Hillary Leftwich will read from her new book, Saint Dymphna's Playbook. Special guests Toni Oswald, Sarah Elizabeth Schantz, and Lauren Samblanet.
“Saint Dymphna's Playbook is a mixed-genre, hybrid collection speaks on themes involving violence against women, the male gaze, and SA. Although I wrote it over four years ago, the themes are heavily present within society today. Some say it’s perfect timing to release this book now, but this doesn’t make me feel better. I wish moving into 2025 we had more rights, not less.”
— HL
Hillary Leftwich is a multi-media writer and the author of Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock (Agape Editions, 2023), Aura (Future Tense Books, 2022), and Saint Dymphna’s Playbook (Limit Zero/University of Hell Press 2025). She teaches creative writing, business writing, environmental writing and environmental storytelling at several universities, writing organizations, and nonprofits for adults, previously incarcerated and hospitalized youth, and unhoused populations. She centers her writing around themes of class struggle, the impact of disease, ritual, and the supernatural. On the outskirts of the writing world, she is a professional Tarot reader and death worker. https://hillaryleftwich.substack.com/
Toni Oswald is a writer, musician/singer, actress, and visual artist who has performed and shown her work across the Unites States and Europe. She has released four albums under the altar ego The Diary of Ic Explura & collaborated musically with Max Davies, Anne Waldman, John Frusciante, Josh Klinghoffer, Cecilia Vicuña, Lydia Lunch, and many others. Her writing publications include The Oyez Review, Bombay Gin, Heroes are Gang Leaders Giantology, The Tattered Press, Zani UK, HOAX & Shame Radian, and she is a core member of the art group, The Wilds. As an actress some of her credits indie Deadwood, Jackpot, Waiting for Iggy, the upcoming Love Luna, and many more, She is currently working on a novel about a girl clown set in the 1950s entitled The Gorgeous Funeral, as well as a collection of short stories set in Los Angeles called Dying on the Vine. Her book Sirens, was released by Gesture Press in 2020. She likes gold teeth, cats, and trees, and lives with her husband Max, and their cats Kiki Pamplemousse Fontaine and Charlie Chaplin in Boulder, Colorado. https://www.gesturepressandjournal.com/press/p/sirens-toni-oswald
Sarah Elizabeth Schantz is a writer living alone on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado in a rambling Victorian-era farmhouse where she is surrounded by century-old cottonwoods, open sky, coyote, and ghosts. Her first novel Fig debuted from Simon & Schuster and was selected by NPR as A Best Read of the Year before winning a Colorado Book Award. Her short stories, and the occasional lyric essay or poem, have been published in literary journals such as Midwestern Gothic, Hunger Mountain, Third Coast, The Los Angeles Review, and many others. She is faculty at Lighthouse Writers Workshop where she is one of the mentors for the Post-Grad Book Project and won the 2022 Beacon Award for Excellence in Teaching. She adjuncts for the MFA program at Naropa University and teaches for (W)rites of Passage, a divinatory poetics space she has owned and operated since 2014. She is currently working on two novels and one collection of short stories as well as a book on craft. https://www.sarahelizabethschantz.org/
lauren samblanet (they/she) is a hybrid writer who cross-pollinates with other forms of making & other makers of forms. she enjoys making interdisciplinary work utilizing performance, sound, video, visual art and writing. they are disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, gender fluid, and queer. she received her mfa from temple university, and currently resides in colorado. punctum books published her first book, like a dog, in 2024. some of their publications include: a shadow map: an anthology by survivors of sexual assault, FENCE, just femme and dandy, dreginald, entropy, bedfellows, and the tiny. lauren is a teacher and guide, offering workshops, creative process support, and creative consulting for individuals and collaborators through their passion project, reinventing creative process. https://laurensamblanet.com/
$5.00 Suggested donation, no one turned away for lack of funds