The Writers' Factory: Poets In Conversation and Book Signing on March 29th with Pat Mottola and Chelsea Dodds at ReReads Booksellers.

Join us for an afternoon of reading and conversation with local poets and Ball & Socket Writers’ Factory instructors, Pat Mottola and Chelsea Dodds as they share their latest work and discuss the poetic process. Q&A and book signing to follow. 

Pat Mottola's Book: A Town Like That

A Town Like That depicts small-town life through poems that are empathetic, witty, and bold. The characters here are the people all of us have known. Many of them show up in a poem called "High School Reunion": the almost-boyfriend, the fast girl, the anorexic, the teacher whose students don't know he is gay. The speaker in the poems sometimes yearns toward the trappings of an idealized suburban family life, but more often she leans toward a wildness and freedom that seem almost, but not entirely, out of reach. In the final poem the speaker meets with her cousin and close childhood companion in a local bar, and they lift glasses, wondering "how everything and nothing has changed."

Nothing Good Will Get Away by Chelsea Dodds

When the speaker in NOTHING GOOD WILL GET AWAY meets a real-life version of the love interest she has written into all of her stories since she was a teenager, she must wrestle with whether this is a fated relationship or a chance encounter that will make for a good story but leave her heartbroken. From the Adirondack Mountains in New York to Steinbeck Country in California and back to the East Coast, these narrative poems explore love, longing, loss, and what it means to let oneself be truly vulnerable.

About the Poets:

Pat Mottola teaches Creative Writing at Southern Connecticut State University, where she earned both an M.S. in Art Education and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing. An award-winning poet and Pushcart Prize nominee, her work is published in journals across the country. Pat is President of the Connecticut Poetry Society, and she is the Poet Laureate of Cheshire, CT. She served as editor ofConnecticut River Review from 2012–2017. On a global scale, she mentors Afghan women writers living in Afghanistan and beyond. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Under the Red Dress, After Hours, and A Town Like That. Pat was the recipient of the prestigious CSCU system-wide Board of Regents Outstanding Teacher Award in 2019, as well as the J. Philip Smith Outstanding Teacher Award in 2021.

Chelsea Dodds is the author of the poetry chapbook Nothing Good Will Get Away (Finishing Line Press). Her writing has been published in The Forge, Maudlin House, Rejection Letters, Poetry Super Highway, and the 2024 Connecticut Literary Anthology (Woodhall Press). She holds an MFA in fiction from Southern Connecticut State University, and her work was recently supported with a residency at Craigardan in upstate New York. When not writing, Chelsea can usually be found hiking, practicing yoga, or planning her next road trip. You can read more of her work at chelseadodds.com.