Join us as we welcome two local writers who will celebrate and share their newest works This Smile is Starting to Hurt and This Season, The Next. 

This Smile is Starting to Hurt is a fun collection of poems that relies heavily on imagination to explore interpersonal communication, the power of art, and some of the joys and perils of contemporary US society. The poems’ speakers are often loud and fast and funny and sloppy and cynical and inaccurate and pop punk and foolish and narrative and whacky; and yet also sincere. If you’re looking for a book of poems that prioritizes an entertaining performance and that draws attention to the anxieties and vulnerability behind the performative, this book is for you.

Part DIY, part memoir, part musing, This Season, The Next finds Casey Knott at several intersections: starting over after a divorce, meeting the love of her life, blending a family, and finding and remodeling an urban farm complete with chickens and a much beloved pet turkey. Whittling down her failures, Knott discovers that refining, renewal, and patience are at the root of not just gardening, but caring for chickens, creating a new family, and remodeling a home. There are no certainties with any of these endeavors—such is life—but Knott reminds us that we can still choose joy because and in spite of that, and that every season gives way to the next.

Casey Knott is the author of Ground Work, a poetry collection, and runs Bluestem Coffee Roasting Co. Her work has appeared most recently in Prism Review, Empty House Press, Gulf Stream, Storm Cellar, december, Contemporary Verse 2, The New Territory, The Westchester Review, Cimarron Review, Salamander, Sugar House Review, and Thin Air Magazine. She lives on an urban farm in Des Moines with her husband and kids.