FRIEDA began to present spoken word events six years ago. We had the space, a microphone, and a vital supportive community…all of which we offered to writers.
Carrying on an ancient tradition of oral poetry reading, spoken word combines performance, word play, and inflection. The interaction between artist and audience is an important part of the creative process and is one which FRIEDAcommunity continues to nurture.
Please join us for a very special literary event celebrating ANYBODY HOME? (Blue Edge, 2023), the poetry debut from Kay Cosgrove.
The poems in Kay Cosgrove’s first collection are driven by curiosity – about herself, the world, and her place in it. Witty and elegantly restrained, they ask the question: how do we live the lives we’ve made for ourselves? Cosgrove roams from barrooms to checkout lines to the enigma of motherhood; she is a teenager responsible for a sack-of-flour-as-a-baby, and then an adult driving a teenage babysitter home. She explores the texture of our connections to strangers, family, ourselves, and illuminates the sublime in the unimportant. The poems in Anybody Home? embrace life’s sweetness and shadows. Here, the ordinary is unfathomable and the ineffable is ordinary.
Kay Cosgrove is the recipient of awards from The Academy of American Poets, Inprint Houston, and The Westchester Review. Her poetry has appeared in The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, The Florida Review and The American Poetry Review, among other journals. She holds a PhD from the University of Houston and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Pennsylvania with her family.
Other readers include:
Christian Bancroft received their PhD from the University of Houston and is the recipient of a Michener Fellowship. He is the author of a poetry collection, A Ghost Has No Fantasies (forthcoming from Unbound Editions Press, 2025); a book of scholarship, Queering Modernist Translation: The Poetics of Race, Gender, and Queerness (2020); and a co-edited collection (with Jenny Molberg), Adelaide Crapsey: The Life and Work of an American Master (2018). Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Callaloo, The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, jubilat, Gulf Coast, and Asymptote, among others.
Lauren Hilger is the author of Morality Play (Poetry NW Editions, 2022). Named a Nadya Aisenberg Fellow in poetry from MacDowell, she has also received fellowships from the Hambidge Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work has appeared in BOMB, Harvard Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for No Tokens.
Adrienne Perry is a Kimbilio Fellow, Hedgebrook alumna, and a member of the Rabble Collective. Adrienne’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, Callaloo, and elsewhere. She teaches literature and creative writing at Villanova University.
Date: Saturday, October 28
Time: 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm
Location: FRIEDA, 320 Walnut Street
Registration: Space is limited. Reservation only. At least 2 days prior to the event.
Fee: Open to the general public. Admission free.
FRIEDA offers a wide range of beverages, cold and hot, as well as a variety of freshly made food options. Please be respectful, no outside food or drinks allowed.
Mask recommended during this event.
Sign Up: Please sign up via email
This event is made possible thanks to donations from our annual fundraiser.
