Two Friends Books Belle Point Press Poetry: Wendy Taylor Carlisle, Kyle Vaughn, and Suzanne Underwood Rhodes

Join us to celebrate Wendy Taylor Carlisle and Kyle Vaughn’s new poetry collections with Belle Point Press, Reading Berryman to the Dog and The Alpinist Searches Lonely Places. Both poets will be reading from their new collections and will be joined by Arkansas Poet Laureate Suzanne Underwood Rhodes. 

Event Info:

February 18, 2023

Start: 5:30pm

Each Poet will read a selection from their new collection, answer questions, and sign copies of their books. 

About Wendy Taylor Carlisle

Wendy Taylor Carlisle was born in Manhattan, raised in Bermuda, Connecticut and Ft Lauderdale, Florida and lives now in the Arkansas Ozarks in a house she built in 1980. She has an MA from The University of Arkansas and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of The Mercy of Traffic (Unlikely Books, 2019), Discount Fireworks (Jacaranda Press, 2008) and Reading Berryman to the Dog (Jacaranda Press, 2000.) Chapbooks include They Went to the Beach to Play (Locofo Chaps, 2016), Chap Book (Platypus Press, 2016), Persephone on the Metro (MadHat press, 2014), The Storage of Angels (Slow Water Press, 2008), and After Happily Ever After (Two River Chapbooks, 2003.) Her work appears in multiple anthologies.

About Suzanne Underwood Rhodes

Suzanne Underwood Rhodes lives, writes, and teaches in the mountains of Fayetteville, Arkansas. A native of New York, she began writing poetry at age six and won several prizes for her poems as a girl. Inspired by teachers and others who nurtured her writing, Suzanne takes a passionate interest in developing other poets through workshops, mentoring, and editing.

Her poems explore personal history and family, the allure of the natural world, the psychological contradictions and complexities of human personality, and Christian spirituality. She holds words close to her ear to capture the rhythms and sounds that lead to poems. She is the Poet Laureate of Arkansas

About Kyle Vaughn

Kyle Vaughn’s poems have appeared in publications such as Adbusters, Matter, The Boiler, Vinyl, Confrontation, Firewheel Editions’ Introduction to the Prose Poem, and The Portable Poetry Workshop by Jack Myers. His prose has appeared in English Journal, where his article “Reading the Literature of War: A Global Perspective on Ethics” won the Paul and Kate Farmer Award for article of the year. His book A New Light in Kalighat, co-authored and co-photographed with Breanna Reynolds and funded by the US State Department’s Bureau for Educational and Cultural Affairs, features photos and stories about the children of sex workers and crematory workers in Kolkata, India. His book of poetry writing exercises, Lightning Paths: 75 Poetry Writing Exercises, was published by NCTE Books in 2018.

About Belle Point Press:

Belle Point Press is a new regional small press founded in 2021 by Michael and Casie Dodd, a book-loving husband-and-wife team in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Raised in Eastern Oklahoma with roots older than living memory in the Natural State, we look forward to supporting new authors while connecting readers with the long thread of our region’s creative culture. We are a family-owned and -operated business, working from home with two young children. Belle Point Press is a proud member of the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) and the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP).​