HoCoPoLitSo welcomes all to the November edition of the Wilde Readings Series, with Ona Gritz and Daniel Simpson, hosted by Laura Shovan. For 2024, please join us at our NEW venue, independent bookstore Queen Takes Book on Tuesday, November 12th at 7 p.m., at 6955 Oakland Mills Rd, Suite E, Columbia MD, 21045. Please spread the word— bring your friends, family and students! Light refreshments will be served and books by the readers available for sale.

An open mic follows the featured authors and we encourage you to participate. Please prepare no more than five minutes of performance time, about two poems. Sign up when you arrive, or in advance via this online form.

Below, get to know Ona and Dan!

Who is the person in your life (past or present) that shows up most often in your writing?

Ona: My late sister Angie—sometimes as herself, sometimes in fictional form, always as a source of longing.

Dan: I’ve written the most poems about my father, but my identical twin brother Dave, my wife Ona Gritz, and a collection of guide dogs aren’t far behind.

Where is your favorite place to write?

Ona: In my home office.

Dan: In my office (a converted attic) of my 115-year-old house on a cul de sac. It gives the feeling of being slightly removed from the world.

Do you have any consistent pre-writing rituals?

Ona: I make a cup of tea, ensure I have chocolate nearby, and read the work of an author I feel will inspire the project I’m working on. Before all this, I procrastinate for longer than I care to admit.

Dan: Definitely breakfast first with maybe some music or a brief listen to the news, then immediately to my desk without checking email. I used to read before writing, but sometimes the reading was so good, I wasn’t getting to the writing, so have had to save that for afterward.

Who always gets a first read?

Ona: My husband, Dan Simpson.

Dan: When my brother was alive, it was often he, but now it’s Ona.

What is a book you’ve read more than twice (and would read again)?

Ona: Three Things I Know Are True by Betty Culley.

Dan: Ulysses by James Joyce.

What is the most memorable reading you have attended?

Ona: A reading by poet Gary Snyder back in 1981. Listening to him, I could feel my teenage self falling in love with poetry.

Dan: My brother Dave‘s last reading, just months before he died from ALS. It took Dave a superhuman effort to get there from Philadelphia, but I’ve never heard anyone more present, grounded, and connected to his audience during a reading. I’ll always be deeply grateful to Marie Howe, who arranged the reading at NYU and introduced Dave, with such love and appreciation.

• Ona Gritz’s new memoir, Everywhere I Look, won the Readers’ Choice Gold Award and is an Independent Book Review 2024 Must-Read. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Ploughshares, Brevity, and elsewhere. She is the author of two 2024 YA verse novels, The Space You Left Behind, featured in The Children’s Book Council’s Hot Off the Press roundup of anticipated best sellers, and Take a Sad Song.

You can find Ona online at onagritz.com.

• Daniel Simpson’s latest book, Inside the Invisible, won the inaugural Propel Poetry Prize and was nominated for the American Academy of Poets Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. His work has been anthologized in About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times, Welcome to the Resistance: Poetry as Protest, and Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, and has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Cortland Review, and many other journals.

You can learn more and reach Dan at insidetheinvisible.wordpress.com, and on Facebook as Dan Simpson.