Collaboration
© Heather Evans Smith
MARJORIE MADDOX is the Poetry Moment host for WPSU-FM, assistant editor of Presence, and Professor Emerita of English at Commonwealth University. She is the author of seventeen poetry collections, including How Can I Look It Up When I Don’t Know How It’s Spelled? (Kelsay Books), Seeing Things (Wildhouse), and the ekphrastic collaborations Small Earthly Space and In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind.
Maddox has also published a story collection, four children’s books, and the anthologies Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and Keystone Poetry (co-edited with Jerry Wemple, PSU Press). Her poetry collection Hover Here and middle-grade biography A Man Named Branch: The True Story of Baseball’s Great Experiment are forthcoming.
www.marjoriemaddox.com
KAREN ELIAS is an artist and activist whose work in photography and collage examines the beauty and fragility of the natural world while grappling with life on a troubled planet. Her award-winning work has appeared in numerous publications and is held in private collections and exhibited in galleries.
Elias is also a writer and playwright. Her ekphrastic collaborations with poet Marjorie Maddox, Heart Speaks and Is Spoken For (2022) and Small Earthly Space (2025), were published by Shanti Arts. Several of her plays have been produced in the United States and internationally, with two included in the anthologies The Future Is Not Fixed and All Good Things Must Begin. In addition, she collaborated as libretist with composer Akshaya Avril Tucker on the musical composition Night Fire, which premiered in April 2024 in Salt Lake City with the NOVA Chamber Music Series.
