We're launching a new author series in 2019: Readings for Writers. Each of these events will feature some of Philly's best writers across all genres sharing both their work and some part of their process - join us to hear great writing AND learn about how great writing is built!

Our first event brings poet and teacher Alison Hicks and her student, memoirist Lyndon Back. Both will be reading from their work and sharing their process for creating a manuscript.

Alison Hicks is the author of poetry collections "You Who Took the Boat Out" and "Kiss," a chapbook" Falling Dreams," and a novella "Love: A Story of Images." Her awards include the Philadelphia City Paper Poetry Prize and two PA Council of the Arts Fellowships. She is founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops.

Lyndon Back was a participant in Alison’s workshops, and also worked privately with her on the manuscript that was to become "Treading Water at the Shark Café." One of the few American women to have lived and worked in the former Yugoslavia before, during, and after the NATO bombing, Lyndon Back recounts her unusual journey in the memoir. Brought up as a Quaker, Lyndon wondered even as a child whether she would ever have the courage to stand up for her belief in nonviolence. In 1998, she quit her job as director of planned giving at the American Friends Service Committee and volunteered with the Balkan Peace Teams in Belgrade, Serbia and Prishtina, Kosovo.