Poetry Reading with Mercedes Wallace

841 North High Street,Columbus OH 43215

08 July, 2022

Description

Mercedes Wallace is from Ohio in a town affectionately named “grit city”. She studied communications at the University of Toledo and currently resides in Columbus, Ohio with her dog. Mercedes has done work in the spaces of advocacy, social justice issues, and currently works as an Assistant Director for a leadership program called Buckeye Leadership Fellows for The Ohio State University. When she is not lost in writing she is inexplicably lost in music, with her loved ones, contemplating the loss of her 20’s, and all around trying to become a better human. In Mercedes Wallace’s debut poetry book “One Without The Other” she holds nothing back as she navigates her way through falling in love, falling out of love, and finding yourself all in the same place. Fresh off the heels of losing her Father, this collection is a labor of love with the middle chapter- Livingston- paying homage to him. Mercedes cracks open her diary to take you along with her as she moves through the waves of grief, resilience, and what it looks like to build yourself from the ground up. With imagery from personal text messages to create an intimate feel for the reader, she uses her raw poems as a connector to the very humanistic traits of failing, but moving forward nonetheless. And above all, the duality of light, and dark, love and loss- you cannot have one without the other.