The Madtown Poetry Open Mic, hosted by Ron Czerwien at Mother Fool's Coffeehouse, welcomes all forms of poetry. Each month a featured reader is showcased for 15-20 minutes, followed by the open mic. Readers in the open mic are invited to read their original work for up to five minutes. Sign up starts at 7:00pm and the event begins at 8:00pm.

SHOSHAUNA SHY wrote her first stories on a manual Olivetti at the age of eight, and sees all spoken words in Palatino font complete with quotation marks, and other punctuation. Her poetry has recently been published courtesy of IthacaLit, Hartskill Review, RHINO, Gulf Stream and Sliver of Stone, and her flash fiction by 100 Word Story, Fiction Southeast, Sou'wester, and other journals. She is also the founder of Woodrow Hall Editions which sponsors the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf initiative, and the Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Awards.

ANGELA RYDELL teaches creative writing for the UW-Madison Division of Continuing Studies. Her work has won the Portland Review Flash Friday contest, received honorable mention in New Millennium Writings Awards and was a finalist for the American Short(er) Fiction Prize, Passages North's Neutrino Short-Short Prize and the Grey Sparrow Journal Flash Fiction contest. She’s currently taking a break from revising her novel True North to work on a collection of linked very short stories tentatively titled The Incredible Shrinking Olivia Jones.

For over ten years Ron hosted poetry readings as well as an open mic at Avol's Bookstore in Madison. His poems have appeared both on-line and in print journals. His manuscript, "The Office of Uncomfortable Admissions," received an honorable mention in the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Contest. Ron serves on the board of The Council for Wisconsin Writers, and sells used and out-of-print books on-line under the name Avol's Books LLC. If you have questions about the open mic, call Ron at 608-255-4730, or email him at avols@chorus.net.