Poetry fans on and off Warren County Community College’s campus will love the free class and reading being held Thursday, Oct. 15 as the launch of the school’s popular Visiting Authors Series.

Two outstanding local poets – Michael Waters and Mihaela Moscaliuc – will be co-teaching an informative and exciting master class. Open to the public (but requiring pre-registration), “students” will learn about the art of poetry from these award-winning experts.

To register for the class, which begins at 4 p.m., please contact BJ Ward at (908) 835-2531 or ward@warren.edu.

Following the master class, the poets will read some of their acclaimed pieces. The reading begins at 7:30 p.m. in room 123A. Also open to the public, attendees are invited to come right on in, as no registration is required. Books will be available for purchase at the reading.  

Waters’ books of poetry, several of which were recognized for their excellence, include the forthcoming “Celestial Joyride,” “Gospel Night” (2011), “Darling Vulgarity” (2006), “Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems” (2001), “Bountiful” (1992), “The Burden Lifters” (1989), and “Anniversary of the Air” (1985).

He has also co-edited several anthologies, including Contemporary American Poetry (2006) and Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing from Homer to Ali (2003), and his own poems have appeared in numerous journals, including The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and Rolling Stone.

The recipient of five Pushcart Prizes and several fellowships local and national groups, Waters teaches at Monmouth University and in the Drew University MFA Program in Poetry and Poetry in Translation.  

Moscaliuc is the author of “Father Dirt” (2010), which won the Kinereth Gensler Award, and “Immigrant Model” (2015). She also translated Carmelia Leonte’s “The Hiss of the Viper” (2014).

Her poems, translations, reviews, and articles have appeared in The Georgia Review, The American Poetry Review, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, Arts & Letters, Mississippi Review, Connecticut Review, Absinthe, Poetry International, Pleiades, and Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal. She received two Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Awards, an Individual Artist Award from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and a Fulbright Scholar Award.  Moscaliuc was born and raised in Romania and teaches at Monmouth University. 

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.  

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 one of only five in the nation to be recognized as a viable A.F.A. by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.