reception includes light hors d’oeuvres and two wine, beer, or nonalcoholic drinks per person. VIP ticket holders must be 21 and older. IDs will be checked.

Both free and paid tickets can be obtained online. Tickets can also be obtained at the Zlock box office outside the auditorium on Tuesdays from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., or on the day of the event. The reading will also be broadcast on Zoom.

Jane Hirschfield

Jane Hirshfield’s poetry books include:

• Ledger (2020)
• The Beauty, long-listed for the 2015 National Book Award
• Given Sugar, Given Salt, a finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award
• After, short-listed for England’s T.S. Eliot Award and named a “best book of 2006” by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and England’s Financial Times

Her two collections of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (1997) and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (2015), have become classics in their field.

Other works of note include her four books collecting and co-translating the work of world poets from the past:

• The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Komachi & Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Japanese Court
• Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women
• Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems
• The Heart of Haiku, on Matsuo Basho, named an Amazon Best Book of 2011

Luray Gross

Luray Gross grew up on a Pa. dairy farm in a household full of music and books. She is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Lift, published by Ragged Sky Press.

A Dodge poet and faculty member of Murphy Writing of Stockton University, she was awarded a Fellowship in Poetry by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and named one of their Distinguished Teaching Artists.

She was the 2002 Poet Laureate of Bucks County and resident faculty at the Frost Place Festival and Conference on Poetry.

A storyteller as well as a poet, she has worked with thousands of students of all ages over several decades.

More Information

The Wordsmiths Reading Series is funded by Bucks’ Cultural Programming Committee.

For more information on the Wordsmiths series contact Dr. Ethel Rackin or visit the Language-Lit Department online.