Sunday, December 10 | 2pm
 Downtown Bend Library

Author John Martin will read from his latest book, Hold This, during December’s Second Sunday, the library’s monthly celebration of the written word.

John grew up in Wisconsin where he first started playing around with words. When he was old enough to vote and get drafted into the military he moved to Los Angeles and enrolled at Immaculate Heart College. Four years later he had a degree in English Literature, the Vietnam War had ended, and he had one published poem to his credit. Two years after that he moved to northern California where he became a landscaper to pay the expenses that poetry didn’t quite cover. He began writing essays and prose fiction more than poetry but only managed to publish one essay in the San Francisco Chronicle.

A move to Bend renewed his interest in poetry, and in 2006 Iota Press published his chapbook The Nick of Time. Along with other members of the High Desert Poetry Cell, he contributed to three anthologies: The Guys’ Big Book of Poetry, The Guys’ Home Relationship Maintenance and Repair Poetry Manual, and Braided Rivers. His poems have also appeared in Manzanita Quarterly, the High Desert Journal, The Cascades Reader, and America Magazine. Hold This, published by Concrete Wolf Press, is a verse autobiography.

Books will be available for sale at the event.