Pete's Big Poetry Series Spring 2008 Poet Bios
September 12 – Amy King, Leslie Anne Mcilroy with guitarist Don Bertschman & Nellie Bridge
Amy King is the author of I'm the Man Who Loves You and Antidotes for an Alibi, both from Blazevox Books, and most recently, Kiss Me with the Mouth of Your Country (Dusie Press). She is the moderator for the Poetics List and the Women's Poetry Listserv, and teaches English and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College. She is currently editing an anthology, The Urban Poetic, forthcoming from Factory School.
Leslie Anne Mcilroy won the 2001 Word Press Poetry Prize for her full-length collection Rare Space and the 1997 Slipstream Poetry Chapbook Prize for her chapbook Gravel. Her second full-length book, Liquid Like This, was published by Word Press in July 2008. Don Bertschman is a musician and writer who studied with Coleman Barks at the University of Georgia. Leslie and Don live in Pittsburgh where they work as copywriters.
Nellie Bridge grew up in Washington State, and has lived in New York for the last seven years. Her poems have appeared in Rattapallax, KNOCK, Painted Bride Quarterly, New Delta Review, and other places. She lives in Brooklyn and works at The Authors Guild.
September 26 -- Cecily Iddings, Brett Price, Cynthia Arrieu-King & Linda Bamber
Cecily Iddings received an MA from the University of Georgia and an MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Harvard Review, jubilat, Meridian, Pleiades, Spinning Jenny, Verse, and Verse Daily, among other places. She is working on the second issue of The Blue Letter with Chris Hoseaand is a former managing editor of Slope Editions.
Brett Price is an assistant editor of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, and Light Industrial Safety. He is working toward an MFA at Bard College. His writing can be found in such journals as H_NGM_N, Octopus, The Incliner, and Milkmoney. He lives in Brooklyn.
Cynthia Arrieu-King is assistant professor of creative writing at Stockton College in New Jersey. Her work has or will appear in Prairie Schooner, Jacket, Diagram, Octopus Magazine, Forklift Ohio, and elsewhere.
Linda Bamber was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up both there and abroad. She teaches literature and creative writing in the Tufts English Department. Her book, Comic Women, Tragic Men: Gender and Genre in Shakespeare, has been widely excerpted and anthologized. "Reading as a Buddhist," an essay, was included in Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art. Other work of hers has appeared in The Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, Tikkun, and Ploughshares, which awarded her the Ploughshares Prize for her story, "The Time to-Teach-Jane-Eyre-Again Blues." She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
October 3 – Jennifer Firestone, Kristin Palm, David Blair & Samuel White
Jennifer Firestone is the co-editor of Letters to Poets: Conversations About Poetics, Politics, and Community, forthcoming in October from Saturnalia Books. She is the author of Holiday (Shearsman Books), Waves (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), and From Flashes and snapshot (both by Sona Books). Her work has appeared in HOW2, LUNGFULL!, Xcp: Streetnotes, 580 Split, Saint Elizabeth Street and others. She is an Assistant Professor teaching poetry at Eugene Lang College at The New School For Liberal Arts, and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their infant twins.
Kristin Palm's writing has appeared in Boog City, Chain, There, Dusie, the anthology Bay Poetics (Faux Press, 2006), and numerous other places. She writes regularly for Metropolis magazine and its blog, POV. Her book The Straits (two long poems about Detroit, her former hometown) was published this year by the serendipitously named Palm Press. Kristin lives in San Francisco.
David Blair's first book Ascension Days was chosen by Thomas Lux for the 2006 Del Sol Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in the anthologies Zoland Poetry and The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, as well as in many journals including The Boston Review, Fence, The Harvard Review, and Tuesday, an Art Project. He is currently on the faculty of the New England Institute of Art and he lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with his wife Sabrina and his daughter Astrid.
Sam White is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the author of one book of poems, The Goddess of the Hunt is Not Herself, published by Slope Editions in 2005. He is also the author and illustrator of two graphic novels and the founder and director of Woolly Fair, a summer arts festival located in Providence, Rhode Island. Recently he directed "Rash of Robberies" a stop-motion music video for the band State Radio which was featured last summer in the 1st International Animation Festival in Poznan, Poland. He lives and works in Monohasset Mill, an artist community in Providence, with his wife Gillian Kiley.
October 10 – Aaron Zaritsky, Ravi Shankar, Laura Sims & Katy Henriksen
Aaron Rivero-Zaritzky's translation of Felipe Benitez Reyes' book Probable Lives (winner of the National Book Award and National Critics' award in Spain) was published in 2006 by BOA Editions as part of the Lannan Series. Nobel prize finalist Miguel Mendez, the Kennedy Center, and others have commissioned Rivero-Zaritzky to translate literary work. His has also co-translated Jose Saavedra Iguina's albums Versosreversos and Vercadaver. He lives in Macon, Georgia with his wife Yosalida, their beautiful daughter Sofia.
Ravi Shankar teaches at Central Connecticut State University. He is the author of Instrumentality (Cherry Grove Collections), Wanton Textiles (with Reb Livingston) and co-editor of Language for the New Century (Norton), an anthology of contemporary poetry from the Middle East, Asia and beyond.
Laura Sims is a recent re-transplant to New York City. She is the author of two poetry books, Practice, Restraint, recipient of the 2005 Fence Books Alberta Prize and Stranger, forthcoming from Fence Books in 2009. She has also published four poetry chapbooks, including Bank Book (Answer Tag Press) and Paperback Book (3rd Bed). She has written book reviews and essays for Boston Review, Rain Taxi, and The Review of Contemporary Fiction, and has recently published poems in the journals Denver Quarterly, CAB/NET, and Crayon.
Katy Henriksen recently returned to the Arkansas Ozarks after four years in New York City, where she founded Cannibal Books with her husband Matt. The hand-bound poetry madness continues down South with Narwhal, a journal of chapbooks, forthcoming this fall. Her arts & culture writing regularly appears in The Brooklyn Rail, The Oxford American, Pure Music, and Venus Zine. Her poems have appeared in Tight. She is currently exploring the South to update The Rough Guide to the USA, vol. 9.
October 17 -- Devin Johnston, Jeff Clark, DJ Dolack & Katie Fowley
Devin Johnston is the author of three books of poetry, the most recent of which is Sources (Turtle Point Press, 2008). A book of his essays entitled Creaturely will be published by Turtle Point Press in 2009. He co-directs Flood Editions, an independent publishing house, and teaches at Saint Louis University.
Jeff Clark was born in southern California in 1971. He is the author of The Little Door Slides Back and Music and Suicide (both from FSG), as well as 2A, which he co-wrote with Geoffrey G. O'Brien. For 12 years he's made his living as a book designer, and currently runs a design studio called Quemadura. He lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with his partner, the poet Christine Hume, and their daughter Juna Hume Clark.
DJ Dolack's most recent work can be found in (or is forthcoming from) Octopus Magazine, Handsome, and Diode. He is a contributing editor at Eye For An Iris Press, which will be unveiling a new website and venture this fall. His chapbook, The Sad Meal, is available through Black Ocean. He currently lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Katie Fowley received a BA in English from Macalester College in 2007. Her book reviews appear in Rain Taxi: Review of Books. A founding editor of Lightful Press, she lives in Sunnyside, Queens.
November 7 – Tim Peterson, Adam Tobin, Dave Carillo & Kate Broad
Tim Peterson lives in Brooklyn and writes poetry, all the while seeking out other complexly gendered individuals for companionship and connection, hungry for articulations of reading and being read as voiced experiences hunting you like a bluejay. SINCE I MOVED IN (Gil Ott Award, Chax Press) was published in 2007. Tim edits EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts.
Adam Tobin owns and operates Unnameable Books, a new and used bookstore in central Brooklyn. He is author of Ode to Pumpsie Green & Stretch Phillips (horse less press, 2005) and editor of The Weekly Weakling (forthcoming), a series of occasional letterpress pamphlets. You may have seen his older work in EOAGH or Fence or other publications, but he hasn't really written much since he opened the bookstore. He promises, however, to read at this reading at least one poem you've never seen before.
David Carillo lives in West Hartford with his wife and dog. He is working on his MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the University of Pittsburgh and teaches English at the University of Connecticut at Waterbury. He has poems forthcoming in Nanomajority.
Kate Broad has lived in India and Brazil and currently resides in Brooklyn, where she is a doctoral student in English at the City University of New York Graduate Center. She has poems in Freshwater, The Wellesley Review, and forthcoming in Karamu, and has won several writing awards, including one from the Academy of American Poets. Kate is working on her first full-length manuscript, Hard to Swallow.
November 21 – Chris Tonelli, Douglas Hahn & Lisa Sewell
Chris Tonelli is the author of three chapbooks, For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press, forthcoming), A Mule Shaped Cloud (with Sarah Bartlett, horse less press, 2008), and WIDE TREE: Short Poems (Kitchen Press, 2006). He teaches at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Douglas Hahn received his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College in 2007. While finishing the manuscript for his first book, he's been freelancing as a marketing copywriter and moonlighting as a technician in the electrical industry.
Lisa Sewell is the author of The Way Out (Alice James Books) and Name Withheld (Four Way Books), and co-editor, with Claudia Rankine, of American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics (Wesleyan UP). She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Pennsylvania Council for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Most recently, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Letters and Commentary, Colorado Review, The Journal and Tampa Review. She lives in Philadelphia and teaches at Villanova University.
December 5 – Adam Chiles, Mark Horosky, Eric Baus & Miriam Benatti
Adam Chiles' first book, Evening Land, was published this year by Cinnamon Press in the UK. His work has appeared in Best New Poets 2006, Indiana Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Free Verse and others. He currently teaches English and Creative Writing at Northern Virginia Community College. He lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia with wife Emily and son Noah.
Eric Baus is the author of The To Sound (Wave Books) and Tuned Droves (Octopus Books). He edits Minus House chapbooks and writes about poetry audio recordings on the site To The Sound. He lives in Denver.
Miriam Benatti lives and works as a licensed massage therapist in New York City. In between changing diapers, rubbing bodies, and cooking cutlets, she's currently working on a chapbook of poems called Open Your Mouth. |
