March 26, 2025
Winsted, CT – CT State Northwestern announces the 2025 Mad River Festival: A Night of Creativity, Conversation and Connection scheduled for Wednesday, April 16 in Founders Hall, 2 Park Place, Winsted. This is a multi-faceted event, free and open to the public, featuring award winning poet and essayist Chen Chen and CT artist and weaver Sophia DeJesus-Sabella.
Festival events are scheduled as follows:
4 to 6 p.m.: Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition with 5:30 awards ceremony
4 to 5 p.m.: Kids Craft Zone
3 to 6 p.m.: The Whey Station Food Truck serving gourmet grilled cheese for purchase and featuring live music
6 p.m.: Mad River Anthology launch and reveal of the Community Art Project: Weaving Connection
6 to 8 p.m.: Main Stage Event: author Chen Chen and artist Sophia DeJesus-Sabella, along with Open Mic Readings
Chen is the author of two poetry books, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities. His latest chapbook is Explodingly Yours. Chen's honors include the Thom Gunn Award, two Pushcart Prizes, the National Book Award longlist, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and United States Artists. His work appears in many publications, including three editions of The Best American Poetry and two editions of The Forward Book of Poetry. He has taught at UMass Boston, the University of Southern Maine, Antioch University Los Angeles, the Fine Arts Work Center, and Brandeis University as the 2018-2022 Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence. Currently he teaches for the low-residency MFA program at New England College. He holds an MFA from Syracuse University and a PhD from Texas Tech University. He lives in Rochester, NY.
Sophia DeJesus-Sabella is an artist, weaver, and educator based in Connecticut, whose woven and sculptural works combine traditional craft with found materials. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with departmental honors in Fibers from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and is the recipient of numerous grants and awards. She has been an Artist in Residence at Byrdcliffe, ACRE, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and Hartford Artisans Weaving Center, and has exhibited widely including Jewett Art Gallery (Wellesley College, MA), Visitor Center (Newburgh, NY), Ely Center for Contemporary Art (New Haven, CT) and Hudson Valley MOCA (Peekskill, NY).
The Northwestern Community College Foundation has been a generous sponsor of Mad River since 1993. This year’s project is also generously supported through CT Humanities and the Northwestern Community College Foundation.
For more information, please contact DeborahKline@ctstate.edu.
