Submitted by SHARK REEF Literary Magazine

The May 5 Local Writers Read will be an all-Lopezian event with Kathleen Holliday and Brooks. The monthly event begins at 7 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

Kathleen Holliday’s writing received a kick-start not long after she moved to Lopez and attended Lorrie Harrison’s memoir-writing class.

“Since then, I’ve been in two writers’ groups and had poems and a personal essay published,” Kathleen reports.

A former librarian, Kathleen found reading drew her to writing and vice versa.

“From my first attempts in grade school after reading Laura Ingalls Wilder,” Kathleen says, “to writing poetry, memoir and historical fiction as an adult, writing and reading have provided solace, escape, time travel and the means to experience more lives than my own.”

Kathleen is working on a historical novel, The Cottage of Content, based on the life of a convict ancestor sent to Australia in the 1820s. She’ll read a memoir piece titled, “Where We Once Belonged.”

Brooks has been a writer with varying intensity for 50 years, with some of her poems published in journals and anthologies. She’s also a visual artist and beach lover.

“Poetry is my genre of choice for many reasons,” Brooks says. “It’s short, it doesn’t have all the grammar rules — at least the way I write — that other genres have, it doesn’t have to be logical or even make sense, and it’s fun!”

She was first drawn to writing as a way to express her young adult feelings and perceptions.

“And,” she says, “I thought it was cool to sit in a cafe writing poetry.”

This month’s audience is invited to join Brooks in celebrating the release of her first chapbook of poems, “Who’s to Say.”

“It’s a collection of serious and fun poems,” Brooks says, “that tries to ask some of the big questions or look at universal feelings.”

Local Writers Read is co-sponsored by SHARK REEF Literary Magazine and Lopez Bookshop. For more information visit lopezbookshop.com.