Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013 at 6 p.m. in the Mi Casa Cafe at the GoggleWorks presenting poets J. Love Kearse and Maria James-Thiaw

Join Berks Bards for First Thursday, featuring the poetry of Soul Cry and Maria James-Thiaw with an open mic to follow.

Soul Cry, who is otherwise known as J. Love Kearse, is a poet from York, PA where she resides with her spouse and four. The “love child” of a musical mother and literary father, she has been featured in numerous venues and slams across the east coast. She was awarded Poet of the Year for 2007 and 2008 at the Central PA Hip-Hop Awards. She currently has two CD’s to her credit entitled “Destiny’s Calling” and “The Love Chronicles” and released her first collection of poems entitled “Passing Bi” in July of 2013.

Ms. Kearse has an Associate’s Degree in Business Management from Yorktowne Business Institute, a Bachelor’s Degree in Organizational Leadership from Eastern University, and is a 2014 candidate to receive her Masters of Business Administration from Easter University.

Also an amateur visual artist and an accomplished vocalist and songwriter, Soul Cry lives with her family in York County, Pennsylvania

Maria James-Thiaw is the author of three poetry collections: Windows to the Soul (Shippensburg University Press, 1999), Rising Waters (Shippensburg University Press, 2003) and her latest,Talking “White” (postDada Press, 2013) In 2006, she produced an independent CD of spoken word and music entitled FREEverse. Her poetry has been published in a variety of journals including Black Magnolias, Fledgling Rag, and Love Your Rebellion.

As a performance poet, Maria gracefully bridges the gap between stage and page by delivering her well-crafted lyric poetry with the dramatic power of a seasoned spoken word artist. Since the mid-1990s, she’s been ‘blessing the mic’ at venues throughout the East Coast and in Auvillar, a village in the South of France that served as inspiration for many poems in Talking “White.”

Maria James-Thiaw is a professor of literary and cultural studies at a small private college in Pennsylvania where she co-edits an online student literary journal called The Central Pen. She holds a Master’s degree in Communications Studies from Shippensburg University (2003) and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Goddard College (2009.)