Shakespeare & Co. is pleased to host the Eve of the Dead poetry readings on Thursday, October 30, at 5:30 pm. The evening will feature readings by local poets Zan Bockes, Maggie Brown, Martha Elizabeth, Sheryl Noethe, and Deb Trowbridge. This event is free and open to the public.

Author Biographies:
Zan Bockes earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. Her fiction, nonfiction and poetry have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The Sun, SLAB and Phantasmagoria, with four nominations for a Pushcart Prize. Her first collection of poetry, Caught in Passing, was published in 2013. Another collection, Alibi for Stolen Light, came out in 2018. Her book of short fiction, From Here, is forthcoming in 2026. She thrives in Missoula with two orange cats, supporting them by cleaning houses as Residential Sanitation Specialist.

Maggie Brown was born in Missoula, though she has also lived in California, Nevada, Arkansas, Colorado, Great Britain, and Washington. Her poems, short stories, and movie and book reviews have been published in McCall’s, The Seattle Times, Borrowed Times, CutBank, The Floating Poetry Gallery, Pacific Magazine, and various literary magazines. Two of her plays were produced and performed in regional theaters. At last count she had nine grandchildren and eight great grandchildren.

Martha Elizabeth has been a writer and artist in Missoula for 36 years, since she began her MFA in Creative Writing at UM, with ceramics as her outside area. She has a BA in Drama from University of Virginia and an interdisciplinary MA from University of North Texas. She was in poetry and screenwriting workshops at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and she was part of the 20-plus years of the Colony, the former annual script conference at UM.

Her awards include a Hugo scholarship and a Bertha Morton Fellowship at UM, a Dobie Paisano Fellowship in Texas, a Writers Voice fellowship in Billings, and the final Montana Arts Council First Book Award for her poetry collection, The Return of Pleasure. She has 3 chapbooks, 2 with her marbling faces on the cover. About 50 of her poems and stories have been in journals and anthologies, including The Georgia Review and the New England Review. 

Her marbling faces were in the 2002 International Marblers Gathering Exhibition, and her marbling landscapes were in shows at Les Yeux du Monde Gallery in Charlottesville, VA. She has had many solo shows through the years at various Missoula venues, including Noteworthy Paper and the former Downtown Dance Collective.

She is the widow of the Missoula writer Jim Crumley.

Sheryl Noethe founded the Missoula Writing Collaborative in 1994. She is currently both Artistic Director and writer-in-residence. Sheryl is also the poetry editor for High Desert Journal. She is co-author of the teaching text Poetry Everywhere, now in its third printing. A recipient of a Montana Arts Council Fellowship, she also has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the CutBank Hugo Prize in Poetry, the Emerging Voices Award from New Rivers Press, a McKnight Prize for Literature, and an American Academy of Poetry Award, as well as an honorable mention for the Pushcart Prize. She is a recipient of a 2004 Cultural Achievement Award from the Missoula Cultural Council for her work in Missoula schools. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals, and she has published four collections of poetry: The Descent of Heaven Over the Lake (New Rivers Press, 1984); The Ghost Openings (Grace Court Press, 2000), which won a Northwest Publisher’s Best Book Award; As Is (Lost Horse Press, 2009); and her latest collection, Grey Dog Big Sky (FootHills Publishing, 2013). In 2011 Sheryl became Montana’s fourth Poet Laureate, an honor she held until 2013, and was awarded the Arts Innovation Award for 2022 by the Montana Arts Council.

Deborah Trowbridge hails originally from Massachusetts, and Missoula has been her home since 2005. Her stories can be read in Thin Air Magazine Online, The Ekphrastic Review, American Writers, Common Ground Review and 50-Word Stories. Her work has been archived in the Potato Soup Review and deComp Literary Magazine. She loves to dance and is a proud member and line dance performer with the Missoula Senior Center’s Boot-Scooters led by the intrepid and amazing Marion Yates.