McLean Project for the Arts (MPA) will host an April 22, 1-3pm, poetry reading presenting Lily Press’ first literary publication, Kari Ann Ebert’s Alphabet of Mo(u)rning. The free MPA Emerson Gallery event will also feature readings by poets Sandra Beasley and Carol A. Beane.
The poetry event coincides with MPA’s ongoing Spring Solo exhibitions: Industry Standards: Works by Chris Combs; Concerns: Sculpture by George Lorio; and With My Face Against the Future: Paintings by Josh Whipkey.
About the Artists
Kari Ann Ebert
Winner of the 2020 Sandy Crimmins National Prize in Poetry and the 2018 Gigantic Sequins Poetry Contest, Kari Ann Ebert is the Poetry and Interview editor for The Broadkill Review. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Night Heron Barks, Mojave River Review, Philadelphia Stories, The Main Street Rag, The Ekphrastic Review, and Gargoyleas well as several anthologies. Her honors include a residency at Virginia Creative Center for the Arts (2021), Individual Artist Fellow in Literature: Poetry, Delaware Division of the Arts (2020), and fellowships from MidAtlantic Arts Foundation (2021), The Shipman Agency (2020), BOAAT Press (2020), and Brooklyn Poets (2019). She holds an M.A. from the University of Tennessee and a B.A. from Delaware State University. She lives in Dover, Delaware, where she serves on the board of The Dover Art League.
Sandra Beasley
Sandra Beasley is the author of four poetry collections—Made to Explode, which won the Housatonic Book Award; Count the Waves: I Was the Jukebox, which won the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Theories of Falling, which won the New Issues Poetry Prize—as well as Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a disability memoir and cultural history of food allergies. She served as the editor for Vinegar and Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. Honors for her work include the 2019 Munster Literature Centre’s John Montague International Poetry Fellowship, a 2015 NEA fellowship, and six DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities fellowships. She lives in Washington, D.C.
Carol A. Beane
A wordsmith at heart, poetry is Carol A. Bean’s constant. Beane taught Spanish language, Latin American/Caribbean Literature, and Simultaneous Interpretation at Howard University. She has collaborated with Michael Platt, Renée Stout and Martha Jackson-Jarvis, among others. Creating artists books, broadsides and soundscapes have been an ongoing creative journey in her life. Beane is represented in various private and public collections, including The Library of Congress, Rare Books and Special Collections; Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture NYPL; Yale University Art Museum; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Her book titles include: forgotten contours, the streets of used to be, Al-Mutanabbi Street, Train Tales in 3 Voices, and Coulda Been.
Lily Press
Lily Press(R)is an independently owned studio operating in Rockville, Maryland, founded by Susan J. Goldman, artist, master printmaker curator and filmmaker. Lily Press(R) began as a private studio in 2000. Goldman’s first collaborative projects included Elizabeth Catlett, and most recently Sam Gilliam, Keiko Hara, and Renee Stout. Goldman is also Founding Director of Printmaking Legacy Project (R), (PLP(R)) a nonprofit dedicated to the documentation, preservation and conservation of printmaking practice and history. Goldman was curator for Forward Press: 21st American Printmaking, PLP(R)’s premier 2019 major national print exhibition for the greater Washington, DC community, at the America University Museum, Katzen Center for the Arts. Kari Ann Ebert’s chapbook Alphabet of Mo(u)rning, is Lily Press(R)’s first literary publication.
MPA’s 2023 Spring Solo Exhibitions are funded in part by ArtsFairfax.
About McLean Project for the Arts
MPA Exhibits, Educates and Inspires
McLean Project for the Arts (MPA) is one of the mid-Atlantic region’s most respected contemporary visual arts organizations. MPA provides high-quality art exhibitions showcasing the work of established and emerging artists, educational programs, art classes, MPAartfest, summer art camps, and ArtReach, an award-winning program serving students in grades K – 12, seniors, and individuals with special needs. For more information, visit www.mpaart.org.
