The Platform, May 1st featuring New Jersey's own, KATHY KREMINS. Kathy is a retired public school teacher and coach, adjunct professor, poet, and author. Her poems are steeped in the Irish-Catholic immigrant experience of her childhood in Newark, NJ. A paradoxical celebration of living at the hard edges and in the curve of things, her poems are tender, funny, sad, joyous, and provocative, filled with dogs, birds, the occasional cat, maps, scars, waves, the women and men she has loved, and the logical families they have created. Her poems have appeared in The Paterson Literary Review and other publications. She is the author of The Ethics of Reading: The Broken Beauties of Toni Morrison, Arundhati Roy, and Nawal el Sadaawi and contributor to Too Smart to be Sentimental: Contemporary Irish American Women Writers.

Join us for the latest chance to see a special screening of Jump the Turnstile at The College of St. Elizabeth. There will be a talk back with the writers and dancers after the screening. Seating is limited, so please email publicrelations@artsbythepeople.org if you plan on attending.

Featured reader: Mary Brancaccio. Mary is a teacher and a published poet. More than a dozen of her poems and essays have appeared in a range of print and online journals, including in Rattle, Naugatuck River Review, Minerva Rising and Adanna. Her chapbook, Mistress of Buttons and Keys, was a Minerva Rising finalist. She currently teaches English at Livingston High School. Brancaccio is completing revisions to her full-length poetry manuscript, Love’s Fierce Geometry, which addresses the complexity women face in their roles as lovers, wives, mothers and daughters. Her passions include raising awareness about the proliferation of plastic waste, threats of climate change, and inequities in education, justice and living standards. Her teaching is driven by a belief in the necessity for ordinary people to actively work for change in both their communities and in the wider world.

Jump The Turnstile. This performance is free and open to the public. No tickets needed.

Join us for our monthly open mic literary reading series hosted by Tamara Zbrizher.

Sign ups begin at 7:30, readings from 8 - 9:30 pm. Maximum time limit for our open mic is 5 minutes.

Featured Reader: Newark, NJ native YSABEL Y. GONZALEZ, is also known for her performance poetry under the alias Ancestral Poetisa. She received her BA from Rutgers University, an MFA in Poetry from Drew University and works as the Assistant Director for the Poetry Program at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. Ysabel has received invitations to attend VONA, Tin House, Ashbery Home School and BOAAT Press workshops. She’s a CantoMundo Fellow, and has been published in Origins Journal, HEArt Journal; Paterson Literary Review; Tinderbox Journal; Anomaly; Vinyl; Waxwing Literary Journal, and others. You can read more about her work, at www.ysabelgonzalez.com.

ARTS By The People invites you to join us on January 26 for our multi-media event: Jump The Turnstile! This event is the product of artists of all ages, backgrounds, and walks of life. A combination dance, poetry, and visual art, Jump The Turnstile is a culmination of different media united by the power of storytelling. The event is free and open to the public.

JOIN US for the 2nd annual presentation of, REVOLVING DOORS

This collaboration showcases our Senior Citizen memoir writers with university students working in dance, theater, and film. This year's memoirs films are created by Dance and Film students from Skidmore College located in Saratoga Springs, NY. This event is barrier free and open to the public.