Virginia Bell, "Lifting Child from the Ground, Turning Around" with Marcy Rae Henry, Katana Smith, and Sarah Jack

Join us in-store to celebrate the launch of Virginia Bell's newest release, Lifting Child from the Ground, Turning Around, with readings from Marcy Rae Henry, Katana Smith, and Sarah Jack!

About Virginia Bell:
Author of the new poetry collection Lifting Child from the Ground, Turning Around (Glass Lyre Press 2025) and From the Belly (Sibling Rivalry Press 2012), Virginia Bell won NELLE Magazine’s  Nonfiction Prize in 2020 for the personal essay, “Chicken,” and her poetry won Honorable Mention in the 2019 RiverSedge Poetry Prize, judged by José Antonio Rodríguez.  Her work has appeared in New City Magazine, Five Points, Denver Quarterly, SWWIM, EAP: The Magazine, Hypertext, The Night Heron Barks, Kettle Blue Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Rogue Agent, Gargoyle, Cider Press Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Poet Lore, The Nervous Breakdown, The Keats Letters Project, Blue Fifth Review, Voltage Poetry, and other journals and anthologies.  Bell is Co-Editor of RHINO Poetry and teaches at Loyola University Chicago and DePaul University. Please visit www.virginia-bell.com.

About Marcy Rae Henry:
Marcy Rae Henry is a multidisciplinary Xicana artist from the Borderlands who’s had motorcycle crashes in the Southwest, Turkey and Nepal. She is the author of the body is where it all begins (Querencia Press, 2025), red delicious (dancing girl press, 2025), dream life of night owls (Open Country Press, 2024), and We Are Primary Colors (DoubleCross Press, 2023).  Her  collection death is a mariachi won the May Sarton NH Prize for Poetry and will be published in April 2025. Her work has received a Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Pushcart nomination, first prize in Suburbia’s Novel Excerpt Contest and Kaveh Akbar recently chose her fiction collection as a finalist for the George Garrett Fiction Prize. MRae is a digital minimalist with no social media accounts and an associate editor for RHINO Poetry. Please visit marcyraehenry.com

About Katana Smith:
Katana Smith is a poet and writer. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, RHINO Poetry, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. She serves as an Associate Editor at RHINO Poetry, and as a Reader for Callaloo. In 2024, she was a finalist for the FSG Writer’s Fellowship. Katana earned her MFA in Creative Writing and MA in English from the Litowitz graduate program at Northwestern University. Her BA in Creative Writing is from Knox College, where she was a McNair Scholar. Originally from Aurora, Colorado, she now lives in Chicago.

About Sarah Jack:
Sarah Jack is a Chicago-based poet and screen-printer. Her work has appeared in Jet Fuel Review. She is an Associate Editor at RHINO Poetry. 

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