The Festival is held every two years, and has won two Citation of Excellence from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. It features workshops, panel discussions, book signings, and open mic sessions.
The festival is held on the campus of the Blair Academy, in Blairstown, NJ.
The 2013 Featured Poets are Roger Bonair-Agard, Nick Flynn and Joy Harjo.
books by Roger Bonair-Agard
Nick Flynn has worked as a ship's captain, an electrician, and as a case-worker with homeless adults. He is also the award-winning author of Some Ether, Blind Huber, The Ticking is the Bomb and Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Award. His most recent book is The Reenactments. He divides his time between Texas, where he teaches at the University of Houston, and Brooklyn, New York. books by Nick Flynn
Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a member of the Mvskoke Nation.
Her seven books of poetry include How We Became Human- New and Selected Poems, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, and She Had Some Horses. For A Girl Becoming, a young adult/coming of age book, was released in 2009. She has also released four award-winning CD's of original music and in 2009 won a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist of the Year for Winding Through the Milky Way. She performs nationally and internationally with her band, the Arrow Dynamics.
books and music by Joy Harjo
Other poets reading and participating in the day's workshops and panel discussion include: James Arthur, Laura Boss, Martin Farawell, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Jim Haba, Leslie Heywood and Joe Weil.For the festival schedule, directions and more about the poets, see http://poetsonline.org/wcpf/
