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© 2026 The Somerville Times. All rights reserved.
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Somerville artist Stephanie Richardson: explores how the divine and mundane exist together
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Somerville artist Stephanie Richardson writes: “I’m a visual artist and former costume designer. My formal training began in the ’90s when I earned a master’s degree in costume design for theatre from Brandeis, but I stepped away from art to support my family. Over time, I pursued an MBA and built a career in higher ed administration. What brought me back to making art was the need to process and respond to this ever-darkening political moment. Making art – whether protest posters or paintings – became essential to my own resilience. Now, I’m in what I’d call my creative renaissance, finally with the time and energy to do the work I’ve always wanted to do.”
November 11
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Liam Almond writes, “I am a Junior Film Production major at Endicott College, with an interest in poetry.”
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A Handpicked Poem presented by Michael Steffen
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A Handpicked Poem presented by Off the Shelf Correspondent Michael Steffen.
By Lloyd Schwartz, from the book Artur Schnabel and Joseph Szigeti Play Mozart at the Frick Collection (April 4, 1948) and Other Poems, published by Arrowsmith, 2026
November 4
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Keith Tornheim has six books of poetry, Fireflies: Poems of Love and Family; I Am Lilith, Dancer on the Wind; Spoiled Fruit: Adam and Eve in Eden and Beyond; Spirit Boat: Poems of Crossing Over; Can You Say Kaddish for the Living?; The Sacrifice of Isaac. His poems have appeared in Ibbetson Street, The Somerville Times, Boston Literary Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review and Poetica.
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Somerville’s Jessa Piaia channels Isabella Stewart Gardner for her garden projects
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I recently caught up with Jessa Piaia about her Isabella Stewart Gardner garden project in Somerville.
Doug Holder: How has Somerville been for you as a creative person?
October 28
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Bridgit Brown is a professor at Roxbury Community College. She has an upcoming poetry collection, Songs Beside A River That Refuses to Forget, to be released by the Ibbetson Street Press in December, 2026.
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New England Poets in new anthology ‘Wag the Dog: Poems of Politics and Social Justice’
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In Main St Rag’s blistering poetry anthology, Wag the Dog: Poems of Politics and Social Justice, New England voices contribute to a national chorus. The collection’s greatest strength is the range of ways its poets experience political life. Along the way, they confront encroaching authoritarianism, the military-industrial complex, the oligarchy and income inequality, and the erosion of access to health care, among other issues. The poems also display a warm immediacy; they move between public events and inner voices – through kitchens, medical appointments, offices, gardens, American history and personal memory. Some demand an honest appraisal of what one citizen’s vote can do in the face of this national peril, while others hint that saplings will live to outgrow the pines and oaks with their ominous institutional shadows.
October 21
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Susan Isla Tepper has been a writer for twenty-plus years and is the author of fourteen published books of fiction and poetry, and seven stage plays. She writes in all genres, with stories, poems, interviews, essays, and opinion columns published extensively worldwide. CLANDESTINE, her stage play about food obsessions and disconnect in a long-term marriage, will go up for a full run in a red barn theatre, off, off, bdwy. Her latest book is a novella titled Girl Upside Down, from Wilderness House Press.
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Nirmal Raja: A Somerville artist who archives beloved objects from immigrants
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Recently, I caught up with Somerville artist Nirmal Raja to talk about a project she is working on that will be presented by the Somerville Museum in January.
October 14
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Lee Varon is a social worker and writer. Her forthcoming co-authored chapbook MS Meets Parkinson’s will be published in 2027.
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A Handpicked Poem
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Presented by Off the Shelf Correspondent Michael Steffen
….from Rattle Fall 2026 (presented online 23 September 2026)
Psalm 131
by George David Clark
October 7
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Christopher Cavallo is a writer living and working in the Merrimack Valley region of Massachusetts. He and his wife Amy make their home in Haverhill, MA, sharing all their love with two gorgeous and adopted “faun” greyhounds, Phoebe and Caliope. While poetry is his preferred genre of writing, Chris has interest in writing in the categories of both short fiction as well as screenplay.
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Interview with author Joyce Wilson
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Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing New England Poetry Club advisory board member Joyce Wilson about her new book of poetry, The Morning After Burns Night.
September 30
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Somerville poet Angelo D’Amato has earned MFAs in fiction and poetry from Lesley University and Albertus Magnus College, respectively. His Doctor (Who) is Peter Capaldi.
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Counting Bricks Poems by Gary Metras
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Review by Dennis Daly
Mnemonic sentiment, boiled down to its essential, tear-charged elements, cannot be ignored. It drives human nature. It mobilizes the emotions. It guides our unruly impulses toward goodness. Poets who completely excise sentimentality from their art do so at their own peril. Thankfully, Gary Metras is not one of those poets.
September 23
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Deborah Leipziger is an author, poet, and advisor on sustainability. Born in Brazil, Ms. Leipziger is the author of several books on sustainability and human rights. Her second collection of poems, Tell Me, was published in 2026 by Lily Poetry Review Books. Her work appears in numerous anthologies, including The Nature of our Times and Tree Lines: 21st Century American Poems. Her poems have been published in ten countries in such magazines as Revista Cardenal, Inkwell, The Bombay Literary Magazine, On the Seawall, and Salamander.
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Review of ‘Hope’ by BRM Evett
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Review by Lo Galluccio
For those of you who loved the Netflix series The Last of Us, which took place in the middle of the 22nd century after a fungal pandemic had destroyed the government and devastated the country with tribal divisions and a band of rabid infected, called “Clickers,” striking the healthy survivors, you will want to read BRM’s novel, Hope, a sequel to his first novel, Joy.
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