Riverwood Poetry Series at Real Art Ways

Riverwood Poetry Series will host Mark Doty and Nadia Sims on Wednesday, April 8, 2026, at 7 PM, in The Avery Theater at The Wadsworth, 29 Atheneum Square North in Hartford.

Mark Doty has published ten books of poems, including Fire to Fire: New & Selected Poems, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008. He is the author of six books of nonfiction prose, most recently What is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life. His work has been honored by the National Book Critics Circle Award, the T.S.Eliot Prize in the U.K., the Stonewall Book Award, the Witter Bynner Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Whiting Writers Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Ingram-Merrill Foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught creative writing programs at Rutgers, Stanford, Princeton, Iowa, Columbia, and New York University. He lives in the Hudson River Valley.

Nadia Sims is the Poet Laureate for the Town of Manchester, Connecticut. Currently, Sims is focused on spreading her message of grace across Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York. Her three books, A Soft Place to Land, We Know the Dark, and Apostle, Interrupted, are available to buy on Amazon. 

Instructions for the location of this event:

Enter through the side entrance of the museum. An elevator is available to the theater.

You can pay for parking in the Front Street South Garage at 62 Front Street. Free street parking is available after 6 PM. There will not be an open mic during this event.

The authors’ books will be available to buy for book signing and conversation. Beer, wine, and soft drinks will be available for purchase at the cash bar.

Bring a friend! Admission to the readings is free.

About Riverwood Poetry Series

The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc., is a non-profit arts organization committed to promoting and appreciating poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.” 

The series takes place in person on the second Wednesday of the month from September 2025 through May 2026. Each night begins with an open mic featuring readers with one poem (one page) and continues with a poetry reading featuring regionally or nationally known poets.

Riverwood Poetry Series @ Real Art Ways will host Charles Rafferty, Srini Mandavilli, Sherri Bedingfield, and Steven Ostrowski on Wednesday, January 7, 2025, at 7 pm at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor Street, Hartford, Connecticut. There will be an open mic this month for the first ten poets who sign up. The authors’ books will be available for purchase during the book signing & conversation, and beer, wine, soft drinks, and snacks will also be available for purchase at concessions. Free admission. Bring a friend! Ample parking is available at Real Art Ways. 

Charles Rafferty is the author of 14 poetry books and chapbooks, most recently The Appendectomy Grin (BOA, 2025), A Cluster of Noisy Planets (BOA, 2021), The Problem With Abundance (Grayson Books, 2019) Something an Atheist Might Bring Up at a Cocktail Party (Mayapple Press, 2018), and The Smoke of Horses (BOA Editions, 2017). His stories have been collected in Saturday Night at Magellan’s (Fomite Press, 2013) and Somebody Who Knows Somebody (Gold Wake Press, 2021). His poems have appeared in Gettysburg Review, The New Yorker, O, The Oprah Magazine, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Rhino, and The Southern Review. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. Currently, he co-directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College and teaches in the Westport Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Sandy Hook, CT.

Srinivas Mandavilli is Chief of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at Hartford Hospital and the author of the chapbook Gods in the Foyer (Antrim Books, 2016). His work has been featured in the anthologies Hum Aiseich Bolte (Trancscendent Zero Press, 2022) and Of Hartford in Many Lights (Grayson Books, 2024), as well as numerous literary journals, including Rattle, Poetry Wales, The Night Heron Barks, New Square, Modern Haiku, The Raven’s Perch, Verse Virtual, and Journal of the American Medical Association. Mandavilli is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and lives in Connecticut with his wife, Bela.

Sherri (Sheryll) Bedingfield worked as a family therapist and psychotherapist for over 30 years. She has served on the Board of Riverwood Poetry Series held at Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut, and she has co-hosted Bloomfield Library & Wintonbury Poetry Series. Bedingfield has volunteered, is a board member with Hartford Creative Contest for the last eight years, working with Hartford students in grades 4-12. Bedingfield is the author of two previous poetry collections: Transitions and Transformations and The Clattering: Voices from Old Forfarshire, Scotland. Her work appears in the Journal of Poetry Therapy and many other journals and anthologies.

Steven Ostrowski is a widely-published poet, fiction writer, painter and songwriter. His novel, The Highway of Spirit and Bone, was published in 2023 by Lefora Publications and has been called “…a literary road trip for the ages.” His poetry chapbook, Persons of Interest, won the 2021 Wolfson Chapbook Prize and was published in 2022. Steven and his son Ben coauthored a full-length collaboration called Penultimate Human Constellation, published in 2018 by Tolsun Books. Steven’s newest book of poems, Life Field, was published in early 2024 by Impspired Press (U.K.). He is Professor Emeritus at Central Connecticut State University. 

About Riverwood Poetry Series The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc., is a non-profit arts organization committed to promoting and appreciating poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.” 

The series takes place in person on the second Wednesday of the month from September 2025 through May 2026. Each night begins with an open mic featuring readers with one poem (one page) and continues with a poetry reading featuring regionally or nationally known poets.

Riverwood Poetry Series @ Real Art Ways will host Jeffrey Harrison and Charles Douthat on Wednesday, December 10, 2025, at 7 pm at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor Street, Hartford, Connecticut. There will be an open mic this month for the first ten poets who sign up. The authors’ books will be available for purchase during the book signing & conversation, and beer, wine, soft drinks, and snacks will also be available for purchase at concessions. Free admission. Bring a friend! Ample parking is available at Real Art Ways. 

Jeffrey Harrison is the author of six full-length books of poetry – The Singing Underneath (1988), selected by James Merrill for the National Poetry Series, Signs of Arrival (1996), Feeding the Fire (2001), winner of the Sheila Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club, Incomplete Knowledge (2006), runner-up for the Poets’ Prize, Into Daylight, published in 2014 by Tupelo Press as the winner of the Dorset Prize, and Between Lakes, forthcoming from Four Way Books in September 2020. A selection of early poems, The Names of Things, was published in 2006 by The Waywiser Press in the U.K. A recipient of Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, as well as other honors, his poems have appeared widely in magazines and journals, in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Poets of the New Century, The Twentieth Century in Poetry, and other anthologies, and have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac, American Life in Poetry, Poetry Daily, and other online and media venues. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, as well as at Phillips Academy, where he was Writer-in-Residence, and has visited many high schools to read from his work and discuss poetry with students. He lives in Massachusetts.

Charles Douthat is a poet, retired litigator, and visual artist. A second-generation Californian, he graduated from Stanford University, UC College of the Law in San Francisco, and received an MFA in Fine Arts from Warren Wilson College. Since 1982, he’s lived in Connecticut, where he practiced trial law and was honored multiple years with membership in Best Lawyers in America. He began writing poems and painting during a long midlife illness. Since then, his poems have been published in many magazines and journals, including Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, and his paintings have been widely exhibited. Charles’ first book, Blue for Oceans, was awarded the 2011 PEN New England Award as the best book of poetry published that year by a New England author. J.D. McClatchy called it “a wise and haunted book.” In 2025, Unbound Editions Press published his second book of poetry, titled Again. Alan Shapiro called it “a book impossible not to love.” Charles’ son Ross is an author and columnist for the New York Times. His daughter Jeanne is a film producer at Made Up Stories, a production company in Los Angeles. He lives in Weston, Connecticut, with his wife, the artist Julie Leff.

About Riverwood Poetry Series The Riverwood Poetry Series, Inc., is a non-profit arts organization committed to promoting and appreciating poetry in Connecticut. RPS, Inc. is invested in providing entertaining and thought-provoking programming while responding to the needs of our neighbors through community outreach and collaboration. From their Facebook page: “The Riverwood Poetry Series has innovated many programs since our inception, all free to the public. We provide entertaining and thought-provoking poetry in a relaxed atmosphere.”