Pink LemonAid: Breast Cancer-Inspired Stories, Poetry and Art
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, local writers Dzvinia Orlowsky and Elaine Sorrentino present Pink LemonAid: Breast Cancer-Inspired Stories, Poetry and Art on Saturday, October 17, 3 pm, at South Shore Conservatory’s Ellison Center for the Arts, 64 St. George Street, Duxbury. This awareness event is free and open to the public.
Both breast cancer survivors, Orlowsky and Sorrentino discovered that creating art out of their experience aided in their healing process. Orlowsky’s fourth poetry collection, Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones, co-recipient of a Sheila Motton Book Award, explores her journey through breast cancer, treatment and survivorship. Her poem titled “Nude Descending” from this collection earned her a Pushcart Prize in 2007. Sorrentino’s first poetry collection, Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit, also includes a small selection collection of breast-cancer related poems.
A Marshfield resident, Orlowsky is a founding editor of Four Way Books and Writer-in-Residence for the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program of Creative Writing at Lasell University. Her most recent poetry collection, Those Absences Now Closest, published by Carnegie Mellon University Press was a finalist in this year’s New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Motton Book Award and earned her the 2026 David Ferry and Ellen LaForge Prize in Poetry and Poetic Translation.
Sorrentino of Pembroke, former Communications Director at South Shore Conservatory, is facilitator of the Duxbury Poetry Circle and a member of Poetry the Art of Words in Plymouth. Her poetry has been published in journals such as Quartet Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gyroscope Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Poetry Porch, Ekphrastic Review, and Haikuniverse.
In addition to Orlowsky and Sorrentino, poets and musicians scheduled to perform in-person include Nanette Schieron and Jay Hoffman of Marshfield, Ed Sorrentino of Pembroke, and Sandy D’Entremont of Washington. Other writers and visual artists whose work will be featured on video or presented by an in-person reader include Christine Jones of Cape Cod, and Kathleen Aguero of Salem, Wilda Morris of Illinois, Chard DeNiord and Liz Hawkes DeNiord of Vermont, Shaun Pankoski of Hawaii, Jeff Friedman and Colleen Randall of New Hampshire, and Lorette Luzajic of Toronto, Canada.
Proceeds from poetry books sold at this event will be donated toward programs that fund transportation to treatment for those in need. For more information, contact Elaine Sorrentino at 617-653-6761.