Featuring poets Jennifer Moore and Justin Hamm, with music by Matt Lundquist
Open mic to follow; beer & wine available for purchase

Sponsored in part by the Bloomington Arts Commission and the Bloomington Urban Enterprise Association

Originally from the flatlands of central Illinois, JUSTIN HAMM now lives near Twain territory in Missouri. He is the author of four books of poetry, Drinking Guinness With the Dead: Poems 2007-2021, The Inheritance, American Ephemeral, and Lessons in Ruin, and a book of photographs entitled Midwestern. He is also the creator of Poet Baseball Cards and the founding editor of the museum of americana. Justin was chosen as a 2022 Woody Guthrie Poet, a 2020 Missouri Arts Council Featured Artist, a finalist for the 2018 River Styx International Poetry Prize, and the winner of the 2014 Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize. In 2022 he delivered a performance entitled “The American Midwest: A Story in Poems” at TEDx Oshkosh. Justin currently works as an elementary librarian in the small town of Mexico, Missouri, where he lives with his wife, Mel, and their two daughters.

JENNIFER MOORE is the author of Easy Does It (The University of Akron Press, 2021), The Veronica Maneuver (The University of Akron Press, 2015), and Smaller Ghosts (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bennington Review, Ploughshares, Interim, DIAGRAM, The Cincinnati Review, and other venues, and criticism and reviews have appeared in Jacket2, Rhetoric Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships and residencies with the Jentel Arts Foundation, Artsmith, the Leña Artist Research and Residency Centre, the Sundress Academy for the Arts, and the Ora Lerman Charitable Trust. A native of the Seattle area, she holds a B.A. in English from Mercyhurst University, an M.A. in creative writing from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a Ph.D. in creative writing from the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A professor of creative writing and Director of the Honors Program at Ohio Northern University, she lives in Bowling Green, Ohio.

MATT LUNDQUIST gathers inspiration for songs from the Lost Roads, Deep Woods, and Front Porches of Southern Indiana. In 2022 he won the John Hartford Memorial Festival Songwriting Contest for his tune “Hartford’s Bend.” He can play slide guitar like a spring creek sings. He can calm the spirits with his pedal steel style. Traveled to many funky little towns and far away forests with a Big Gibson Jumbo and another new song. In Bloomington, Indiana, you’ll find him stompin’ with cosmic folk rockers Otto & the Moaners, singin’ Garcia/Hunter tunes with Dead Country, or pickin’ in your friends backyard.