Full-color book cover featuring original artwork—“The Origins”—by Lucy Wales. Book title in rectangular banner, top; deep blue background with white sans serif, capitalized lettering. The words “Poems by Diane R. Wiener” (at the very top) look as if made with an old school label maker, with the effect of appearing to be embossed. The words “Flashes & Specks” (after a white horizontal line) have blue spots in the lettering, as if mottled—possibly like a Crip appaloosa horse. The main scene on the cover is a fantastical world depicting steampunk grasshoppers, slugs, and snails. The slugs are suspended from shells (like hot air balloons) as they travel from a watery planet-orb through the sky to the land below. When they land, the shells connect to their bodies, and they become snails. The grasshoppers, aloft, have top hats and gears; the slugs-to-snails have steam engines on their shells (with accompanying, emergent smoke) and wear monocles. The artwork is multi-media—ink with watercolor. The color palette is a reflective mixture of the environments depicted—blues, greens, grays, and tans, with some creams, ivories, whites, and, indeed, magic

On Saturday, June 26, 2021, at 1:30 p.m. (Eastern), Diane R. Wiener will read from her new poetry chapbook, Flashes & Specks, at the Tioga Arts Council (TAC), in the gallery located at 179 Front Street, in Owego.

The reading can also be accessed on Zoom: https://syracuseuniversity.zoom.us/j/98763044729
Zoom Meeting ID: 987 6304 4729
Automatic captions will be provided on Zoom, with Otter.ai.

About Flashes & Specks 
Flashes & Specks features themes of loss and grief, survival and resilience, family and friendship, equity and justice, Disability and Neuroqueer ecologies, and magic and mysticism.

“Reading Diane Wiener‘s chapbook, one can smell marine air, see birds flying, and feel the reach of trees as they sing and talk. We experience a poet’s ‘cyclical nonlinear mythical time’ with awe at living among each other and nature. Readers will want to return to her sieve of words to savor the love, dreams, and hope these poems catch.” – Clark A. Pomerleau

About the Author
Diane R. Wiener is the author of the poetry collection, The Golem Verses (Nine Mile Press, 2018), and the poetry chapbook, Flashes & Specks (Finishing Line Press, 2021). Her poems also appear in Nine Mile Literary Magazine, Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature, Tammy, Queerly, The South Carolina Review, Welcome to the Resistance: Poetry as Protest, Diagrams Sketched on the Wind, Jason’s Connection, and elsewhere. Her creative nonfiction appears in Stone Canoe, Mollyhouse, and The Abstract Elephant Magazine; flash fiction appears in volumes 2 and 3 of Ordinary Madness. After serving as Guest Editor for Nine Mile Literary Magazine’s Fall 2019 Special Double Issue on Neurodivergent, Disability, Deaf, Mad, and Crip poetics, Diane was appointed Assistant Editor. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature, housed at Syracuse University. Diane has published widely on Disability studies and cultures, Mad pride, pedagogy, social justice, and empowerment, among other subjects. She blogged for the Huffington Post between May 2016 and January 2018. You can visit Diane online at: https://dianerwiener.com/.

Additional Information

Books will be available for purchase and signing on the day of the event.

Tioga Arts Council
179 Front St.
Owego, NY 13827
www.tiogaartscouncil.org
tiogaartscouncil@gmail.com
607.687.0785