If you read this blog and live in northeast, Pennsylvania, you should come out to the New Visions Writers Showcase taking place this Saturday at 7 p.m. at New Visions Studio Gallery, 201 Vine Street in Scranton.  This month’s readers include Chicago-based fiction writer Eugene Cross, poets Richard Aston and Scott Thomas, crime fiction writer Lauren Stahl, and Keystone College students Lisbeth Herr Gelatt and Jennifer Matarese. Below you can find bios of each reader. The reading is free, and authors will have books for sale.

Eugene Cross is the author of the short story collection Fires of Our Choosing, which was long listened for the Frank O’Connor International Short story Award. He was born and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania and received an M.F.A. from The University of Pittsburgh. His stories have appeared in Narrative Magazine (which named him one of “20 Best New Writers” and his story “Harvesters” a “Top Five Story of 2009-2010”), American Short Fiction, Story Quarterly, TriQuarterly, and Callaloo, among other publications.

His work was also listed among the 2010 Best American Short Stories’ 100 Distinguished Stories. He is the recipient of scholarships from the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, as well as a fellowship from the 2012 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He is the winner of the 2009 Dzanc Prize for Excellence in Literary Fiction and Community Service.

Scott Thomas has a B.A. in Literature from Bard College, a M.S. in Library Science from Columbia University, and a M.A. in English from the University of Scranton. He is currently employed as a librarian, specifically, Head of Information Technologies & Technical Services at the Scranton Public Library. His poems have appeared in Mankato Poetry Review, The Kentucky Poetry Review, Sulphur River Literary Review, Poem, Stirring: A Literary Collection, and other journals. Currently, he resides in Dunmore with his family.

Lisbeth Herr Gelatt is a student at Keystone College and was born in Los Angeles, but eventually moved to Pennsylvania to raise a family. Currently, she works for Wayne Country Transportation and is now the mother of three grown women, including a veteran of the Iraq war. Her most recent writing credits include Keystone College’s The Plume Literary Magazine, CowboyPoetry.com, and PANK. She is working on at least one urban fantasy novel, and she hopes to complete a chapbook of poems in the near future.

Jennifer Matarese is also a student at Keystone College and the author of the novel Heroine Addiction.

Richard  Aston has been a member of Mulberry Poets and Writers Association for over 30 years and has been active in the Wilkes-Barre /Scranton poetry scene generally. He has coordinated all of the poetry contests held by the Mulberry Poets. He has been publishing poetry for over 30 years, and has had his collection Valley Voices published by Foothills Publishing. He has also published technical textbooks and numerous professional engineering papers. He has three children and seven grandchildren.

A former prosecutor in Pennsylvania, Lauren Stahl is an avid reader and writer of the crime fiction genre. She is a graduate of Pennsylvania State Dickinson School of Law and received her M.F.A. from Wilkes University. Lauren’s first novel, Deadly Conviction, is currently represented by Union Literary in New York with the hopes of reaching publication. She is hard at work on her second novel, The Bottom Line.