Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic

20^th Anniversary Reading  

Featuring Clark County Poet Laureate Susan Dingle

Hosted by Christopher Luna and Morgan Paige

7 pm

Thursday, November 14

Art At The Cave

108 E Evergreen Blvd

Vancouver, WA 98660

https://artatthecave.com

ANTI-RACIST, LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, PRO-SCIENCE, ANTI-FASCIST,

PRO-CHOICE, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004

https://printedmattervancouver.com/

$5 Suggested donation

No one will be turned away for lack of funds

Donations can be made in person or through Christopher Luna’s PayPal account (christopherjluna@gmail.com). Include a memo stating that the money is for Ghost Town Poetry.

Susan Dingle moved from the East End of Long Island, aka ‘Strong Island,” New York, to Washougal at the invitation of her son Jake in 2020, the year after her husband died. Susan’s first chapbook, Parting Gifts, won honorable mention and publication by Local Gems Press, NY in 2020. A second chapbook, In Pilgrim Drag, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020. 

She is currently in the MFA program at Pacific University, completing her thesis of poems. With Julie Sparling, Susan co-hosts an open mic called Poetry Street PNW at the Camas Library on the 4^th Wednesday each month. In March 2024, Susan Dingle was selected as Clark County Poet Laureate (2024-2026.)  Following in the footsteps of Armin Tolentino, Gwendolyn Morgan and Christopher Luna, she leads workshops and projects to encourage people of all ages, ethnicities and gender identification to find their voices.  

Susan graduated from the Creative Writing Program at the University of Illinois/Chicago in 1971, with publications including the Ohio Review, Partisan Review and APR. After teaching briefly at Colgate University, she left it all for Hollywood, to write epic poetry about LA and read it on the Merv Griffin Show. Fortunately, she returned to New York and got sober in 1981, performing her LA epic at open mics including the Nuyorican Poets Café in NYC and on Long Island as a one-woman show, The Hollywood Dream-Catcher. Becoming a clinical social worker in 2008 and a preacher in 2017, she is an ardent advocate for the power of poetry as a healing modality. She collaborated with Maggie Bloomfield on Break Out! a two-woman show about recovery, based on their poems. With Robert A. Brown, Susan founded Poetry Street in Riverhead, NY in 2014.

Christopher Luna founded Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic in November 2004. The reading began at Ice Cream Renaissance before migrating to Cover to Cover Books, Angst Gallery. The series has called Art At the Cave home since 2022.

On Friday, November 8, Art at the Cave will host a book launch party for Ghost Town Poetry Volume Three, featuring poetry from throughout the twenty year history of the series. Join us at Art At The Cave from 4-7 to purchase a copy of the new book, edited by Christopher Luna, Morgan Paige, and Toni Lumbrazo Luna, who co-hosted the reading from 2007-2020.   

Send an email to printedmattervancouver@gmail.com to receive The Work, Christopher Luna’s monthly newsletter featuring news and events for poets in Vancouver, WA, Portland, OR and surrounding areas.

The Ghost Town Poetry community respectfully encourages you to support Niche Wine Bar, whose owner, Leah Jackson, provided a home for the reading series from 2015-2020. Stop by their new location at 900 Washington, Suite 130 Vancouver, WA 98660: https://nichewinebar.com.

UPDATED Statement on Healthy Spaces from Art at the Cave: We want to provide a healthy space to enjoy art. We have been practicing safety precautions such as regular cleaning, social distancing and mask wearing. As a result of the removal of the mask mandate effective March 12, 2022, we will no longer require the wearing of masks. We encourage you to continue to wear a mask if it makes you feel more comfortable, and we will supply masks and hand sanitizer at the door. As social distancing has become a norm, please be mindful some will still need a bit of personal space while inside the gallery.