About me
Paulette Demers Turco began her creative writing in verse and children’s fiction about 2005 when near retirement in her forty-year Boston area optometry career. Her move to Newburyport in 2012 brought her to Isabell vanMerlin’s memoir course, to Rhina Espaillat’s annual Newburyport Adult Education Lyceum poetry workshop, and soon after, to Alfred Nicol’s Emma Andrew’s biweekly poetry workshop. She attends the annual Frost Farm Poetry Conference in Derry, NH and is pursuing her MFA in poetry at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Her poems have been published in The Lyric, Ibbetson Street Press, Merrimac Mic Anthologies: II, III, and IV.
Writing awards include 2017 Lesley University, MFA in writing President’s Scholarship, Honorable Mention in the 2014 Naomi Charkofsky Memorial Poetry Contest for “The Limpet,” second place in 2014 Newburyport Adult and Community Education writing contest. She was a featured reader at the 2017 annual August Whittier Home and Museum event honoring John G. Whittier and Powow River Poet guest reader in “The Herstory Stanzas” hosted by Rhina Espaillat and Debbie Szabo on March 17, 2018 at the Actors’ Studio in Newburyport. She enjoys reading her work at area open mics sponsored by the Powow River Poets, Portsmouth Poetry Hoot, Amesbury Public Library and Poet Laureate Program, Joppa Flats Education Center, and Merrimac Mic. She is revising a middle grade and a young adult novel; writes stories for her granddaughters; takes drawing and painting at the Newburyport Art Association. Her art is featured in Merrimac Mic Anthology III and IV, and Merrimac Mic Anthology IV and In Silence cover photos. She is having fun using the right side of her brain.