Poet, memoirist, and writer Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, a Liberian civil war survivor, will speak at the Nittany Valley Writers’ Network meeting on Tuesday, November 10 in the Schlow Library Community Room, 211 S. Allen St., State College. Doors open at 6:00 pm and the meeting begins at 6:30.

Wesley will present “Finding Poetry, Finding Healing During a Time of Chaos and Pain,” an interactive reading which will include her writing process, her poetics, and what she knows to be important about writing in general, and poetry in particular. She will also be signing books.

She is a professor of English at Penn State Altoona. Her poems and memoir articles have appeared in many publications, including Harvard Review, Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, and The New York Times Magazine. Her newest book, “Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: Collected Poems, 1998-2020,” was a Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 collections of poetry for Spring 2026. Wesley’s awards include a Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, a Levinson Prize from Poetry Foundation, and a Edward Stanley Prize from Prairie Schooner. For more information, visit patriciajabbehwesley.com.

The event is free and open to the public. The Nittany Valley Writers' Network is a supportive community linking local writers of all genres and levels of experience. For more information, contact nvwn-leadership-committee@googlegroups.com.