Community Initiatives
Our annual Susquehanna Valley Voices reading presents two writers based in (or otherwise connected to) the greater Susquehanna Valley, highlighting the rich literary culture of our local area. To underscore the community nature of this series, the SVV reading takes place in an off-campus venue. This year's SVV reading will feature poet Le Hinton of Lancaster and fiction-writer Sarah Reish Desmond, a Lewisburg native who now resides in Massachusetts. The SVV reading will take place on Dec. 1 at the Campus Theatre in Lewisburg.
Now entering its third year, the Center's National Poetry Month Project, devised and administered by Publicity & Outreach Manager Jessica Ram, brings a cadre of Stadler Center staff members and Bucknell students to Lewisburg Area School District classrooms to teach lessons in writing poetry during the month of April. With the help of our LASD partners, the program reaches virtually every district classroom in which English is taught. The National Poetry Month Project culminates in a Community Poetry Reading in Bucknell Hall, for which one student from each grade is selected to read a poem aloud.
Other recent community-centered activities include co-sponsorship of the Lewisburg Poet Laureate Program, an initiative of local nonprofit Lewisburg Neighborhoods; maintenance of the Bucknell Poetry Path in downtown Lewisburg and the Linntown Intermediate School Poetry Path; nature-writing workshops for children; collaboration with the Lewisburg Arts Council to bring poetry to Lewisburg's annual Celebration of the Arts; a workshop for the incarcerated at SCI Muncy, a local correctional facility; and contributions to WPSU's statewide student poetry contest and regional Poetry Out Loud competitions.
The Stadler Center is grateful to the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and donors for funding that makes our community outreach programs possible.
"From interactive partnerships with local schools to regional-focused readings, we continue to find ways to deliver on our mission to create a literary arts community for wide and varied audiences."
— Joe Scapellato, Director, Stadler Center