1455 is happy to celebrate the recent release of W. David Hubbard’s memoir Möbius: Meditations on Home.
Thanks, as ever, to our friends at the awesome Hideaway Cafe. This month marks the one year anniversary of 1455’s Spoken Word Series. Needless to say, this pesky pandemic disrupted our monthly events, and since it doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon, it seemed important to keep the community together by any means necessary. Since 1455 has effectively—and quite successfully—shifted all of its programming online, we decided there’s no good reason we shouldn’t resurrect the Spoken Word series as a virtual event until we’re able to meet in person again (more on that, with dates and times, soon). Fortuitously, I ran into my friends David and Joseph on the walking mall the other month and we talked about putting together a reading; this coincides with the recent release of David’s book, which I wanted to properly acknowledge and celebrate. As such, the idea for a Winchester Writers Reunion suddenly made all the sense in the world. This special reading featured an eclectic mix of local writers. The event was recorded and can be viewed (along with the author bios) below.
Wayne David Hubbard is an educator and new author making first strides into publishing in 2020. His debut book, Mobius: Meditations on Home, was released on Amazon in October. His first book explores the timeless subject of home through illuminating prose on place, identity, and love. He is a winner of the 2020 Button Poetry of Short Form Contest and is a columnist for The Good Men Project, writing about modern manhood, relationships, race, and war. Find him online at https://www.waynedavidhubbard.com.
Joseph M. Jablonski, also known as the “Walking Mall Poet,” is the typewriting street poet of Old Town Winchester, VA. Since 2019, Joseph has written for pedestrians at Winchester’s Town Center with a typewriter collection that includes nearly 30 different machines. He recently started a Twitch-based streaming show entitled “Morning Words” where he typewrites live every morning at 7AM EST. He has also released a collection of poems entitled DROPOUT available from Jafansta Press. When Joseph isn’t writing, he works doing community engagement and consultancy with fundraising and social service companies in the Winchester area. walkingmallpoet.com
Jon Udelson’s fiction has appeared in Juked, The Ampersand Review, The Baltimore Review, and Fiction Magazine, among others. He is also the author of ARABIC TATTOOS, released by Mark Batty Publisher. A graduate of The City College of New York’s M.F.A. program in Creative Writing and University of Louisville’s Ph.D. program in Rhetoric & Composition, Jon proudly serves as an assistant professor of English at Shenandoah University. His scholarship focuses on writing, literate development, pedagogy, and ideologies of craft. He lives in Winchester, VA.
Kelley Crowley is a late-blooming writer whose work has appeared in SUM, Memoir Mixtapes, the Pittsburgh PostGazette, and Corvus Review among others. She is currently working on an MFA from the Bluegrass Writers Studio at Eastern Kentucky University. She teaches in the Media and Communication department at Shenandoah University where she implores her students to listen to the words and not just nod to the beat.
Jessi Lewis grew up on a blueberry farm in rural Virginia. Influenced by a childhood in the mountains and the experiences of the women in her family, often there’s a hint of mythology, magic and oddity thrown into her work. Her essays, short stories and poems have been published in Oxford American, Carve, Sonora Review, The Pinch, Yemassee, and Appalachian Heritage, among others. Jessi’s novel manuscript, SHE SPOKE WIRE, was a finalist for the PEN/ Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. Oxford American chose her short story, “False Morels,” as the 2018 Debut Fiction Winner. Her work has been supported by the Tin House Summer Workshop and Bread Loaf Environmental. Jessi has her MFA from West Virginia University. She now teaches writing in the Shenandoah Valley of VA.
