EVENTS/READINGS/WORKSHOPS
Check back for updates on poetry readings, book launches, writing workshops, and other news.
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*Send all correspondence to:
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2024 Event Info / COMING SOON
2022 Event Info
Looking forward to being one of the guest authors at this celebration of books! Details below:
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Sunday, October 23rd / 4-6pm Central
Location:
Raised Grain Brewing Co.
(1725 Dolphin Dr Ste B, Waukesha, WI)
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These local authors
will have books at this event:
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Elizabeth Jorgensen
Nancy Jorgensen
Cristina M. R. Norcross
Jim Landwehr
Lucy Park
Amy E. Reichert
Valerie Biel
Barbara Ann Geiger
​2021 Event Info
Order NOW from Kelsay Books!
SIGNED COPIES available to order from this site soon!
(OR contact the author directly for ordering details: Boondz@yahoo.com)
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VIRTUAL BOOK LAUNCH READING
Save the Date: Thursday, December 9th, 2021 at 7pm via ZOOM
Hosted by Books & Co
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Back Cover Blurbs:
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The Sound of a Collective Pulse reflects its author’s boundless heart, meditating on events such as the current pandemic. The poet explores our encounters with traumatic change, “We feel the jolt of loss,” and eventual despair, “Blue now lived inside of me.” Aware of the emotional burdens resulting from such loss, “This winter heart you carry,” the poet offers comfort and emphasizes our essential unity. Speaking of the pandemic as “an out of body experience,” she strongly touts interpersonal connectedness to stay tethered and grounded. This transformative poetry collection is ultimately an affirmation of hope and love, a promise that “We will touch palms again.”
—Ami Kaye, publisher and editor, Glass Lyre Press
The poems in The Sound of a Collective Pulse are meant to bring comfort in our shared humanity, and they do. Wrapped up in lush descriptions and gorgeous words, Norcross writes with us, not at us. Yes, “2020 has been an out of body experience,” but “Looking above means choosing to hope.” We are all birds in Cristina’s cornflower blue skies, and we are learning to see the beauty that surrounds us—in everything from nature with its golden honey colors, to the “wide cerulean sea,” to remembrance of ancestors. Read this book. “… remember how / our hands once connected in greeting. / We will touch palms again.”
—Tobi Alfier, co-publisher Blue Horse Press
Norcross’s poems are “little sparks of gold,” filled with touches of sun and “lemonade limbs.” In her latest volume, she recounts being led down the red-brick pandemic road of uncertainty and fear, where we were herded up, masked up, isolated, and somehow dependent on each other. “The news … / a stream of lightning bolt events. / We feel the jolt of loss speed through the spine ….” Using free verse and the influences of art and nature, these poems are enabling, comforting, and richly rewarding. “The secret is simply to move / every day and remember how / our hands once connected in greeting. / We will touch palms again.”
—Karla Huston, Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2017-18. Author of Grief Bone and A Theory of Lipstick
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RAPA Day 2021 / February 20th
(Visit the RAPA Facebook page for more info.)
RAPA Day 2021 is coming up on February 20th! It is a kindness movement based on creating small gifts of poetry and art to give away. We are advising that people mail cards or small gifts this year, rather than leaving gifts in public spaces because of Covid. Share photos of what you are making on the Official Sharing Thread post on our RAPA Facebook page. Add #rapaday2021 to your social media posts.
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Thursday, February 18, 2021 / 7pm
The Dwight Foster Library in Fort Atkinson
Through This Door Anthology
Virtual Book Launch Reading
Art Night Books (2020)
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February 2021
Floored Anthology
Virtual Book Launch Reading
Kingly Street Press (2021
BOOK LAUNCH READING / SAVE THE DATE!
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FOR: Beauty in the Broken Places by Cristina M. R. Norcross
WHEN: Saturday, March 16th, 2019 at 6:30pm
WHERE: Books and Company, 1039 Summit Ave, Oconomowoc, WI
IT’S A FUNDRAISER FOR THE WOMEN'S CENTER! Please bring 1-2 “wish list” items—The Women's Center has a need for condiments: mustard, ketchup, relish, salad dressing/mayonnaise, parmesan cheese shakers, frequently used spices (Lawry’s season salt, garlic salt, onion powder, red flake pepper, salt/pepper), plus staples like sugar and coffee creamer. *Or you can make a small monetary donation to The Women’s Center in Waukesha. A portion of my profits from book sales on the night of this event will also be donated to The Women’s Center. Please visit their site, to learn more about the important services they provide in the community.
BOOK SUMMARY: Readers will recognize their own stories, or similar ones, in Beauty in the Broken Places (Kelsay Books, 2019). This book of poems serves as a loyal and constant companion to return to for solace, encouragement, and support for challenging times. These poems will hold your hand for shadow moments and rejoice with you during times of gratitude. With themes covering a variety of topics related to brokenness and strength, Beauty in the Broken Places offers up comforting words about grief and loss, body image and self-acceptance, healing from emotional and physical scars, finding inspiration in the strength of others, and the gathering up of hope in a broken world. This book will remind all readers that they are never alone.
(Kelsay Books, 2019)
Cover art by Erin Prais-Hintz
BEAUTY IN THE BROKEN PLACES NOW AVAILABLE TO ORDER!
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My latest chapbook, Beauty in the Broken Places (Kelsay Books) is now available to order online directly from Kelsay Books.
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Signed copies can be ordered on my Etsy page.
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Beauty in the Broken Places is also now available on Amazon (January, 2019)
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Back Cover Blurbs:
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Cristina Norcross has gifted us a book of poems about the body and the body’s always singular beauty. These large-hearted poems hold space for pain, and love, for the brilliance of stars and the softness of a woman’s tender belly. Again and again, she reassures us, “You deserve to exist here,” her message both simple and profound. Equal parts healing, joy, and fierce reclamation, Beauty In the Broken Places reminds us that to be broken is to be broken open, a blessing.
—Sarah Sadie, founder/owner of Odonata Creative, author of We Are Traveling Through Dark at Tremendous Speeds
The poems in Beauty in the Broken Places are like reassuring offerings to all of the varied ruptures of human existence. Norcross offers the embodiment of the Divine in both real and ethereal ways, and how it manifests itself through the mind, body, and the soul. These poems remind us of the beauty that is inherent in not only what we are fortunate enough to have, but what we must relinquish, naturally, through the natural and inevitable passage of time in our lives. These poems are a triumph of the feminine spirit and a lodestar for the modern human condition.
—Michelle Reale, author of Birds of Sicily
These poems pulse with the dappled light of hope. They spin optimism into the vacuum left when compassion departs, weave threads of smoke from our past into wings of peace. We are left with the sense that the melodies of life will outlast the sorrows.
—Ruth Bavetta, author of Flour, Water, Salt and No Longer at This Address
• ON THE RADIO! •
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Delighted to be included in the new radio series, "A Space for Poetry," on WMUU radio (102.9 FM), hosted by James Roberts! My interview aired on Friday, May 26, 2017. Thank you to James Roberts for a lovely discussion about my books, poetry workshops, Blue Heron Review, and Random Acts of Poetry and Art Day!
The audio recording for Episode 7 "A Space for Poetry" is now available on SoundCloud. You can listen to the full interview HERE.
"A Space For Poetry" is hosted by James P. Roberts, on WMUU 102.9 FM. All shows begin at 8:00 a.m.
Listen to archived recordings of these interviews on the site:
April 14 -- Rita Mae Reese
April 28 -- Marilyn Taylor
May 12 -- Adam Gregory Pergament (Flow Poetry)
June 9 -- Harwood Place Writer's Group
INTERVIEWS
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• Absolutely delighted and honored to be featured on Linda K. Sienkiewicz's blog, for her "What, Why, How" author series. I talk about why I write, and also share an anecdote about driving to the seacoast during nap time, just to get an hour of writing time in, when my kids were young.
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• Read a special, online interview about my poetry chapbook, Still Life Stories (Aldrich Press, 2016), on author Christi Craig's blog.
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• Read an online featured interview about my poetry chapbook, Amnesia and Awakenings (Local Gems Press, 2016), in author, Heather Fowler's Writers on Craft series.
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• Read this wonderful and thoughtful review of my chapbook, Amnesia and Awakenings, by author Katherine Yets, on the Whale Road Review site.
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Still Life Stories (Aldrich Press, 2016) is a poetic antidote of hope and human connection, at a time when the isolation of modern living leaves us with many questions. Still Life Stories explores the themes of family wisdom, spirit guiding us, finding the stillness within, seeking one’s artistic path and celebrating joy. Each slice of life and snapshot of solitude offered in this collection allows the reader to pause and consider the inner life of each narrator. The poems of Still Life Stories help bring us closer to our true nature – our true spirit.
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Back Cover Blurbs for Still Life Stories
I live inside layers of color, Cristina Norcross confides in this moving collection, Still Life Stories. The title provides a double meaning – the speaker remains alive, as she contemplates the lives of others who have passed in these arresting still life images. Like the still life paintings of the 17th century Dutch Masters, Norcross’s poems bring us into a carefully examined world where death is understood as a new aspect of life. And living fully, is what Norcross is all about.
~Susan Rich, author of Cloud Pharmacy and The Alchemist's Kitchen
With lush imagery and a tone of celebration, the poems in this collection explore our relationships: with art, with the natural world, with each other. Cristina Norcross has a gift for finding the beauty in all facets of human experience and rendering them with clarity and precision on the page. She reminds us to pay attention. She invites us to feel. Still Life Stories is eminently accessible and full of heart.
~Kim Suhr, author of Maybe I'll Learn: Snapshots of a Novice Mom and Director of Red Oak Writing
Norcross writes with the tenderness of one who knows that beauty is often born of darkness, and there are joys accessible only through sorrow. In Still Life Stories she offers readers small, polished jewels reclaimed from loved ones who have walked on: a horse remembering its rider; a climbing friend who fell; dances with a ghostly grandfather. Though gone, her loved ones still live. Still Life Stories also touches readers with the writer’s gentle counsel to herself: surrender; break open; feel everything; begin again. Still Life Stories is a small book of treasures.
~Leslee Goodman, Publisher/editor of The MOON Magazine
Amnesia and Awakenings (Local Gems Press, 2016) is a collection of poems offering a guide map, through verse, for the transformation of spirit. Some poems focus on life chapters and challenges. Others paint a vivid picture of the changes in the natural world or the transformation of the body with age. Every poem engages with hope, like a furtive bird singing on a branch, to no one in particular, and also to everyone. These poems ask the reader to listen and be more tender, more patient, with the self that is emerging every day.
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Back Cover Blurbs for Amnesia and Awakenings
“Cristina Norcross’s Amnesia and Awakenings is a call to be fully present in our humanness, to bear attentive witness to the numerous cycles that fill our lives. As she writes, “We may be here awhile/says the body./Take root,/grow windows/and look out.” Here too is a poet in deep engagement with the natural world. Norcross is an eager student and scholar of the animal kingdom, recognizing a metaphor for hope in a many-legged beetle, for passion in a bird’s flight. These poems are a call to a higher plane of attention, one we’d be wise to heed.”
~Paulette Beete, author of Voice Lessons and Blues for a Pretty Girl
“Amnesia and Awakenings is one sweet read (or many)! Like a book of hymns waiting to chorus and chorus again, these are poems that beg to be reread—poems of rebirth and growth, poems that “sew things back together.” Even in moments of profound sadness, like the death of a child, we hear Norcross’s soft voice of hope, of “next time” – a boundless connectedness with the earth, the sky, each other.”
~Cathryn Cofell, author of Sister Satellite
“These poems reflect the deep sweetness of embodied awareness, of the dreams we were born to discover, and of the nourishing power of grace. Sip from them. Savor them. Be reminded of what is boundless and true.”
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff, author of What Holds Us, Moonlight and Remembrance, and Befriending the Soul
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