About Us
The Poetry Factory is a poetry reading series featuring exceptional local and national poets. Click here to view our 2008 reading series schedule, which includes bios and photos of participating poets. Readings take place at 2:00 p.m. (ET). Writers’ books will be for sale at the event, and a book signing and brief reception will follow the readings. Admission is free, but we would appreciate your donations. Most of the money we raise goes directly to pay the poets for their readings.
The Poetry Factory is sponsored by the Berrien Artist Guild (a non-profit 501(c)3 corporation) and is based at the Box Factory for the Arts, 1101 Broad Street, in downtown St. Joseph, Michigan, just 90 miles from Chicago, on the shores of beautiful Lake Michigan. The Box Factory for the Arts offers gallery space for local artists; affordable studio space for painters, crafters and writers; a venue for musicians, poets, drama and dance groups; meeting space; and Jeannie's Café, for guests to enjoy a delicious meal while surrounded by many artistic displays and sounds. Please click here for directions.
Staff & Advisors
Founder and Director Marci Rae Johnson holds an MFA in Poetry Writing from Spalding University, and a MA in Theological Studies from Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The 2005 Rhysling Anthology (The Best Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Poetry of 2004), the anthology New Voices and New Visions: Religious Writing from Rising Generations, Garbanzo, 32 Poems, Strange Horizons and The Poetry Kit Magazine (UK). Her poem “Red Shirt” was nominated for a 2005 Rhysling Award. Marci lives with her husband, her six year old daughter and baby son, in Three Oaks, Michigan.
Advisor Alan Michael Parker is the author of a novel, Cry Uncle, and three books of poems, Days Like Prose, The Vandals, and Love Song with Motor Vehicles. He is also editor of The Imaginary Poets, co-editor of The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse, and Editor for North America of Who's Who in 20th Century World Poetry. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Pleiades, and The Yale Review, among other magazines; his prose appears regularly in journals including The New York Times Book Review and The New Yorker.
The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Arts and Science Council, the Eastern Frontier Society, the MacDowell Colony, and the Seaside Institute, Alan Michael Parker teaches at Davidson College, where he is Director of Creative Writing, and at Queens University, where he is a Core Faculty member in the low-residency M.F.A. program.
Advisor Molly Peacock, a poet and a creative nonfiction writer, is the author of five books of poetry, including Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems (W.W. Norton and Company in the US and UK and Penguin Canada). Among her other works are How To Read A Poem and Start A Poetry Circle and a memoir, Paradise, Piece By Piece (both published by Riverhead Penguin/McClelland & Stewart). She is the editor of a collection of creative non-fiction, The Private I: Privacy in a Public World (Graywolf) and the co-editor of Poetry in Motion: One Hundred Poems from the Subways and Buses (W.W. Norton)
Peacock’s latest project is a one-woman staged monologue in poems, “The Shimmering Verge,” produced by Femme Fatale Productions, which she is performing in theatres throughout North America.
She conducts quarterly poetry circles on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Here On Earth with Jean Feraca, and has read her poetry at the Library of Congress, the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, and Harbourfront (Toronto) as well as at numerous colleges, universities, and libraries. Currently she is interested in how young adults connect to poetry through her work with the College Boards and Advanced Placement English.
A transplanted New Yorker, she now lives with her husband, , a James Joyce scholar, in Toronto. Born in Buffalo, New York, she received a B.A. magna cum laude from Harpur College (SUNY Binghamton) and an M.A. with honors from The Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University. Among her awards are Danforth Foundation, Ingram Merrill Foundation, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and New York State Council on the Arts Fellowships. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, as well as The Best of the Best American Poetry.
Former Poet-in-Residence at the American Poets’ Corner (Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, New York City) and former President of the Poetry Society of America, Peacock is one of the creators of Poetry in Motion on subways and buses throughout North America. Currently she is on the faculty of the Spalding University low residency Master of Fine Arts Program. She works with poets and writers throughout North America privately one-to-one.
Born in Illinois, raised in Southern Indiana, and now living in St. Louis, Advisor Richard Newman is the author of the poetry collection Borrowed Towns (Word Press, 2005), as well as several chapbooks, including Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2002), Tastes Like Chicken and Other Meditations (Snark Publishing, 2004), and Monster Gallery: 19 Terrifying and Amazing Monster Sonnets! (Snark Publishing, 2005). His poems, stories, and essays have most recently appeared in American Literary Review, Boulevard, Crab Orchard Review, 5AM, The Laurel Review, Meridian, StoryQuarterly, The Sun, and many other periodicals and anthologies. He earned his MFA at the Brief-Residency MFA Writing Program at Spalding University. He teaches at St. Louis Community College, reviews books for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and, for the last ten years, has served as editor of River Styx.
Advisor Al DeGenova’s résumé has an unusually wide scope: contributing editor for down beat magazine; saxophonist with blues legends Lefty Dizz, Joe Kelley, and Valerie Wellington; editor of the Oyez Review; and an MFA in Poetry from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. His poetry has been published widely including such publications as the Café Review, the Paterson Literary Review, VIA (Voices of Italian-Americans), and the Oyez Review. He has been included in several anthologies and once was featured in the now defunct Chicago zine, U-Direct. DeGenova’s first chapbook, A Tender Spot, was published in 1992. His book, Back Beat, co-authored with Charles Rossiter, was published by Cross+Roads Press in 2001. DeGenova and Rossiter form the poetry performance duo Avant Retro and were asked by publisher Norb Blei to each trace their Beat influences through memoir and poetry for the book. On Back Beat, Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote, “Back Beat beats everything for being beater than the Beats.”
Beyond his own poetry, however, DeGenova’s most significant contribution to the literary world of Chicago is his editing and publishing efforts for the magazine After Hours, a journal of Chicago writing and art. DeGenova launched After Hours in June of 2000 and has since published many of Chicago’s strongest literary voices.