Gray Hair Reading Series

Elaine Rollwagen Chamberlain is the author of Pictures from the Bee House (White Pine Press, 1978) and is a former area coordinator of the New York State Poets in the Schools program. She is one of the early original editors of Earth's Daughters Magazine. She taught Creative Writing and Composition at Erie Community College. She began a second career in nursing, partially due to her experiences as a volunteer in a Mayan hospital in southern Mexico, which later evolved into mental health work. She spent the last twenty years of her career as a nurse counselor. Now retired, she has traveled to Latin America, India, and Nepal. According to poet Helen Conkling, Chamberlain's poems "about people—their exuberance, discoveries, losses, courage—" are delivered with "precise, yet full-blooded, imagery," revealing information with delicious nuances. Her more recent readings have been for the Dinner & Poetry Series at the Woodlawn Diner, Dog Ears Fourth Friday Series, and Circleformance at Meridian West Art Gallery.

Paula Wachowiak has been published in Artifacts, The Buffalo News, and Artvoice. Her works have also been featured on local television public arts programming. In addition, she has written for other WNY weekly newspapers: The Buffalo Examiner has featured her food and culture articles, while Buffalo Beat published "Poets Corner," a collection of bios of local poets. "Convolutions with Greg Sterlace" featured photos and commentary by Wachowiak, along with an interview with Sterlace. Wachowiak worked with No Budget Films, a Buffalo based independent film company that more recently completed their fourth production, The Big Mess (an accidental documentary about the making of Bang, Bang, Bang, itself a friendly little romp through murder and organized crime with a twist in that the women are in charge), which she co-wrote with Sterlace.

Earth's Daughters Magazine—a feminist literary periodical published in Buffalo by a multi-generational collective editorial board comprising Kastle Brill, Jennifer Campbell, Joyce Kessel, Janna Willoughby-Lohr, and ryki zuckerman—is in its 42nd year. The Gray Hair Reading Series at Hallwalls is in its 8th season.