Literary Lights Honors Women's History Month with a Tribute to Women Poets, hosted by Donna Isaac

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Shirley Smith Franklin holds a degree in English and music from Gustavus Adolphus, a Masters degree in early childhood education, and has taught at multiple levels in Minneapolis and in India. She likes to write to learn, celebrate, and sometimes complain. She finds words to be fun and usually writes in plain, everyday language, sprinkled with words or phrases from hymns, liturgy, and authors she has read. Shirley has two grown children and lives with her husband Franklin in Arden Hills and sometimes in India where they have initiated a project in village development.

Wendy Brown-Báez is the author of the inspirational writers' guidebook Heart on the Page: A Portable Writing Workshop, a novel Catch a Dream, and the poetry collection Ceremonies of the Spirit. Her poetry and prose appear widely in literary journals and anthologies, such as Mizna, Wising Up Press, The Feminine Collective, Poets & Writers, Water~Stone Review, and Mom Egg Review. Wendy facilitates writing for healing and memoir workshops via Zoom.  Find out more on her website: http://www.wendybrownbaez.com. 

Marge Barrett’s work appears in numerous journals and anthologies. She’s also the author of a chapbook of poems, My Memoir Dress, (2011), and a memoir, Called: The Making & Unmaking of a Nun (2016). Her book of poetry, If You Have Something to Say, Margaret, was published last September 2020. She graduated with a BA in English from St. Catherine University and completed Master’s work in education and an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota. She has taught high school, college, and adult students and now teaches workshops at the Loft. She and her husband raised a family in St. Paul and now live in Minneapolis, often seeing their children and grandchildren in Minnesota and New York. 

Ethna McKiernan has been twice awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant in Poetry. McKiernan holds an MFA from Warren Wilson Program for Writers. Her first book, Caravan,  was nominated for the Minnesota Book Award, and her work has been widely anthologized, including in The Notre Dame Book of Irish American Poetry and 33 Minnesota Poets. Salmon Press from Ireland published her fourth book Swimming With Shadows, in 2019 and will publish her Selected Poems in 2022. McKiernan works in Street Outreach for a non-profit serving the Minneapolis homeless population. In an earlier life, she was CEO of Irish Books and Media, Inc., a grape-picker in France, and a school bus driver.

Terri Ford is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is the author of two books of poems, both published by Four Way Books--Why the Ships Are She (2001) and Hams Beneath the Firmament (2008). She has been a fellow at Bread Loaf Writer's Conference and has received fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, the Kentucky Arts Council, and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Her poems have been published in Agni,, Ploughshares, Cincinnati Review and other journals. Ford currently lives in Minneapolis, where she hopes to change at least the lipstick on the face of Minnesota poetry.