Open Mic Night–Featuring Galen Warden, Author of I Believe You, Also Reading for Poet James Strazza

The Pat Conroy Literary Center’s monthly Open Mic Night will be held at the Conroy Center (601 Bladen St.) on Thursday, April 10, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. For National Poetry Month, Open Mic Night will feature poet and memoirist Galen Warden, author of I Believe You: When Doctor’s Wont, A Mother Must. She will also be reading on behalf of her son, James Strazza, author of Unsung: Poems Written in the Dark. Open Mic will also include short readings of 3 to 5 minutes each by other writers in many genres.

Interested in reading as part of Open Mic? Let us know at contact@patconroyliterarycenter.org.

About Our Featured Authors
Galen Warden has enjoyed poetry since childhood, drawing from the joyful, transcendent, and most difficult moments of her life. From adolescence through motherhood, divorce, dating, and caregiving—and throughout her career as a designer and marketer for Bowker and LexisNexis—poetry has been a steady companion. Her work has appeared in Sensations Magazine, The Ever-Dancing Muse, Get Satisfied, and Lips, plus the anthologies Poets of the Palisades, The Paterson Literary Review, and The World Book of Healing. Galen is a fourth-generation Beaufortonian who has cared for her adult son James in her home for the past five years. Her forthcoming memoir, I Believe You, captures the heartrending reality of very severe M.E.

“I have come to know Galen as an amazing mother, caregiver and advocate. Patients, families, caregivers and medical professionals will benefit from her lived experience and effectiveness…. Her book is a highly effective clarion call to anyone with ME or long COVID to just rest, and to their loved ones to support them. I believe it’s what the world urgently needs right now.”—Janet L. Dafoe, PhD, psychologist

James Strazza was a prolific songwriter as well as a professional music producer when his young life was destroyed by a serious neurological disease. His only creative outlet became texting on his phone, so he leveraged his songwriting skills for a newfound passion: poetry. His second collection of poetry is Unsung, Poems Written in the Dark.

“This poet—and he is a poet in the fullest sense—gives utterance to a horrific reality that escapes all utterance. Transforming us into witnesses, he ignites our own soul: to read James Strazza is to burn with him.
And to be forever transformed.”—David Patterson, Hillel A. Feinberg Distinguished Chair in Holocaust Studies, University of Texas at Dallas