THEME: POETRY OF CHANGE

Featuring Sylvia Cavanaugh and Ed Werstein

Two activist poets share their work.

Sylvia Cavanaugh teaches high school cultural studies and has advised breakdancers and poets. Her students are actively involved in the Sheboygan chapter of 100,000 Poets for Change. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems have appeared in various periodicals and anthologies and she is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual: An Online Community Journal of Poetry. Her third chapbook, Icarus: Anthropology of Addiction, is published by Water’s Edge Press.

 

Ed Werstein, a regional VP of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, is also the WFOP representative on the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. Werstein was awarded the 2018 Lorine Niedecker Prize for Poetry by the Council For Wisconsin Writers. His work has appeared in Stoneboat, Blue Collar Review, Gyroscope Review, among other publications, and is forthcoming in Rosebud,. His 2018 book, A Tar Pit To Dye In, is available from Kelsay Books. His chapbook, Who Are We Then? was published in 2013 by Partisan Press. Find out more here: edwerstein.com

 You’re invited to visit Deep Lakes, Wisconsin and meet a new friend, Francine “Frankie” Champagne. The 40-something owner of Bubble and Bake — bakery by day, wine lounge by night — Frankie is a spitfire pastry maker, vintner, and budding journalist. Frankie finds herself on the perimeter of a suspicious death that upends the peaceful winter slumber in Deep Lakes when the local pastor is found dead inside his fishing shanty on Lake Loki. Frankie sticks her curious nose into the investigation, despite warnings from the local sheriff to leave it alone. But she has something to prove, maybe to the newspaper editor who wouldn’t hire her as a reporter, maybe to herself as she searches for fulfillment. Regardless, her fierce independence won’t allow her to back down. Follow Frankie as she stumbles upon one discovery after another, trails potential suspects, and solves the case!