Open Mic following the Featured Readers — feel free to share one poem, one page.
At Casey Community Center, 810 S Frederick Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 20877
Ellen Aronofsky Cole’s books include Notes from the Dry Country, (Mayapple Press, 2019) and Prognosis, (Finishing Line Press, 2011.) Journal publications include Bellevue Literary Review, Gargoyle, Little Patuxent Review, Potomac
Review, Innisfree, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Fledgling Rag, New Verse News. Ekphrastic Review and The Mid-Atlantic Review. Her work was featured on Verse Daily and nominated for Best of the Net. Ellen lives in Silver Spring with her husband Brian and a feisty parrot named Haiku.
Julie Bloss Kelsey is an internationally published and award-winning haiku poet. She is the current Secretary of The Haiku Foundation, where she serves on the Board of Directors. Julie started writing haiku in 2009, after the birth of her third child. Her published work includes a free online digital chapbook, The Call of Wildflowers (Title IX Press, 2020), and two print collections, Grasping the Fading Light: A Journey Through PTSD (Sable Books, 2023) and After Curfew (Cuttlefish Books, 2023). She lives in Germantown, Maryland with her husband, kids, a bark-happy dachshund, and four tiny fish.
DiVerse Gaithersburg 