The Warren County Community College Visiting Authors Series resumes on Thursday, September 26, with a celebration of new books published by prominent New Jersey poets Charlie Bondhus, Luray Gross, and Michael T. Young. This event, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in room 123A, is free and open to the public.  

Bondhus is the author of Divining Bones (Sundress, 2018) and All the Heat We Could Carry (Main Street Rag, 2013), winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. He received his MFA in creative writing from Goddard College and his Ph.D. in literature from UMASS Amherst. His work has appeared in Poetry, The Missouri Review, Columbia Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Nimrod, and Copper Nickel. He is associate professor of English at Raritan Valley Community College.  

Poet and storyteller Luray Gross is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Lift, published by Ragged Sky Press of Princeton. She was awarded a Fellowship in Poetry by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and named as one of their Distinguished Teaching Artists.  She has served as resident faculty at the Frost Place Festival and Conference on Poetry.  She has worked with thousands of students and teachers during her twenty-some years as a Teaching Artist.  Gross grew up on a dairy farm in Bucks Co., PA, in a household rich in books and music.   

Young’s third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. His other collections are The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost and Transcriptions of Daylight. He received a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His chapbook, Living in the Counterpoint, received the Jean Pedrick Award from the New England Poetry Club. His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous journals including Cimarron Review, The Los Angeles Review, One, Rattle, The Smart Set, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. 

The Visiting Authors Series is supported by a grant from the Warren County Cultural and Heritage Commission. All facilities comply with ADA regulations and are fully accessible. Sign language interpreters are available with two weeks’ notice.  

Save the Dates: Patricia Smith (winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the 2018 NAACP Image Award, and finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize) will read at WCCC on Tuesday, October 8. Juilene Osborne-McKnight, who specializes in Celtic and Native American storytelling and Irish mythology, will read on Wednesday, November 13. All events begin at 7:30 p.m. 

Warren County Community College offers students the option of earning an Associate of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, the first and only degree of its kind in New Jersey and a member program of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).  For directions to the campus or for more information about the A.F.A. in Creative Writing, please visit www.warren.edu or call 908-835-WCCC.  

Photo: L-R, Charlie Bondhus. Luray Gross, Michael T. Young.