BELFAST — Left Bank Books, in downtown Belfast, invites the public to a free talk, Thursday, May 1, at 6:30 p.m., at the bookshop, when poets Andrea Ballou and Pam Alexander celebrate the release of their new books, Other Times, Midnight (Ballou) and Left (Alexander).

Other Times is Ballou’s debut collection and explores how we contend with grief and remorse—with divorce, death, and departures. Her startling and often humorous images rooted in the fields, forests, and domesticity of rural life are juxtaposed with oblique, at times irreverent, adaptations of Celtic and Greek myth and biblical stories.

Ballou holds a PhD from the University of Chicago in Romance Languages and Literatures and an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. She is the recipient of a Tinker Foundation Grant and a National Resource Fellowship. Ballou has taught creative writing and literature at numerous colleges and universities and currently facilitates the Poetry Lab in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Left was the winner of the 2024 Chad Walsh Chapbook Prize from the Beloit Poetry Journal. Alexander is the author of five collections of poetry; Inland won an Iowa Poetry Prize, and Navigable Waterways won the Yale Younger Prize. She has received fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center and the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute and taught creative writing at MIT and Oberlin College for many years. Her work has been set to music for public performances and featured on the websites of National Public Radio and the Academy of American Poets.

Reservations can be made by calling the bookshop (207.338.9009) or emailing: info@leftbankbookshop.com. Ample free parking is available in front of the shop and in an adjacent city lot.