Koon Woon and Carrie Gilstrap-Nettle will be our featured readers on Virtually Live PoetryBridge #5, this coming Wednesday, April 29th starting at 7 PM followed by Community Mic. Sign up by emailing me at info@poetrybridge.net or let me know at the start of the Zoom meeting.
Koon Woon is a poet who usually does things out of order. He published two books of poems before he was in a writing program and his early poems are better than his later ones by a long shot. Now he is editor / publisher of Goldfish Press, which is primarily interested in bringing out new talent. His books have won a Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award for literary excellence and an American Book Award.
He has been nominated five times for a Pushcart Award and the Best of the Net. His poetry is internationally anthologized, and his books have been used as texts to teach poetry at Sarah Lawrence, Bard, UC Berkeley, among other colleges and universities. However, he is now student again at the University of New Orleans for an MFA. Now at seventy-one years of age, he is finally awakened to the immensity of poetry, both as art and as a healing agent for personal as well as societal ills.
Carrie Gilstrap-Nettle writes in many forms, but poetry is the most natural to her. Carrie teaches wreading (reading/writing) to students 2 – 102. She focuses on students with learning disabilities and actively champions for disability education, financial opportunities and protections.
Carrie also translates nerd/geek. She's won chapbook contests, published, but dislikes taking time away from writing to play the publishing game.