Spooky season is upon us! Why not celebrate with a little witchery? Join us in welcoming poet Chelsea Fanning as she launches her new poetry collection, To Love a Fierceness So Bright. Joining Fanning are local poets Kailey Tedesco (Motherdevil), Kathrn Bratt-Pfotenhauer (Bad Animal), and Amy-Small McKinney (& You Think it Ends). The group will also be leading a spell workshop with attendents! This is definitely not one to miss.
Chelsea Fanning is a poet, editor, witch from NJ. Her poetry delves into themes of womanhood, religion, identity, gender, healthcare, and ancestral history.
Kailey Tedesco is a mother, caul bearer, writer, & teacher who currently resides in Allentown, Pennsylvania with her husband, Joey, and their beautiful son Sebastian and their cats, Coraline & Marzipan. She teaches courses related to writing and Gothic literature at Moravian University & Northampton Community College. In her free time she enjoys sewing Victorian lampshades, watching horror movies, practicing automatic writing, and traveling to hotels with pink carpet and heart tubs. She is a current member of the Horror Writers Association and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association.
Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer is a poet and scholar from Maryland by way of Brussels and Berlin. She holds a B.A from Bryn Mawr College in Russian language with a literature concentration, and an M.F.A in poetry from Syracuse University.
Amy Small-McKinney is the author of six books of poetry. Her newest full-length book, & You Think It Ends, was released March 2025 (Glass Lyre Press). Her second full-length book of poems, Walking Toward Cranes, won the Kithara Book Prize (Glass Lyre Press, 2016). Small-McKinney’s poems also appear in several anthologies, for example, Rumors, Secrets, & Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion, & Choice (Anhinga Press, 2023) and 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium (Ashland Poetry Press, 2021). In 2019, her poem “Birthplace” received Special Merits recognition by The Comstock Review for their Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Contest, judged by poet, David Kirby, and again, in 2021 for her poem, “Bench, Ducks, & Inn,” judged by poet, Juan Felipe Herrera. On 10/2/23, her poem "Love/Furious" appeared in Verse Daily. Her poems have also been translated into Korean and Romanian. Her book reviews have appeared in journals, such as Prairie Schooner and Matter. Small-McKinney has a degree in Clinical Neuropsychology from Drexel University and an MFA in Poetry from Drew University. She resides in Philadelphia, where she has taught community poetry workshops, both privately and as part of conferences, as well as independent students.