Welcome to the second installment in our fall season—please join us for the September edition of The Pegasus Reading Series! This month we feature John Poch, Corey Marks, Loretta Diane Walker, and Clara Bush Vadala. RSVP Here

About us: Pegasus Reading Series was founded and curated by the poets Robert Torres and Sebastian Paramo in 2014. When Torres left in 2015, Courtney Marie joined Sebastian to host & curate the series. In 2016, both poets joined forces to organize and curate Deep Ellum Lit Hop. In 2018, Mag Gabbert joined to co-host.

The mission of Pegasus Reading Series is to bridge together literary communities and writers in Dallas and across the nation.

John Poch is the author six collections of poetry, two of which were published this year: Texases (WordFarm Press) and Between Two Rivers (TTU Press—with photographer Jerod Foster). His work has been published in Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, the Nation, Yale Review, and other journals. He teaches at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

Corey Marks is the author of The Radio Tree (New Issues Press, 2012), winner of the Green Rose Prize, and Renunciation (University of Illinois Press, 2000), a National Poetry Series selection. His poems have appeared in New England Review, The Paris Review, Poetry Northwest, Ploughshares, Southwest Review, The Threepenny Review, TriQuarterly, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Natalie Ornish Prize from the Texas Institute for Letters, and the Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review.

Loretta Diane Walker, a multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, has published four collections of poetry. Her most recent manuscript, Ode to My Mother’s Voice and Other Poems, is forthcoming in 2019 from Lamar Literary University Press. Loretta’s work appears in numerous publications in the US, Canada, UK, and India. In This House won the 2016 Phillis Wheatly Award for Poetry; Word Ghetto won the 2011 Bluelight Press Book Award. Loretta received a BME from Texas Tech University and an MA from the University of Texas Permian Basin. She teaches music at Reagan Magnet School in Odessa, Texas. Naomi Nye states, "Loretta Diane Walker writes with compassionate wisdom and insight. Her poems restore humanity."

Clara Bush Vadala is a poet and veterinarian and a North DFW native. Her poems have appeared in SWWIM, Thimble Literary Review, Harbor Review, and 3Elements Review and have been featured at the Houston Poetry Festival and the Sowell Collection Conference at Texas Tech University. She has one previously published book of poetry, Prairie Smoke: Poems from the Grasslands, and her second book, Beast Invites Me In, is forthcoming in January 2020.