Biography

Kathleen Balma is a poet and librarian from the Ohio River Valley of Illinois. Her poems have been included in Best New Poets, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the Montreal International Poetry Prize Anthology, and many other publications. She is the recipient of a Fulbright grant in Spain, a fellowship at Rivendell Writers’ Colony, and scholarships for Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference. She works at New Orleans Public Library.

Schedule

9:45 a.m. to 10:45 a.m.
Capitol Park Event Center, Meeting Room
Reading
Louisiana Poets
with Kathleen Balma, Catharine Savage Brosman, Ariel Francisco, Rodger Kamenetz, Alison Pelegrin, Sha'Condria Sibley, and moderator Mona Lisa Saloy

11:00 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.
Cavalier House Booksellers Tent
Book Signing

From Your Hostess at the T&A Museum: Poems

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FROM YOUR HOSTESS AT THE T&A MUSEUM is a stunning series of imaginative leaps and encounters, as playful as it is momentous. Not only poetry lovers, but enthusiasts of art history, fantasy fiction, sci-fi, westerns, travel narratives, nature documentaries, and historical fiction will delight in its genre-bending adventures and inventions. How did Abraham Lincoln build the log cabin he was born in? What happens at an invisible gun show? Are aliens really controlling a Chicago musician's ears? Kathleen Balma crafts answers to these and other metaphysical questions with a language all her own. Known for her deadpan humor and lack of pretense, Balma has given us a first book that is both light to carry and hard to put down.