Spoken & Heard is a seasonal series of literary events hosted by Kari Gunter-Seymour, Poet Laureate of Ohio, featuring award-winning authors, poets and singer/songwriters from across the country. January’s event will feature Alison Luterman (poet), Chiquita Mullins (poet), and Megan Bee (singer/songwriter).

Alison Luterman
Alison Luterman’s four books of poetry are The Largest Possible Life; See How We Almost Fly; Desire Zoo, and In the Time of Great Fires. Her poems and stories have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Sun, Rattle, Nimrod, Salon, Prairie Schooner, The Brooklyn Review, The Atlanta Review, Tattoo Highway, and in numerous other journals and anthologies. She has written an e-book of personal essays, Feral City, half a dozen plays, a song cycle We Are Not Afraid of the Dark, as well as two musicals, The Chain and The Shyest Witch.

Alison performs with the Oakland-based improvisation troupe Wing It! and has given writing workshops all over the country, including at Omega and Esalen Institutes. She teaches memoir and poetry at The Writing Salon in Berkeley, and is available for private coaching in writing or creativity, both in-person or on-line. For more information, please visit her website at www.alisonluterman.net.

Chiquita Mullins
Chiquita Mullins Lee won individual artist/excellence awards in fiction and playwriting from the Greater Columbus Arts Council and in fiction and nonfiction from the Ohio Arts Council (OAC). She lives in Columbus, Ohio, and works as an arts learning coordinator for the OAC, where she oversees Ohio’s Poetry Out Loud contest, and formerly served as a teaching artist on the OAC Teaching Artist Roster. Published in literary anthologies including Fifth Wednesday, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, The MOON Magazine, Falling Star Magazine, Blink Ink, Red Thread Gold Thread, and Voices of Israel, Chiquita was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is featured on the Long Street Cultural Wall in Columbus. She hosted the Emmy award-winning program, Traditions – Ohio Heritage Fellows and she writes and performs with Columbus-based Wild Women Writing, leads Word Warriors creative writing ministry at New Covenant Believers Church, and recently performed in the plays, Twelve Hours and The Shakespeare Club by Dave Carley, Lost Lake by David Auburn, The Coffee Shop Blues by Katherine Burkman, and portrayed Venus in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. Her critically acclaimed play, Pierce to the Soul, premiered at CATCO, toured Ohio with A Portable Theatre Company, and was featured in the 2019 History in ACTion Playwright’s Festival, which also featured her dramatic monologue, Ms. Morrison Speaks to Pilate from Song of Solomon.

Megan Bee
Megan Bee writes with an unquenchable wanderlust, a raw love for the land, and a storytelling skill that is saturated by her background as an environmental educator, farmer, and traveler. Her Americana style incorporates distinctly homespun vocals, acoustic simplicity, and a yearning soulfulness. In the summer of 2020 she released her third studio album, “Waiting.” The album follows her 2017 release “Like a Canyon” which won The Ohio Music Awards Best Americana and Best Singer-Songwriter Album along with a finalist spot in the 2018 USA Songwriting Competition. Learn more at meganbeemusic.com.