Pics and sketch from big reading

Here's a sketch of the reading by Dmitry Samarov...



Here's a photo of the crowd during the off-site reading during AWP. Thanks to Brianna Pike for snapping it (and being a good sport about reading at the end of the night -- readers chose names of the next reader from a pill bottle, and sadly, Bri's was picked last. What is it they say -- last but not least? Certainly true here).

Reading Between the Lines: An AWP Offsite Event

Hope you can make it out to this event...

Thursday, February 12th
8:00 p.m.

Beat Kitchen (upstairs)
2100 W. Belmont
Chicago, IL 60618
(773) 281-4444

Join emerging as well as established writers from across the US for this intimate reading scheduled to coincide during the annual AWP Conference. Admission is free!

Readers include [order TBD]:

Shaindel Beers’ poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is currently a professor of English at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton, Oregon, in Eastern Oregon’s high desert and also serves as Poetry Editor of CONTRARY. She has just released her first poetry collection, A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, from Salt Publishing.

Jessica Berger was born and raised in Chicagoland, where she is now a graduate student in UIC's Program for Writers. She has worked as an illustrator and is especially interested in the coupling of text and her other great love: the visual arts.

Emma Bolden is the author of three chapbooks of poetry: HOW TO RECOGNIZE A LADY, published as part of Edge by Edge, the third in Toadlily Press’ Quartet Series; THE MARINER’S WIFE, published by Finishing Line Press; and THE SAD EPISTLES, forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as the INDIANA REVIEW, THE JOURNAL, FEMINIST STUDIES, PRAIRIE SCHOONER, REDIVIDER, VERSE, GREEN MOUNTAINS REVIEW, SALAMANDER, and on LINEBREAK.ORG. She was the recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship for the 2008 Sewanee Writers’ Conference and was named a finalist for a Ruth Lily Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation/Poetry magazine. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English in Creative Writing at Georgetown College, where she also serves as poetry editor of the GEORGETOWN REVIEW.

Donald Breckenridge is the Fiction Editor of THE BROOKLYN RAIL and Editor of THE BROOKLYN RAIL FICTION ANTHOLOGY (Hanging Loose Press, 2006). In addition, he is the author of more than a dozen plays as well as the novella ROCKAWAY WHEREIN (Red Dust, 1998), and the novels 6/2/95 (Spuyten Duyvil, 2002) and YOU ARE HERE, new in 2009 from Starcherone Books.

Bruce Covey's fourth book of poetry, GLASS IS REALLY A LIQUID, will be published by No Tell Books in the summer of 2009. He lives in Atlanta, GA, where he teaches at Emory University, edits COCONUT POETRY, and curates the WHAT'S NEW IN POETRY reading series.

Jacque E. Day's latest book, IMAGES OF AMERICA: WEST RIDGE hit bookstores last September, a follow-up title to her 2007 book about Chicago's northernmost neighborhood, IMAGES OF AMERICA: ROGERS PARK. She co-authored both books with Jamie Santoro. Jacque also contributed to the books ARMCHAIR READER: BOOK OF INCREDIBLE INFORMATION (2008), SCIENCE FICTION AMERICA (2006) and JOURNEYS OF FRIENDSHIP (2005), and wrote for many Chicago publications, including New City and ReelChicago.com. She now lives with her husband in western Kentucky, where she works as a reporter for NPR affiliate WKMS-FM, and serves as assistant managing editor for NEW MADRID, JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.

Larry O. Dean was born and raised in Flint, Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan, during which time he won three Hopwood Awards in Creative Writing, an honor shared with fellow poets Robert Hayden, Jane Kenyon, and Frank O'Hara, among others. He is author of numerous chapbooks, including I AM SPAM (2004), a series of poems “inspired” by junk email; his poetry has also been internationally anthologized. In addition to writing, he is a singer-songwriter, performing solo as well as with his current band, The Injured Parties; he has released many critically-acclaimed CD’s, including FABLES IN SLANG (2001) with Post Office, and GENTRIFICATION IS THEFT (2002) with The Me Decade. His current band, The Injured Parties' debut, FUN WITH A PURPOSE, is due in spring 2009. Dean was a 2004 recipient of the Hands on Stanzas Gwendolyn Brooks Award, presented by the Poetry Center of Chicago.

Lori Desrosiers is a poet, editor and publisher. Her chapbook THREE VANITIES is being published by Pudding House Press. She is the managing editor and publisher of NAUGATUCK RIVER REVIEW, a new journal of narrative poetry (available during AWP at the New England College MFA program table) and also publishes POETRY NEWS, an online events chronicle for the MA and CT area. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Westfield State College in Westfield, Massachusetts.

Laura Dixon earned a BA in literature from The University of Chicago and an MAT from Dominican University. She has worn many hats, from teacher and coach to circus performer. She is currently a Michener Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin, working toward her MFA in poetry, with a fiction minor. She has been featured at numerous Chicago venues, including the Green Mill, Fitzgerald’s, and Lollapalooza.

Eckhard Gerdes is a novelist who has published eight novels in thirty years of writing. His most recent, MY LANDLADY THE LOBOTOMIST, was voted novel of the year 2008 in the annual international on-line PREDITORS & EDITORS Readers Poll. He also edits THE JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL FICTION and teaches at Lake Forest College, DePaul University, and Triton College.

Johannes Göransson was born and raised in Skane, Sweden, but has lived in the US for many years. He is co-editor of Action Books and has translated the work of Aase Berg, Henry Parland, Ann Jaderlund and other Swedish and Finland Swedish poets. His newest book is DEAR RA, A STORY IN FLINCHES, from Starcherone Books.

Sara Greenslit has an MFA in Poetry from Penn State University. She has received grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and from the Barbara Deming Foundation/Money for Women, and her novel THE BLUE OF HER BODY was chosen by Brian Evenson as winner of the 2007 Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she recently graduated from the veterinary program at University of Wisconsin.

Chris Hildebrand was born in the Spring of 1963, where he grew up watching the moon shots from his driveway in Winter Park, Florida. When he was 15, his family moved to Mobile, Alabama, where he perfected the art of truancy and spent his school days on the waterfront mingling with sailors from around the world. After dropping out of high school, he ran away with the Clyde Beatty Circus and spent the summer traveling about the south with them. He sold monkeys on a stick. Shortly thereafter, he joined the Navy and saw the rest of the world. Many other things happened along the way, but he survived nonetheless. Eventually, he went back to school and now teaches Freshman Composition at Murray State University where he attempts to undermine everything his students ever learned.

Matt "McG" Markgraf is from Chicago but for some odd reason lives in Kentucky, where he works at the NPR station WKMS and with GreenMark Public Relations (based in Chicago). He enjoys writing letters in an order that forms words, hoping they'll eventually form sentences or grocery lists. When he's not throwing down wicked bass-lines on his electronica radio show, he can often be found shouting obscenities at the television whilst playing old school Nintendo and dining on Indian cuisine.

Pamela Johnson Parker is a certified medical language specialist and adjunct instructor at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. She attended Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and Murray State University, where she received a MFA in Poetry in May 2008.

Ted Pelton is the author of three books, including the novel MALCOLM & JACK (Spuyten Duyvil, 2006). An NEA fellowship recipient in fiction, he is the founder and publisher of Starcherone Books, a press devoted to innovative fiction.

Brianna Pike is interested in embarrassing her boyfriend whenever she writes poetry—we should all strive to such high standards. Through her introspection into the natural and the mundane, she seeks to show the beauty and chaos of life. She is currently an Instructor of English at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis, teaching comp and creative writing. She enjoys the challenges and successes of teaching, and finding the time to devote to her craft.

Sarah Rosenthal is the author of HOW I WROTE THIS STORY (Margin to Margin, 2001), SITINGS (a+bend, 2000), and NOT-CHICAGO (Melodeon, 1998). Her work has appeared in journals such as BIRD DOG, FENCE, and BOSTON REVIEW, and has been anthologized in BAY POETICS (Faux Press, 2006), THE OTHER SIDE OF THE POSTCARD (City Lights, 2005), and HINGE (Crack Press, 2002). Her cross genre book, MANHATTEN, is forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil, and her collection of interviews, A COMMUNITY WRITING ITSELF: CONVERSATIONS WITH VANGUARD WRITERS OF THE BAY AREA, is forthcoming from Dalkey Archive.

Davis Schneiderman is co-author of the novel ABECEDARIUM (Chiasmus Press, 2007), and author of DIS (BlazeVox, 2008) and MULTIFESTO: A HENRI D'MESCAN READER (Spuyten Duyvil, limited ed 2006). He is co-editor of RETAKING THE UNIVERSE: WILLIAMS S. BURROUGHS IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION (Pluto, 2004) and the forthcoming THE EXQUISITE CORPSE (U. Of Nebraska), and co-creator of the audiocollage record MEMORIALS TO FUTURE CATASTROPHES (Jaded Ibis, 2008). He has recently been named Director of Lake Forest College Press/&NOW Books.

Karissa Sorrell is a poetry student in the MFA program at Murray State University. She is from Nashville, TN, and teaches ESL at a local high school.

Roger Stanley is a teacher, traveler, and music-lover who has seen Lucinda Williams in concert at five different Chicago venues. These interests combine for his Murray State MFA thesis in creative nonfiction, which he is completing this spring and summer.

Richard Thomas lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. He has been published in COLORED CHALK, CAUSE & EFFECT, GOLD DUST MAGAZINE, VAIN MAGAZINE, and online at NEFARIOUSMUSE.COM, REDFEZ.COM and OPIUMMAGAZINE.COM. His work will also appear in two anthologies from New Voices in Fiction in 2009, as well as online at their site. He is pursuing an MFA at Murray State University while editing his neo-noir thriller novel, TRANSUBSTANTIATE.

Chet Weise is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Murray State University. Naturally, he chose a Kool menthol as the first cigarette he ever smoked. Kools proved to be the gateway drug to many others including marijuana—much like the Rock 'n' Roll of the Doors, Stooges, and Velvet Underground gatewayed to William Blake, Yeats, and Rimbaud. Listening to the Stooges while getting high inevitably lead the impressionable youth to LSD and an odd affection for its deep images of flashbacks, tracers, and moving ceilings—much like Blake lead to an affection for Eliot and Dylan Thomas. Then there was the Cocaine. Cocaine is a helluva drug, especially when Crystal Meth is mistaken for it. Chet Weise didn't like Cocaine in general much or the non-stop seventy-two hours spent driving a Chevy van as a result of a Crystal Meth mixup. But, he did like picking up that copy of Frank Stanford's book THE SINGING KNIVES at Powell's bookstore. And subsequently, Robert Desnos to Larry Levis. Nowadays, all those gateway experiences have been laid to rest after a bad trip on Mushrooms lead to the fetal position in Auburn, Alabama—a suitable ending to a mostly harmless, innocent time in any red blooded American boy's life. But the poetry has stuck, and hopefully won't be so innocent in Nashville, Tennessee.

Scott Woodham is an MFA candidate in Poetry at Murray State University. He teaches developmental college English courses on Fort Knox and serves as a contributing editor for AlaskaDispatch.com.

Snežana Žabić hails from Croatia by way of Serbia, Hungary and Czech Republic, and resides in Chicago. Her publications include the award-winning short story collection IN A LIFETIME and a collaborative collection of essays and poems titled DISCURSIVE BODIES OF POETRY. Her prose and poetry has been translated into Polish, Swedish, Macedonian, and Hungarian. She edits PACKINGTOWN REVIEW, new journal of arts and scholarship published by the University of Illinois Press. She serves on the board of the Edgewater Film Society, which has been organizing the annual Chicago Festival of Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film at Loyola University since 2006. In 1998, she co-founded LITKON, the pioneering Internet-based network of young writers in the post-war Balkan region. She currently teaches literature and writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago.