As the finale of our April Poetry Series, our fifth event is the BOOK LAUNCH of Ellen Dooling Reynard’s chapbook No Batteries Required. The book launch is FREE and open to the public so please join us in celebrating the release of this beautiful chapbook. No registration required!
Date: April 30
Start Time: 6:00 pm EDT
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/95851655842?pwd=M2E4NmFvUUVEaHJUWGVjZ2UrbnJjUT09
You can watch the book launch on our YouTube channel here.
No Batteries Required examines the world around Ellen from the perspective of her inner world. As a senior, she looks back on her life, its joys and sorrows, its loves and losses, while she navigates the unknown currents of old age and ponders about the journeys of life, death, and what lies beyond.
Observing the natural world, she recognizes what is to be learned about the human condition from animals, insects, and plants. In the final title poem, Ellen muses about the craft of writing with a pencil, which she describes as a simple computational device with one end for ‘enter,’ the other end for ‘delete.’
No Batteries Required is available in the Yellow Arrow bookstore as a paperback and a PDF (as well as wholesale) and through most bookstores/distribution channels online! If you registered for any of the Four Poetry Series Fridays (April 2, 9, 16, and 23), check out some incredible publication discounts here.
Ellen spent her childhood on a cattle ranch in Jackson, Montana. Raised on myths and fairy tales, the sense of wonder has never left her. A one-time editor of Parabola Magazine, her poetry has been published by Lighten Up On Line, Current Magazine, Persimmon, Silver Blade, and The Muddy River Poetry Review. She is now retired and has relocated to Clarksville, Maryland, where she will continue to write fiction and poetry. She is currently working on a series of ekphrastic poems based on the work of her late husband, Paul Reynard (1927–2005).
Joining Ellen in her reading and discussion of No Batteries Required is Judie Rae, the author of the novel, The Haunting of Walter Rabinowitz; her poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, among them Nimrod, Wisconsin Review, Mudfish, and Canary Online, and her essays have appeared in “Sierra Heritage,” “Tahoe Quarterly,” and “The Sacramento Bee,” as well as online at San Francisco’s NPR station, KQED. She taught college English classes for 27 years at various colleges throughout California. A Canadian, she now lives in Northern California, in a small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, a landscape reminiscent of her grandmother’s home on the Ottawa River, where Judie spent her childhood summers. She is married to sculptor Will Connell.
And hosting the book launch will be Yellow Arrow associate Siobhan McKenna, born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She stumbled upon Yellow Arrow while living in Baltimore, Maryland, and has loved every minute of working as an editorial associate. Siobhan recently began working as a travel nurse and is enjoying the sunshine and manatees found at her first stop: St. Petersburg, Florida. As she moves to a different city every three months to work as an ICU nurse, Siobhan looks forward to writing about all that this crazy, broken, and beautiful country holds. She holds a bachelor’s degree in writing and biology from Loyola University Maryland and an MSN from Johns Hopkins University. You can follow her on Instagram @sio_han.
We look forward to seeing you on April 30! Thank you for supporting independent publishing.