Come listen to local author, Carla Panciera talk about her newest book, Barnflower: A Rhode Island Farm Memoir. Carla will read an excerpt from her book and answer audience questions so have your questions ready! Books will be available to purchase. 

Born in Westerly, RI, Carla Panciera was raised on her family’s dairy farm. She graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a BA in English and has a graduate degree in poetry from Boston University where she studied with George Starbuck and Derek Walcott.

She has published two collections of poetry: One of the Cimalores (Cider Press) and No Day, No Dusk, No Love (Bordighera). Her poetry has appeared in numerous magazines including Poetry, Painted Bride Quarterly, Nimrod, the Carolina Quarterly, and the Los Angeles Review. Poems have also been nominated for three Pushcart Awards. She received the Aghda Ali Scholarship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and has twice presented at the Student Day of Poetry for the Massachusetts Poetry Festival.

Her first collection of short stories, Bewildered, received the 2013 Grace Paley Short Fiction Award from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (Pam Houston, judge) and was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in the fall of 2014. Her short stories have appeared in the New England Review, the Clackamas Review, Slice, and other magazines. Her short story, “The Kind of People Who Look at Art” was chosen by Junot Diaz as a distinguished story in Best American Short Stories for 2017.

A second collection of short stories, Barnflower: A Rhode Island Farm Memoir, will be released in the spring of 2023 by Loom Press, Amesbury, MA.

She received a 2022 Individual Artist Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in numerous journals including The New England Review, Poetry, The Carolina Quarterly, and the Los Angeles Review.

Her blogsite is I Am a Part of All That I Have Met. A high school English teacher, Ms. Panciera lives with her husband, Dennis Donoghue, and their three daughters in Rowley, MA.