Author Event: Water Marks by Mary Anna Scenga Kruch

Join us for a special event with Mary Anna Scenga Kruch, author of Water Mark. This event is free, but we appreciate your RSVP below so we can plan for your attendance.

'All things that flow—time, music, water, life—leave us in the end, and this profoundly moving collection of poems asks: “…who will hold / the substance of their songs?” Luckily, it also answers that question: “Each dawn and dusk / places its bet on / poets.” And I’ve got my money on this poet, whose songs mark not only the sorrows and losses: a beloved sister, parents, a faith—but also life’s profound gifts: riverside flowers, constellations, a gorgeous homeland—all life’s love letters, addressed to us. Read this book with joy and gratitude.' —Robert Fanning, author of Severance, Our Sudden Museum, American Prophet and The Seed Thieves

'The wise and graceful poems that Mary Anna Scenga Kruch gives us in this collection call us to healing and wholeness. They speak of movement and connection, celebrate our ties to family long ago and far away, and to the rivers, creatures, and stars that soothe and guide us. Everything abides in relationship here. Everything waltzes as one.' —Jan Shoemaker, author of Slow Learner, Flesh and Stones, and The Reliquary Earth

'Mary Anna Scenga Kruch’s powerful collection of verse soars across the water to her father’s homeland. We are invited to hear, see, and glide along with the loss of a loved one, the struggles with faith, and a shared love of family. Within the pages of Water Marks, both author and audience revisit the defining moments of our past through Mary Anna’s well-crafted words and powerful images with water.' —Alan Harris, author of Hospice Conversations and Fall Ball

Water Marks is inspired by the seas and ocean between here and her fatherland in Pofi, Italy; the lakes, streams, rivers, creeks, and marshes on her journey from childhood into elderhood; a lost sister and the significance of letter writing, an often-permanent mark. In Water Marks, the author invites readers to hear, see, and glide along with the loss of a loved one, the struggles with faith, and a shared love of family. Readers may revisit the defining moments of their pasts through Mary Anna’s words and sensory images of paper, ink, water, and what each considers important enough to have marked their lives.

Mary Anna Scenga is career educator, writer, and photographer who celebrates the natural world, Italian ancestry, and social justice in her writing. She has published a poetry chapbook, We Draw Breath from the Same Sky (2019), a full-length collection, Grace Notes: A Memoir in Poetry & Prose (2021), and a new full-length book, Water Marks (2024). Recent poetry appears in Meat for Tea, Walloon Writers Review, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. Mary Anna is on the editorial board of The Awakenings Review, a journal representing work by poets, artists, and writers living with mental illness.

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