Poets James Crews and Brad Peacock

James Crews and Brad Peacock edited a beautiful anthology of compassionate poems of connection and affirmation that are a celebration of all kinds of love—romantic, family, friendship, self-love, and love for nature. The collection, called Love Is for All of Us: Poems of Tenderness and Belonging from the LGBTQ+ Community and Friends, is gathered from a diverse group of contemporary writers, both part of and allied with the LGBTQIA+ community, with a special focus on queer, nonbinary, and transgender poets.

Your ticket price includes a copy of this new anthology.

James Crews is the editor of numerous anthologies, including New England Book Award winner The Wonder of Small Things, The Path to Kindness, and How to Love the World, which has over 100,000 copies in print. He and his work have been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition and in People magazine, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He is the author of four prize-winning books of poetry, and his poems have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, The Sun, The New Republic, and other journals. Crews recently joined the New York Zen Center as a faculty member in the Contemplative Medicine Fellowship Program. He teaches mindfulness and writing throughout the United States, and lives with his husband in the woods of southern Vermont.

Brad Peacock is a veteran, writer, and long-time organic farmer from Shaftsbury, Vermont, whose passion is to bring people closer to one another and the natural world. His poems have been published in several anthologies, and his op-ed pieces have appeared in newspapers across the United States. He lives with his husband on forty rocky acres that they are restoring to a habitat for pollinators and native species.

Jason O'Toole is co-founder and judge of the Anne Bradstreet Poetry Contest and was the 6th Poet Laureate of North Andover. He is a board member of the Independent Living Resource Center San Francisco and a hospital administrator in the Boston area. Jason was the vocalist for the 1980s NY Hardcore Punk band Life's Blood and continues to collaborate with musicians such as Alec. K. Redfearn Miro Snejdr (Herr Lounge Corps), and members of Siege. He earned his BA from Eugene Lang College and an MBA from St. Joseph's College of Maine.

Alix Klingenberg is a poet, spiritual director, and creative dilettante. She describes herself as a cross between an ethereal woodland creature and an alternative 90’s girl stereotype and is only half-kidding. Alix graduated from Oberlin College in 2003 with a degree in Visual Art where she studied film and photography but also took way too many classes in Spanish literature and personality psychology to not have it count for something. She is obsessed with people dynamics, myth, philosophy, and imagination.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Purple Couch Bookshop, 350 Winthrop Avenue, North Andover, United States