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Join us on the first Monday of every month at 7PM at the UConn B&N Bookstore at Storrs Center. 
Hang out, listen to some riveting stories, and meet us for a drink at Geno's afterwards. 

October 1, 2018 

Joan Seliger Sidney
is the author of Bereft and Blessed, Body of Diminishing Motion: Poems and a Memoir and The Way the Past Comes Back. She has received individual artist poetry fellowships from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation, the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, and the Vermont Studio Center. She is the recipient of a Visiting Faculty Fellowship from Yale.  She’s writer-in-residence at the University of Connecticut’s Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life.  In addition, she facilitates Writing for Your Life, an adult writing workshop.
Robert Cording 
​has published eight collections of poems, the most recent of which are Walking with Ruskin and Only so Far. He taught for thirty-eight years at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in poetry, and his poems have appeared in such publications as The Nation, The ​Georgia Review, The Southern Review, The Hudson Review, and The New Yorker. 
Gray Jacobik
​is a university professor emerita from Eastern Connecticut State University. She is the author of several award-winning collections of poems: The Double Task, Brave Disguises, The Surface of Last Scattering, and Little Boy Blue: A Memoir in Verse. Her book The Banquet: New & Selected Poems received the 2016 William Meredith Award for Poetry; for this collection, Gray also received a lifetime achievement award from the Connecticut Center for the Book for her contributions to the literature of Connecticut. For more about her work as poet, please visit her website: grayjacobik.com. For more about her work as a visual artist, visit grayjacobikartist.com. 

November 5, 2018 

Ryan Curcio 
​is a student at Central Connecticut State University. He studies English with a minor in writing. He is currently a contributing writer for Trill! Magazine and is also an intern reporter for the New Britain Herald. His work has appeared in undergraduate literary magazines, on 121words.com, and is scheduled to appear in Crack the Spine​'s 240th issue. 
Michael Downs
is the author of three books set in his birthplace of Hartford. The Strange and True Tale of Horace Wells, Surgeon Dentist, his latest, explores the life of the man credited with introducing general anesthesia - and thereby changing the world. Downs's awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Maryland State Arts Council. A former Hartford Courant reporter now living in Baltimore, Downs is a professor of English at Towson University. Find him at http://www.michael-downs.net. 
Ruth Danon
is the author of ​Word Has It, Limitless Tiny Boat, Triangulation from a Known Point, and ​Living with the Fireman. Her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous publications, including The Paris Review and Fence. She graduated from Bard College and received her PhD from the University of Connecticut. For twenty-three years, she taught in the creative writing program she designed and directed at NYU. She now teaches and lives in Hudson Valley, New York. She is currently working on a memoir about growing up on the grounds of a mental hospital in upstate New York. She lives with her husband, the painter Gary Buckendorf. 

December 3, 2018

PR Griffis 
is currently completing a novel about punk rock, Texas high school football, alcoholism, and the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. He lives in Willimantic, CT with Mika Taylor, his writer wife, and Petunia Van Scampers, their crime-solving wonderpup.
Paul Beckman
was recently featured in The Best Small Fictions 2016, ​and his story "Mom's Goodbye" was the winner of the 2016 Fiction Southeast Editor's Prize. He's been widely published in Playboy, PANK, Litro, the Blue Fifth Review, and the Raleigh Review. Kiss Kiss is his newest flash collection. Paul also had a story selected for the 2018 Norton Anthology New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction. 
Mary Collins
worked for twenty years as a freelance writer and editor in Washington, D.C. for a range of clients, including National Geographic and Smithsonian. She also taught part-time at John Hopkins before returning to her native Connecticut in 2007 for a tenured position at Central Connecticut State University. There, she teaches narrative nonfiction and has previously served as the director of the Center for Teaching and Faculty Development. She has published three adult nonfiction books and five young adult nonfiction books, has worked as an artist-in-residence for the National Park Service, and has written many award-winning essays. 

    We'll keep you in the loop.

"In the first two acts of the novel, the combination of debut author DiStefano's lyrical prose and effortlessly nuanced characters makes for a gripping and heart-wrenching read." 
--Kirkus Reviews 
Don't forget to submit your one-sentence story!
Elephant Rock Books: Stories You Won't Forget

 Contact us at elephantrockbooks@gmail.com if you're interested in participating in a reading.