CHESTERTOWN — The Bookplate is concluding its 2025 season of author events with poetry readings from “The Word Girls” on Sunday, Dec. 14 when Meredith Davies Hadaway, Erin Murphy and Amanda Newell will read from their most recent books at 2 p.m. at the bookstore located at 112 S. Cross St. in downtown Chestertown.
The award-winning poets also will sign copies of their books.
The event is free and open to the public. Reservations are recommended.
For more information or to reserve your seat, call The Bookplate at 410-778-4167 or email contact@thebookplate.net.
Hadaway, Murphy and Newell, aka “The Word Girls,” share connections to Chestertown and Washington College as alumni and faculty/staff, former and current.
They have been lauded for poems that deal with environmental and social issues with humor, sensitivity and poignancy that appeal to a wide readership.
Hadaway is the author of five books of poetry including “Small Craft Warning,” a collaboration with artist Marcy Dunn Ramsey.
Her latest collection, “Among the Many Disappearing Things,” was issued in 2024 from Grayson Books.
Her previous collection, “At the Narrows,” was winner of the Delmarva Book Prize.
Hadaway, who holds a Master of Fine Arts from Vermont College of Fine Arts, is the recipient of a Maryland Individual Artist Award and fellowships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She is currently the Sophie Kerr Poet-in-Residence at Washington College.
Murphy is a professor of English at Penn State Altoona and the poet laureate of Blair County, Pennsylvania.
She is the author or editor of 15 books, most recently “Human Resources” (published in June 2025) and “Fluent in Blue,” winner of the 2025 American Book Fest Best Book Award in Poetry.
Her work appears in The Best of Brevity, Best Microfiction, Best of the Net and anthologies from Random House, Bloomsbury and other presses.
Murphy, a graduate of Washington College and UMass Amherst, has been inducted into the Blair County Arts Hall of Fame.
Newell is the author of “Postmortem Say” (Červená Barva 2024) and “I Will Pass Even to Acheron,” a winner of Rattle’s 2021 chapbook prize.
Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, Bellevue Literary Review, Cimarron Review, On The Seawall and elsewhere.
A graduate of Warren Wilson’s MFA program, she has received scholarships or fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The Frost Place and The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is an associate editor at Plume.
