CHESTERTOWN, MD—Poets Michelle Chan Brown and Ryan Teitman, and local bluegrass band Chester River Runoff headline the first of three Summer Poetry Salons at the Rose O’Neill Literary House at Washington College. On, Tuesday, May 28 at 4:30 p.m., Brown, Teitman, and Chester River Runoff come together on the enclosed porch of the Literary House for an evening of poetry and music. This event is free and open to the public. 

Michelle Chan Brown’s Double Agent was the winner of the 2012 Kore First Book Award, judged by Bhanu Kapil. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Anti, Cimarron Review, Linebreak, The Missouri Review, Quarterly West, Sycamore Review, Witness, and others. 

A Kundiman fellow, Brown received her MFA from the University of Michigan, where she was also a Rackham Fellow. She has received scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, Wesleyan Writers’ Conference. Her chapbook, The Clever Decoys, is available from LATR Editions. She lives with her husband, the musician Paul Erik Lipp, in Washington DC, where she teaches, writes, edits Drunken Boat, and co-curates the Café Muse literary series. 

Ryan Teitman is the author of Litany for the City, selected by Jane Hirshfield for the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize and published by BOA Editions. He received an MA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University, and his poems have appeared in Ninth Letter, Sycamore Review, The Southern Review, and other journals. He was formerly a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University and is currently the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College. 

Chester River Runoff is an original bluegrass band from Maryland’s Eastern Shore.  Their honest, unaffected sound features big harmonies, insightful songwriting, and tight instrumental work, and they preserve in their live shows the warm spirit and humor of friends who first started playing together just to learn their instruments. 

The Literary House’s second Summer Poetry Salon is scheduled for Tuesday, June 25 at 4:30 p.m. and will feature poet and 2013 Cave Canem Fellow Yona Harvey, poet Steve Kistulentz, and local musical duo Sleeper Cell. 

The third and final Summer Poetry Salon will be Tuesday, July 23 at 4:30 p.m., featuring poets Sarah Arvio and Elana Bell, accompanied by a classical violin duet.