Join us for an evening with poets Colin Halloran and Mark Harden (pictured left and right, below).

An internationally published writer, artist, and adjunct professor of English, Colin Halloran’s 2012 debut collection, memoir-in-verse Shortly Thereafter, recounts his experiences serving on the front lines of Afghanistan and the impact those experiences had on his return to civilian life. It won the 2012 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award and was a Massachusetts Must-Read Book of 2013. In addition to teaching, Halloran leads workshops and lectures on the relationship between writing and conflict, in particular working with veterans with PTSD, a group that includes himself. His acclaimed second collection, Icarian Flux, explores his life with PTSD through experimental narrative and form, metaphor, and persona. It has been called “a remarkable book,” by Pablo Medina, while Richard Hoffman notes that the collection is comprised of “poems of great vitality and passion.” He lives in Boston and is currently working on an exhibition of paintings that explore the veteran suicide epidemic.

Mark E. Harden is a retired U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer 3 whose service to his country spanned four decades. Since 2000, as a manager of Veterans Affairs and adjunct faculty at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas, Harden has had the honor and privilege of working with veterans from WWII to the ongoing war in Afghanistan. His poems have been published in the Rio Review, Red River Review, Windhover Journal, and Old Mountain Press Anthologies. He currently lives in Georgetown, Texas.