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The Literary Southwest presents its first-ever summer reading on Thursday, June 13 at 7 p.m. in the Yavapai College Library’s Susan N. Webb Community Room (Bldg. 19, Room 147) on the Prescott campus.

The event will showcase the work of two wonderfully accomplished writers: local favorite novelist, memoirist, writing guide, and nonfiction stylist Laraine Herring, and award-wining poet Lynne Thompson. An open conversation, audience Q & A session, and a book signing follow the reading. Literary Southwest programs are presented admission free and are open to all. And, to make this event even more special, refreshments will be served.

Laraine Herring is the author of three books on writing from Shambhala Publications: "Writing Begins with the Breath: Embodying Your Authentic Voice;" "The Writing Warrior: Discovering the Courage to Free Your True Voice;" and "On Being Stuck: Tapping into the Creative Power of Writer's Block." Both "Writing Begins with the Breath" and "The Writing Warrior" were included on Poets & Writers top books for writers. Her book "Lost Fathers: How Women Can Heal from Adolescent Father Loss" was released from Hazelden in 2005.

Herring has written three novels: "Ghost Swamp Blues," "Gathering Lights," and "Into the Garden of Gethsemane, Georgia." Her nonfiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her fiction has won the Barbara Deming Award for Women. Her work has most recently appeared in Tiferet, The Manifest-Station, and Quiet Storm, among many others. She teaches writing nationally at the Kripalu Center, the Omega Center, 1440 Multiversity, and at many writer's conferences. She holds an MFA in Fiction Writing and an MA in Counseling Psychology. She is currently the director of the creative writing program at Yavapai College where she is a tenured professor of creative writing and psychology. Her current project is "A Constellation of Ghosts: A Speculative Memoir with Ravens."

Lynne Thompson is the author of the collections "Start With a Small Guitar" and "Beg No Pardon," winner of the Perugia Book Award and the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Award. In 2018, Thompson was awarded Honorable Mention for Cave Canem’s Toi Derricote/Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize as well as the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize for her manuscript, Fretwork, which was published in 2019. Along with her full-length collections, she also has written three poetry chapbooks. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry, Colorado Review, Pleiades, diode poetry journal, New England Review as well as the anthology Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California. Thompson is Reviews & Essays Editor for the journal, "Spillway." She lives in Los Angeles.

The Hassayampa Institute presents The Literary Southwest is made possible by Yavapai College and the Yavapai College Foundation, with additional support provided by Peregrine Book Company.

For complete author and series information, visit: www.yc.edu/Literarysw or contact Series Director Jim Natal through Yavapai College at 928-776-2295.