Author, playwright visit region in YSU Poetry Center outreach effort
The Youngstown State University Poetry Center and Etruscan Press coordinate a four-day outreach program featuring author Sheryl St. Germain and local playwright Kelly Bancroft Monday, April 29 through Thursday, May 2.
St. Germain and Bancroft will visit Northeast Pre-Release Center, Trumbull Correctional Institute and Camp, Park Vista Retirement Home, ACTION, the Youngstown YWCA, Lit Youngstown, YSU Creative Writing, Wilson Elementary, Youngstown Early College, Mahoning County High School and Austintown Fitch. The program will distribute 400 free copies of St. Germain’s 50 Miles to students and community members. The program will also feature Thomas Welsh, an author and sketch artist, whose impromptu sketches of students help boost self-image while introducing them to “flash art.”
St. Germain will discuss her memoir, 50 Miles, addressing addiction and alcoholism. The memoir traces the life of St. Germain’s son and his death from a drug overdose at 30, as well as the author’s own recovery from substance abuse. A poet and essayist whose work has received multiple awards, St. Germain directs the MFA program in Creative Writing at Chatham University in Pittsburgh. She is the co-founder of the Words Without Walls program, a creative partnership between the Chatham MFA Creative Writing Program, Allegheny County Jail and Sojourner House, a residential drug and alcohol treatment facility for mothers and their children.
Bancroft is an essayist, poet and playwright and teaches at YSU and for the Mahoning County Juvenile Justice Center. Bancroft has received Ragdale fellowships, the Betty Gabehart Prize for Women Writers and an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist grant. Her plays have been produced in Youngstown, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh. Most recently, her short documentary with filmmaker and YSU alum Craig Duff, “Arriving at Bessie,” was a selection in the Cleveland International Film Festival. The Outreach Program will host showings and discussions of the short film, which follows Bancroft as she travels to Cleveland to retrace the steps of her great-aunt Bessie Watkins, who died under mysterious conditions in 1910, along with readings and discussions of Bancroft’s award-winning one-act plays.
Inaugurated in 1994, the YSU Poetry Center has brought hundreds of national and international writers and thousands of their books to underserved populations in the Mahoning Valley. Partnering with YSU, Etruscan Press is a non-profit literary press working to produce and promote books that nurture the dialogue among genres and cultures.
The YSU Poetry Center/Etruscan Press Outreach Program is supported by the Andrews Foundation, the Drs. Brothers and Murphy Fund, the Muse’s Fund, the Ohio Arts Council, the Rayen Foundation, YSU CLASS and the Wean Foundation. For further information, please contact Dr. Philip Brady, at psbrady@gmail.com or 917-703-0321.