Calendar Alert: July 2, Dara Wier, Lesle Lewis, Elizabeth Hughey, all in Shelburne Falls, Mass.

From Lea Banks, a great way to start the holiday celebrations:

Thursday, July 2, at 7:30 p.m., award winning poet Dara Wier, with Lesle Lewis and Elizabeth Hughey will be reading as part of the Collected Poets Series. Mocha Maya's, 47 Bridge St., Shelburne Falls, MA. 413-624-6292. Suggested donation $2 - $5. For more info, see www.collectedpoets.com or www.mochamayas.com.

Dara Wier's books include the recently published Remnants of Hannah (Wave Books 2006) Reverse Rapture (Verse Press 2005), Hat On a Pond (Verse Press, 2002) and Voyages in English (Carnegie Mellon U. Press, 2001). Awards include the American Poetry Review's Jerome Shestack Prize, a Guggenheim and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Her poems are included in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. A limited edition, (X IN FIX), is published by RainTaxi's Brainstorm Chapbook Series. She's a member of the poetry faculty and director of the MFA Program for Poets and
Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and along with Emily and Guy Pettit, publisher and editor for Factory Hollow Press. Forthcoming in the fall of 2009 is Selected Poems.

Lesle Lewis' books include Small Boat (winner of the 2002 Iowa Poetry Prize) and Landscapes I & II (Alice James Books 2006). She's had poems appear in American Letters and Commentary, Green Mountains Review, Barrow Street, Pool, The Hollins Critic, The Massachusetts Review, and Jubilat, among many others. Lesle teaches at Landmark College in Putney, Vermont, and lives in Alstead, New Hampshire.

Elizabeth Hughey is the author of Sunday Houses the Sunday House, which won the 2006 Iowa Poetry Prize. She lives with her husband and son in Birmingham, Alabama.