Join authors Christine Gelineau and Jen DeGregorio at the Barnes & Noble in Vestal, Sunday, June 8, from 12-3pm to celebrate their new books. Christine’s latest book, Almanac: A Murmuration, is a nature memoir that takes stock of what it means to care for a farm, a nation, a planet, a home, and how the stories we tell impact our lives. Jen’s debut poetry collection, What to Wear Out,  follows a woman reassessing her life’s trajectory—romantic encounters, family dynamics, and professional choices—in the midst of the Covid-19 lockdown and an uncertain future.

About ALMANAC:  “In ALMANAC, bewildered vixens; iced-in alligators; newborn foals; and prose poems evoking the natural world mix with national origin stories; gardening techniques learned from the Haudenosaunee; resilience in the face of Long COVID and brain surgery; urban vs. rural perspectives on water rights and wind turbine siting; and how the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, about one another, and about the planet we all share shapes our own identities, our communities, and our attitudes and actions towards the environment. Framed by the seasons, ALMANAC speaks to these vital conversations about what it can mean to be human in ways that are lyrical, practical, spiritual, and life-affirming.”

About What to Wear Out: “Jen DeGregorio’s debut full-length poetry collection, What to Wear Out, witnesses a woman chafing at the seams of her life. From an ‘eager to please’ youth hemmed in by white femininity, patriarchy, and consumerism to a mid-life urge to shed these constraints, the speaker of this intricately woven collection tangles with family dynamics, romantic relationships, social class, and a planet wracked by environmental and political crises. Framed by a sequence of poems about the Covid-19 pandemic, What to Wear Out records a personal reckoning, the quest to fashion an authentic self amid ‘the shared / emergency of the world.'”

Christine Gelineau grew up on quarter-acre lots in New England but, fresh out of college, she moved with her new husband to a 120-acre farm in upstate New York  (Windsor) to raise Morgan horses and write poetry. Seventeen years into midwifing foals, tending to a large organic garden, and starting their own family, Christine returned to academia, earned her doctorate, and added teaching to her other activities. She has authored multiple poetry collections and is the former director of the Creative Writing Program at Binghamton University.

Jen DeGregorio’s writing has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Literary Hub, Paterson Literary Review, Poets & Writers Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Spoon River Poetry Review, Third Coast, Tupelo Quarterly, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She is the associate director of the Creative Writing Program at Binghamton University. A former senior editor of Poets & Writers, she holds a PhD in English from Binghamton and an MFA in creative writing from Hunter College (CUNY).