Big Bend Poets & Writers at Barnes & Noble Books

Mary Jane Ryals, poet, novelist, educator, inveterate traveler, and long-time Floridian and resident of Leon County will be the guest poet and speaker at Big Bend Poets & Writer’ September monthly meeting. Mary Jane is the author of the award winning book Cookie & Me, Cutting Loose in Paradise (A Panther LaRue Mystery), The Moving Waters, and A Messy Job I Never Did See A Girl Do.

The meeting and poetry reading will begin at 7 P.M., Tuesday, September 10, at Barnes & Noble Books, Centre of Tallahassee, 2415 N Monroe Street, Tallahassee, FL 32303

Mary Jane Ryals has lived near the coast of Florida and northern Gulf of Mexico for most of her life. She currently lives in the woods of eastern Leon County with her spouse, the writer Michael Trammell.  She teaches for Florida State University’s International Programs in the summers in Spain, London and Italy. She has been the Poet Laureate of the Big Bend of Florida from 2009 through 2012.

Ryals won a Florida Book Award for her novel Cookie & Me, as well as the Yellow Jacket Press Chapbook Contest for Florida Poets with Music in Arabic.  She has published five other books and several poetry chapbooks.

In other lives, she has worked as a journalist, bartender and pharmacy technician.