NEPC @ the BPL: Anastasia Vassos, Jean Flanagan, Cindy Goncalves
The NEPC returns to the Boston Public Library, Jamaica Plain Branch, to help kick off the holiday season! The reading, on Saturday, November 28 at 2:00 pm, is free and open to the public. An open mic will follow the featured poets. The JP Branch, at 30 South Street, is an accessible venue.
Jean Flanagan is the author of three books of poetry: Ibbetson Street (Garden Street Press), Black Lightning (Cedar Hill Books), and The Language of Two (Finishing Line Press). Her fourth book, A Hard Winter for Living (Červená Barva Press) is both prose and poetry. Flanagan is one of the founders of the Arlington Center for the Arts and the Poet Laureate of Emeritus of Arlington, Massachusetts.
Born to immigrant parents and raised in the small town of Scituate, Massachusetts, Cindy Goncalves grew up with a deep, uncomfortable sense that she didn’t quite belong. For years, she followed the grain, learning to fit into the world around her rather than question whether it fit her. Eventually, she found comfort and confidence in being her fullest self—and discovered the power of her voice, thoughts, and words.
Today, Cindy is a holistic practitioner, serial entrepreneur, self-proclaimed “quantum poet,” and published author of two books of poetry, with a third in the works. Her writing explores the quantum space, identity, belonging, healing, resilience, and the process of becoming who we were always meant to be: living a life in purpose, on purpose. She is learning to use her words, thoughts, and emotions to create the kind of world her younger self needed—one where being different isn’t something to overcome, but something to embrace.
The poems of Anastasia Vassos have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. She is the author of Note to Self (2026), Nostos (2023), which was a finalist in Two Sylvias’ and Headlight Review’s Chapbook Contests, and Nike Adjusting Her Sandal (2021). Her poems appear online as well as in print journals and anthologies; find her work in RHINO, Whale Road Review, Salamander, Thrush, Comstock Review, and elsewhere. Her poem “Rough Marble” was awarded the 2026 Amy Lowell Prize from the New England Poetry Club. Her poems about the Greek-American diaspora have been translated into Greek. She is a reader for Lily Poetry Review, speaks three languages, and lives in Boston.