Writers Can Read – April 2023

“On Monday, April 17 at 7 P.M, Heritage Station in Huntington, WV will host the monthly Writers Can Read event. This month’s event features the local poets Edwina “Eddy” Pendarvis and Jeff Tigchelaar reading selections from their work, as well as an open mic session for anyone who would like to share their prose or poetry with the audience.”

HUNTINGTON, WV, April 11, 2023—This month’s Writers Can Read series will feature local poets Edwina “Eddy” Pendarvis and Jeff Tigchelaar. The event is free and open to the public and will take place on Monday, April 17 at 7 P.M. in Heritage Station at 210 11th Street in downtown Huntington.

Edwina “Eddy” Pendarvis, Professor Emerita, Marshall University, considers both West Virginia and eastern Kentucky home, as she was born in Floyd County, KY, and spent her early childhood in Kopperston, WV. Most of her research and writing features literature and life in central Appalachia, but draws on experiences from many different places. Her most recent nonfiction, Another World: Ballet Lessons from Appalachia, explores the influence of Appalachian culture on talent development in dance and other fields. She will read brief excerpts from Another World, an excerpt about Muhammad Ali and the connection between boxing and ballet and an excerpt about “little rats” and “bunheads.”

Jeff Tigchelaar is a former newspaper reporter and editor whose writing has appeared in journals including New Ohio Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, North American Review, Pleiades, and The Laurel Review, and in anthologies such as Verse Daily, Best New Poets, and New Poetry from the Midwest. His poetry garnered a fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council, and his first book, Certain Streets at an Uncertain Hour, published in 2015 by Washburn University’s Woodley Press, won the 2016 Kansas Authors Club Nelson Poetry Book Award. Jeff currently works at Cabell County Public Library and resides with his wife and two children in Huntington.
The “Writers Can Read” open mic night reading series takes place on the third Monday of each month (all year) from 7:00-8:30 in Heritage Station at 210 11th Street in downtown Huntington, West Virginia. The event features two award-winning, published authors that serve as “featured readers” to begin the event each month. Previous featured readers have included: Marc Harshman, Denise Giardina, Crystal Wilkinson, Jonathan Corcoran, Doug Van Gundy, Robert Gipe, Nick White, and others. Afterwards, the mic is open to anyone in the audience that would like to share a creative work.