Karen Weyant, SUNY Jamestown Community College associate professor of English, recently had her first full-length book of poetry published.
Titled “Avoiding the Rapture,” the collection of poems centers on Weyant’s first-hand childhood encounters with a life that is challenging, but one that can also be tender, hopeful, and vibrant if fought for.
“I call this book a coming-of-age story of growing up in the rust belt of Pennsylvania,” Weyant said. “They are narrative poems, many of them. They were inspired by my experiences. But as I tell people: ‘It’s poetry, so not everything is 100% true.’”
Weyant, who grew up in Ridgway, Pennsylvania in Elk County, has taught English at JCC since 2001 and at Penn State campuses in DuBois and Altoona in the years prior.
The 102-page “Avoiding the Rapture,” published by Riot in Your Throat in October 2023, comes after Weyant published shorter chapbooks titled “Stealing Dust," and "Wearing Heels in the Rust Belt," which was the winner of Main Street Rag's 2011 chapbook contest. Her poems and essays have also been shared in many publications.
Weyant said “peer pressure from my poetry friends” pushed her to produce a full-length collection.
“I like brevity in writing, and poetry is about as brief as you can get,” she said. “I like not only the brevity of poetry but the lyrical elements of it, the attention to language. Even when telling a story, it’s not necessarily plot-driven, it’s more language-driven.”
Weyant earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg and master’s degrees from Clarion University and the University of Arkansas at Monticello. She received the New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellowship in 2007 and the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in 2011.