UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Poet Abby Minor will offer a reading at Penn State as the final event in this year’s Mary E. Rolling Reading Series. The reading, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 13, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on the University Park campus.
Abby Minor’s first book, “As I Said: A Dissent” (Ricochet Editions, 2022), is a collection of long documentary poems concerning reproductive rights, embodiment, justice and citizenship in U.S. history. It is a book described by poet and Penn State professor Julia Spicher Kasdorf as filled with “lines that dance and leap, each a necessary testament to a life planted in the ridges of Appalachia and reaching back to the nits of New York tenements.” Minor is also the author of two poetry chapbooks, "Real Words for Inside" (Gap Riot Press) and "Plant Light, Dress Light" (dancing girl press). Awarded Bitch Media’s 2018 Writing Fellowship in Sexual Politics, she has received residencies and awards from Split this Rock, the Rensing Center, Sundress Academy for the Arts, the Penland School of Crafts, the C.D. Wright Women Writers Conference, and the Ora Lerman Charitable Trust. She earned her master of fine arts degree in creative writing at Penn State.
Minor lives in central Pennsylvania, where she works on poems, essays, drawings, and projects exploring reproductive politics. Since 2017, she has worked as the founding director of Ridgelines Language Arts, a non-profit providing expert language arts instruction outside of academic institutions and to those who are marginalized in the region. Through Ridgelines, she also teaches poetry workshops in her county’s low-income nursing homes. Minor currently serves as a board member of Abortion Conversation Projects and collaborates widely with other organizations and activists.
The April 13 reading will begin with a “choreopoem” performance (including live music and choreographed dance) and continue with readings from "As I Said." All of the poems presented will revolve around themes of reproductive rights and politics.
The Mary E. Rolling Reading Series is a program offered by Penn State’s Creative Writing Program in English. The series receives support from the College of the Liberal Arts; the Department of English; the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment; the Mary E. Rolling Lectureship in Creative Writing; and University Libraries. A full list of readings in the series can be found at creativewriting.psu.edu.