The Washington Borough Public Library will host a reading by BJ Ward, a Professor of Creative Writing at Warren County Community College, to celebrate National Poetry Month. The event begins at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 18. The library is located at 20 Carlton Avenue in Washington. The reading will be followed by a Q&A session with the audience and a book signing.  The event free and open to the public. Ward’s books will be available for purchase.  

Ward is the author of four books of poetry. His most recent book, Jackleg Opera: Collected Poems 1990-2013, released as part of the IO Poetry Series, is the recipient of the Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. The Star-Ledger placed Jackleg Opera as #3 in its year-end list of Top 10 Books by New Jerseyans (2014). The book entered a second printing in 2017. Ward’s other books are Gravedigger’s Birthday, 17 Love Poems with No Despair, and Landing in New Jersey with Soft Hands. All are published by North Atlantic Books (Berkeley, CA) and distributed by Random House.  

Ward’s poetry has been featured on National Public Radio, New Jersey Network’s “State of the Arts,” and the web site Poetry Daily, as well as in national publications such as Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Green Mountains Review, TriQuarterly, The Literary Review, The Normal School, The Sun, and dozens of other journals. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Worcester Review, and Teaching Artist Journal, among others. One of his essays about his childhood visits to the Washington Public Library (when it was temporarily located on West Washington Ave.) is featured on the American Library Association’s main library advocacy web site (www.ilovelibraries.org). A short story, W8ing4Springsteen, was the featured fiction in the 2016 “Summer Reads” issue of Inside Jersey magazine. Dozens of anthologies feature his work, include Shakespeare in America (Library of America), In A Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare (University of Iowa Press), The Poets of New Jersey (Jersey Shore Publications), The Random House Treasury of Friendship Poems (Random House), Tower Stories: An Oral History of 9/11 (Santa Monica Press), and The Breath of Parted Lips II: Voices from the Frost Place (CavanKerry Books). One of his poems (“For the Children of the World Trade Center Victims”) has been cast in bronze and acquired as part of the permanent collection at Grounds for Sculpture, an outdoor sculpture museum in Hamilton, New Jersey. 

Ward is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for Poetry and two Distinguished Artist Fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Inside Jersey magazine has named Ward one of the “10 Dynamic Jersey Artists Not Named Springsteen” who are “making a difference,” citing his poetry’s “music and physicality” and referring to him as a “master teacher.” Ward has received the Governor’s Award in Arts Education from the State of New Jersey and has been designated Distinguished Teaching Artist by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He was also named Teaching Artist of the Year by Playwrights’ Theatre of New Jersey for his work in the New Jersey Writers Project. In October 2016, Ward received the President’s Merit Award at the Warren County Hall of Fame Induction Celebration.