WKCTC's Amelia Martens Featured Reader for Louisville Literary Arts Series

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PADUCAH, KY (05/24/2018) West Kentucky Community and Technical College instructor Amelia Martens was recently invited to be a featured reader in Louisville Literary Arts' InKY Reading Series, the longest running independent reading series in Louisville that has connected writers and readers since 2004.

Martens, a Paducah resident and first-year experience instructor at WKCTC, was joined by fiction writer and fellow Kentuckian, Leesa Cross-Smith in the reading that was held in Louisville's The Bard's Town Restaurant earlier in May.

"I appreciate the work Louisville Literary Arts engages in through the InKY Readings Series, the InKY Workshops, and their annual Writer's Block Festival, to provide literary opportunities to a population that extends far beyond the city of Louisville," said Martens. "I've long admired the InKY Reading Series and I'm honored to have been invited to read."

Martens is the author of The Spoons in the Grass are There to Dig a Moat, a book of prose poems that was selected by Sarabande Books for the 2014 Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature. She is also the author of three published chapbooks: Purgatory, Clatter and A Series of Faults. Her new chapbook, Ursa Minor, is forthcoming from Elsewhere Magazine later this year.

Her work has earned support from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the Kentucky Arts Council and Rivendell Writers' Colony. A co-founder of the Rivertown Reading Series and recent Pushcart nominee, Martens was awarded a 2016 Artist Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and Emerging Artist Grant from the Kentucky Arts Council in 2011. Martens also currently serves as the associate literary editor for West Kentucky Community and Technical College's Exit 7: A Journal of Literature and Art.

She received both a Master in Fine Arts degree in creative writing and an Master in Science degree in literacy, culture, and language education from Indiana University.

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West Kentucky Community and Technical College (WKCTC) has been recognized four consecutive times by The Aspen Institute as an Aspen Prize Top 10 Community College and twice as a Finalist with Distinction for providing students with strongjob training and continuing higher education opportunity, for achieving high completion and transfer rates, and for providing strong employment results for its graduates.