Join us for our first event of 2026! Local poet and professor Roberta Batorsky will be celebrating the release of her new collection, Perihelion. Joining her are fellow writers and creatives Deb Freeman, Fran Gilmore, and Elliot M. Rubin. Batorsky will read from her new collection, and sign copies following the discussion portion.
Roberta Batorsky is a poet, science journalist and college educator. She is in several online and in-person poetry and fiction critique groups and has a poetry book called Perihelion, published last month by Prolific Pulse Press.
She is published in Fine-Lines, Delaware Valley Poets, Poets for Science, Prolific Pulse Press poetry compilations (Social Possibilities and Unhoused), NJ Bards, NewVerseNews and Heron Clan and has been a freelance editor/reviewer of Life Sciences textbooks. She co-edits the Heron Clan poetry publication. She teaches in a NJ state prison.
Her science blog is at https://solipsistssoiree.blogspot.com. She writes on topics as varied as her interests and currently teaches Biology at a NJ youth corrections facility.
RobertaBatorsky_poetry (Instagram)
Deb Freedman is a poet living in Pennsylvania. Her poems have been published in Paterson Literary Review, NewVerseNews and DVP/US1 Poets’ Worksheets. Wandering amongst social, environmental and political issues as well funny family stories and strange musings, her poems have minds of their own.
Fran Gilmore is an activist, poet, visual artist and educator. She has taught biology (high school), occupational health and safety (blue collar workers), emotional healing (in a prison), as well as anti-racism and yoga (community settings). She has self-published a chapbook and is currently working on poems about health and safety based on her experience as an industrial hygienist. She recently had a showing of 5 paintings about Gaza in at the Mt. Airy Art Garage.
elliot m. rubin is a best-selling New Jersey poet who has published over forty-two books of poetry, facilitates three international Zoom poetry critique groups, posts daily on Instagram, with almost 13,000 poets following him online. He was a nominee for a 2025 Pushcart Poetry Prize and a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Elliot has also published numerous poems in assorted anthologies.