Karen Petersen and Mary Strong Jackson Read Poetry at Teatro Paraguas

Sunday October 18, 2026 at 5:00 p.m.

  Free

Karen Petersen will be reading from her three award-winning chapbooks, in addition to a selection from her upcoming first volume out later this year, The Habits of a Landscape, published by Kelsay Books.

Karen Petersen has published poetry, short stories, and flash both nationally and internationally.  A former foreign correspondent, in this last decade she has been fiercely devoted to a literary life. Her poems have been translated into Persian and Spanish, and she has been nominated for numerous prizes, including ten Pushcarts, and long-listed for the UK's international Bridport Prize, Forward Prize, and Australia's Peter Porter Prize.  In 2023, her chapbook, "Trembling," published by Kelsay Books, won the national Wil Mills Award, judged by Annie Finch, and her poem, "The Price of Love," was nominated for Best of the Net.  New work is in The Wallace Stevens Journal, A New Ulster, and The Cimarron Review. Her chapbook, "Wamponomon: The Place of Shells," was released in October 2024, and named a finalist in the SW Book Design Awards. Her latest chapbook, "Influences: The Irish Poems," was released September 2025.  More information can be found at:  karenpetersenwriter.com

Mary Strong Jackson’s full-length book of poetry, A Pear-Shaped World, was published in May of 2025 by Finishing Line Press. El Palacio, a Magazine of Art, History, and Culture of the Southwest published her  poem, “The Backbone of Us” in the Spring 2022, Vol. 127. The poem was chosen by the Santa Fe Poet Laureate, Darryl Wellington. S. Jackson’s chapbook titles are Dreaming in Grief, Finishing Line Press, 2022, From Other Tongues, 2017, Witnesses, 2011, and No Buried Dogs, 2006, Foothills Publishing, Clippings Pudding House Publications, 1995. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies in the United States and England. S. Jackson facilitated a writing group for 4 years at the Life Link psycho/social rehabilitation program where she worked in Santa Fe, NM. She brought poetry to the men’s and women’s shelters in Santa Fe for 2 years.. Mary Strong Jackson resides near Santa Fe, NM.