Writers Read ft Amie Hyson, Dennis Finnell, and Erika Higgins Ross

The LAVA Center hosts a monthly series, Writers Read, on the second Wednesday every month. Coordinated by Lindy Whiton, the series brings in local writers and a couple of outside surprises. $5 suggested donation.

Amie Hyson lives in Western Massachusetts where, thanks to the encouragement of the vibrant & wonderfully welcoming poetry community, she has been writing since 2016. She began facilitating creative writing workshops for incarcerated, previously incarcerated & women in recovery in 2017 and has led numerous workshops since. During the pandemic she began offering weekly online co-ed “Writing Your Recovery” workshops, which continue to meet weekly; she has recently begun co-facilitating “Free Write of Franklin County,” a workshop for women at the Franklin County Re-entry Center & is working on her first book of poetry.

Dennis Finnell has published six books of poems, the most recent his Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. He’s taught at the University of Tennessee, Mount Holyoke College, and Wesleyan University, and served as Co-Director of Financial Aid at GCC for a decade. He has made his home in Greenfield for over twenty years.

Erika Higgins Ross is a writer and therapist living in the Pioneer Valley after decades in Los Angeles and New York. She is currently at work on a novel and has had short pieces published in Funny Pearls, LA.com, Parenting Teens Magazine, Stagebill, and Juice Magazine. She has been granted writing residencies at Key West Literary Seminar, Studios of Key West, and Star Island.