WRITE TO THE HEART: A BENEFIT READING

of award-winning and new work by acclaimed writer

Bruce Sweet

Sunday, October 27, 2002, 3:00pm Verb Café [map] Writers & Books 740 University Avenue Rochester, NY 14607 (585) 473-2590 $5 "Writers & Books" members, $10 non-members. Reception and refreshments to follow.
Connie Deming, Rochester singer and songwriter, will perform during the reception. Broadsides of "So It Was, So It Will Be" signed by the author will be available.

This benefit reading for the Rochester Heart Institute is in thanks for their superb help in recovering Sweet's health through quadruple bypass surgery last Halloween and three months of physical rehabilitation. This reading includes recently published award winning work -- poetry: "Moose in Winter," "Neighbor" and "Primordial Honeying"; prose excerpts from "Artie," "Fat Chance and Warren-Bird" and "The Essential Existential Lunch" -- and new work which focuses on the heart: "Prayer After Surgery," "One Thing I Like About Jesus" and "On Repairing an Old Church Organ."Entire proceeds for the reading donated to the Rochester Heart Institute.

Bruce Sweet is an award-winning poet, playwright, essayist, critic and writer of stories who has taught for Writers & Books, the Aesthetic Education Institute, Young Audiences, the Jewish Community Center, the University of Rochester, GeVa Theatre, SUNY Brockport and Saint John Fisher College from which he retired as Writer-in-Residence in 1999. His work has appeared in such texts as "Blueline," "Commonweal," "English Journal," Gannett newspapers, "Hazmat," "Lake Affect," "Milkweed Editions: Contemporary Poems About Music," "Minnesota Monthly," "Napalm Health Spa," "Reminisce," "Yankee," "Your Cat" and in four chapbooks. "This Is A Good Thing," a volume of poems, is slated for 2003 publication. Sweet's poetry spot, "What's The Word?" celebrating local, national and international writers, begins its eighth broadcast year on Rochester's NPR affiliate, WXXI Classical 91.5 and 90.3 FM. He lives with his wife, Madeleine Riordan, and six cats in the village of Charlotte, Rochester, NY, where he is often visited by seven children and five grandchildren.