BOOKS | First name Barbie, last name Doll

The Vachel Lindsay Association’s popular Poets in the Parlor series continues with a reading by Maureen Bocka, author of First name Barbie, last name Doll, on Thursday, June 12, from 2-3 p.m. The chapbook, published in February 2016 by Headmistress Press, is the first collection of poetry for Bocka, a recent University of Illinois Springfield graduate and former assistant managing editor of The Alchemist Review and Uproot magazine. Bocka’s collection explores themes of love and loss, gender orientation, sexual identification, inequality and betrayal through the eyes of a Barbie doll living in a pink Dreamhouse world. For more information about the Vachel Lindsay Home and other Poets in the Parlor events, visit http://vachellindsay.org.