Lit Youngstown Benefit Reading

Lit Youngstown will host Youngstown Live|d, an online benefit reading featuring Ross Gay of Bloomington, Indiana, and Rochelle Hurt of Orlando, Florida, Monday, January 30 at 8:00pm on Zoom. Both poets spent years of their childhood in Youngstown.

This will be the first of an annual series of readings by writers who have lived in the Mahoning Valley. “This place made a deep impression on these poets,” said Lit Youngstown director Karen Schubert. “Youngstown is in the blood and words of quite a few accomplished contemporary writers, and we are proud of our literary legacy.”

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry and winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award,  the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. He will read from his new collection of essays, Inciting Joy. Gay will be the featured poet at the 2023 Fall Literary Festival in Youngstown in October.

Rochelle Hurt is the author of three poetry collections and winner of the Blue Light Books Prize, the  Barrow Street Poetry Prize and the White Pine Press Marie Alexander Series Prize. She will read from The J Girls: A Reality Show. Hurt has been a Lit Youngstown featured reader and Fall Literary Festival presenter.

After the reading, a discussion will be moderated by poet Philip Memmer, author of six poetry collections and director of the Downtown Syracuse Writers Center. Memmer was Lit Youngstown’s 2019 Fall Literary Festival featured poet and is currently on the Advisory Council.

Registration for the event is available at LitYoungstown.org. Lit Youngstown, founded in 2015, is a literary arts nonprofit for writers, readers, and those who love a good story.