Sunday, May 24 | 3pm 

Curated and hosted by WV Poet Laureate Marc Harshman, this year’s panel will feature the works of poets Sara Henning, Ace Boggess, and Kari Gunter-Seymour.

Location: Taylor Books Annex Gallery, 226 Capitol St, Charleston, WV 25301

Time: 3:00pm

About the poets:

Sara Henning
Sara Henning is an award-winning teacher and poet. She is the author of the poetry collections Burn (Southern Illinois University Press, 2024), a Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Editor’s Selection;Terra Incognita (Ohio University Press, 2022), winner of the 2021 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize; and View from True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award and the 2019 High Plains Book Award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Kenyon Review, Crab Orchard Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Southern Humanities Review, Witness, Meridian, and the Cincinnati Review. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Marshall University, where she coordinates the A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series.

Ace Boggess
Ace Boggess is author of eight books of poetry, most recently Tell Us How to Live (Fernwood Press, 2025) and My Pandemic / Gratitude List (Mōtus Audāx Press, 2025). His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes, watches Criterion films, and tries to stay out of trouble. His first short-story collection, Always One Mistake, is forthcoming from Running Wild Press.

Kari Gunter-Seymour
Kari Gunter-Seymour is the immediate past Poet Laureate of Ohio and author of three award-winning poetry collections, including Dirt Songs (EastOver Press, 2024) winner of the 2025 IPPY Bronze, NY Big Book, and Feathered Quill Awards. She is the executive director of the Women of Appalachia Project and editor of its anthology series, Women Speak. Gunter-Seymour holds writing workshops for all age groups as well as incarcerated adults and women in recovery, is a retired instructor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University and the founder, curator, and host of “Spoken & Heard,” a seasonal performance series featuring poets, writers, and musicians from across the country. She is the editor of I Thought I Heard A Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices, funded through the Academy of American Poets and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She was selected to serve as a 2022 Dodge Poetry Festival Poet and is a Pillars of Prosperity Fellow for the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio. Her work has been featured in a variety of journals and publications including World Literature Today, American Book Review, Rattle, Poem-a-Day, and Katie Curic’s Wake Up Call.