Literary Nights with Unsolicited Press: Katie Holtmeyer and Laurie Woodford

We are starting a new reading, and good gracious, technology can be a pest. For our first livestream attempt, we failed to stream it. BUT, you can still watch it!

Our newest series, LITERARY NIGHTS WITH UNSOLICITED PRESS is hosted by the charismatic Rosalia Scalia. On most Wednesdays, Scalia will be hosting 1-4 authors reading from their books. These readings will be livestreamed on YouTube and some social media outlets (if we can ever figure it out!). 

On December 13th, 2023, Scalia hosted a reading with Katie Holtmeyer and Laurie Woodford. 

Katie Holtmeyer lives, writes, and teaches in Missouri. She is a pushcart-nominated author, and her poetry has appeared in Vast Chasm, Stanchion Zine, and The Shore,  among others. You can find more of her work at katieholtmeyer.com. Her poetry collection, She Asked Me Where, explores the various ways in which the demons, darkness, and pain, both of ourselves and of others, manifest in our lives. It captures the pull of several spectrums innate to the human experience: pain and triumph, fear and power, longing and overcoming, the perfect and the flawed. This collection approaches the liminal spaces of these binaries through recurring themes that are connected in their struggle for control and understanding over what cannot be controlled or understood.
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Laurie Woodford is a memoirist, fiction writer, and essayist whose work has appeared in The Antioch Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Minnesota Review, Little Patuxent Review and Catamaran. For over twenty years, she taught English to college students in the U.S., South Korea, and China. She holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. Originally from upstate New York, Laurie now lives with her amazing husband, Bruce, and wonder dog, Journey, in the outskirts of Austin, Texas. For more, visit her at www.lauriewoodford.com.

Her memoir, UNSETTLED,  is a stunning account of travel and learning about the human condition. At the age of forty-nine, driven by an urgent restlessness, Laurie Woodford rents out her house, packs her belongings into two suitcases, and relocates to Asia. What begins as an opportunity to teach college English overseas, evolves into a nomadic adventure as Laurie works and volunteers in South Korea, Ethiopia, Peru, Spain, and Mexico. After four years of traveling, Laurie’s return “home” to the U.S. becomes an unexpected adventure of its own when she ends up in Arkansas and meets Bruce, a bird-loving, bearded Quaker, who challenges her to reconcile her life of fierce independence with her longing to feel settled and loved.
Laurie Woodford is a memoirist, fiction writer, and essayist whose work has appeared in The Antioch Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Minnesota Review, Little Patuxent Review and Catamaran. For over twenty years, she taught English to college students in the U.S., South Korea, and China. She holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. Originally from upstate New York, Laurie now lives with her amazing husband, Bruce, and wonder dog, Journey, in the outskirts of Austin, Texas. For more, visit her at www.lauriewoodford.com.