Join us for an inspiring evening of poetry and art with poet Leanna Petronella and artist Joy Wilson.

Joy Wilson is a large scale, narrative artist who lives and works in Columbia with her partner and their two children. A native of Kentucky, but most recently a trans- plant from Chicago, her oil paintings weave sculptural stories of still-life imagery of nature and flowers to tell stories of memory and time.

Joy spent over a decade working in commercial architecture and design before returning to her passion for art when she managed the former Gallery M at Melwood Art Center in Louisville, Kentucky. She attended Indiana University Southeast where her early work was recognized with various awards. Last year, her journey was featured in the Chicago Tribune as part of a series highlighting the evolution of gender and sexual identity through artists’ relationships with their younger selves. Joy has a studio at Orr Street Studios, and is represented by Sager Braudis Gallery in Columbia. Her art will be displayed in an October show at Sager Braudis.

LEANNA PETRONELLA
Leanna Petronella's debut poetry collection, The Imaginary Age, won the 2018 Pleiades Press Editors Prize. Her poetry appears in Beloit Poetry Journal, Third Coast, Birmingham Poetry Review, CutBank, Quarterly West, ElevenEleven, and other publications. She holds a PhD in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri and an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. She lives in Austin, Texas.