Celebrate two years with us on June 15th!

drinks and snacks and cheer plus readings by

LUCY IVES

DOUGLAS A. MARTIN

MARTHA OATIS

RONALDO V. WILSON

Tuesday June 17th at 7pm

LUCY IVES is the author of Anamnesis, a long poem, published by Slope Editions on the last day of 2009. She lives in New York, where she is a PhD student in Comparative Literature at NYU.

DOUGLAS A. MARTIN is the author most recently of Once You Go Back, a novel (Seven Stories Press). His other books include Your Body Figured (Nightboat Books, 2008); Branwell, a novel of the Bronte brother; They Change the Subject, stories; and In the Time of Assignments, poems. Outline of My Lover, his first novel, was named an International Book of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement and adapted by the Forsythe Company for their multimedia dance-theater piece, "Kammer/Kammer." He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Wesleyan University and also teaches in the Low Residency MFA Writing Program at Goddard College.

MARTHA OATIS is poet who lives in Massachusetts now, where for the last three years she has been in virtual retreat while becoming a physician of chinese medicine. She is the author of from Two Percept (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs) and several other works-in-progress. Poems have appeared most recently in Try! Magazine, EOAGH, and Aufgabe.

RONALDO V. WILSON is the author of Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man, winner of the 2007 Cave Canem Poetry Prize (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), and Poems of the Black Object (Futurepoem Books, 2009). He is a graduate of the PhD program in English at the CUNY Graduate Center, and NYU's Graduate Creative Writing Program. Wilson has won numerous fellowships to include the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Cave Canem, Kundiman, Djerassi, and Yaddo. A co-founder of the Black Took Collective, he teaches creative writing and African American poetics at Mount Holyoke College.

TUESDAY 4/20: Bordowitz, Szymaszek, and Zolf

GREGG BORDOWITZ

STACY SZYMASZEK

RACHEL ZOLF

read to you

TUESDAY APRIL 20 / 7pm

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GREGG BORDOWITZ (Born August 14, 1964, Brooklyn, N.Y.) is a writer, film and video maker and teacher. A collection of his essays, titled The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings 1986-2003, was published by MIT Press in the fall of 2004. For this collection, Bordowitz received the 2006 Frank Jewitt Mather Award from the College Art Association. Recently, his writings have appeared in Massachusetts Review, Fence, Casco, and Texte Zur Kunst. A long poem titled Admissions was included in the book Considering Forgiveness, edited by Aleksandra Wagner and Carin Cuoni (Vera List Center, 2009). His most recent book consisting entirely of questions, titled Volition, was published by Printed Matter (2009). His films, including Habit (2001), The Suicide (1996), and A Cloud In Trousers (1995), Fast Trip Long Drop (1993) have been widely shown in festivals, museums, movie theaters and broadcast internationally. In addition, he has received a Rockefeller Intercultural Arts Fellowship and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, among other grants and awards. Bordowitz is Chair of the Film, Video, and New Media Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and he is on the faculty of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

STACY SZYMASZEK was born and raised in Milwaukee, WI. From 1999 to 2005, she was the Literary Program Manager for the nonprofit literary organization Woodland Pattern Book Center. In 2005 she moved to New York to serve as Program Coordinator at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, where she became Artistic Director in 2007. She is the author of the chapbooks Mutual Aid (gong press, 2004), Some Mariners (Etherdome, 2004), There Were Hostilities (repair, 2005), Pasolini Poems (Cy Press, 2005), Stacy S: Autoportraits (OMG! Press, 2008), Orizaba: A Voyage with Hart Crane (Faux Chaps, 2008) and from Hart Island (Albion Books, 2009), among others. Her first full-length book, Emptied of All Ships, was published in 2005 and her second book Hyperglossia in 2009, both with Litmus Press.

RACHEL ZOLF's fourth full-length book, Neighbour Procedure, was recently released by Coach House Books. Previous collections include Human Resources (Coach House), which won the 2008 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, Masque (The Mercury Press), Shoot & Weep (Nomados), from Human Resources (Belladonna books) and Her absence, this wanderer (BuschekBooks). Zolf’s work has appeared in journals throughout North America and in anthologies such as Prismatic Publics: Innovative Canadian Women’s Poetry and Poetics (Coach House) and a forthcoming anthology of conceptual writing from Les Figues Press. She was the founding poetry editor for The Walrus magazine and has edited several books of poetry. Zolf lives in New York.

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March 17: Coan, Jaffe, & Lawlor

if you know what's good:

JAIME SHEARN COAN
SARA JAFFE
&
ANDREA LAWLOR

Wednesday March 17 / 7pm / free

Downstairs at Unnameable Books

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JAIME SHEARN COAN teaches literature and writing at The City College of New York and leads a writing workshop at the Ali Forney Center through the New York Writers Coalition. Her writing has appeared in the Mississippi Review. Jaime is a member of Accidental Movement, an ongoing dance project led by Mariangela Lopez, and serves as the curator of dear someone, a queerly collaborative letter-making endeavor, available soon in chapbook form.

SARA JAFFE's writing has appeared, most recently, in Fourteen Hills, NOON, Gladtree Journal, and Skein. She is co-editor of The Art of Touring, a collection of writing and visual art by musicians, available from Yeti Publications. She plays a treble-heavy guitar and teaches various forms of writing. She lives in Brooklyn.

ANDREA LAWLOR, a fiction writer and the editor of Pocket Myths, has had stories published or forthcoming in Persiflage, The Brooklyn Rail, Cash Free, and Encyclopedia, Volume II. Lawlor is currently pursuing an MFA in Fiction at UMass Amherst.

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February 17: Jennifer Bartlett, Tonya Foster, and Joy Ladin

Wednesday February 17

JENNIFER BARTLETT

TONYA FOSTER

&

JOY LADIN

7pm / free /downstairs at Unnameable Books

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JENNIFER BARTLETT'S first collection is Derivative of the Moving Image (UNM Press). Individual poems have appeared in New American Writing, The Brooklyn Rail, Rattapallax, and others. She lives in Brooklyn with the writer Jim Stewart and their son, Jeffrey.

TONYA FOSTER is the author of A Swarm of Bees in High Court, forthcoming from Belladonna and Futurepoem in 2010. She is currently completing A Mathematics of Chaos, a cross-genre, multi-media piece on New Orleans, Monkey Talk, an inter-genre piece about race, paranoia, and surveillance, and A History of the Bitch, a collection of poems. A native of New Orleans, she resides and writes in Harlem.

JOY LADIN is the author of three books of poetry from Sheep Meadow Press: the just-published Transmigration, The Book of Anna (as J. Ladin) and Alternatives to History (as Jay Ladin). Her poems and essays have been widely published, and have recently appeared in or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Parnassus, to which she is a regular contributor, and other publications. She holds the David and Ruth Gottesman Chair in English at Stern College of Yeshiva University, and has also taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Princeton University, Tel Aviv University, Reed College and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

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Wednesday 1/6: Cyrus Cassells, Tim Peterson (Trace) and Magdalena Zurawski

CYRUS CASSELLS
TIM PETERSON (TRACE)
&
MAGDALENA ZURAWSKI

on January 6, 2010 / 7pm at Unnameable Books

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Cyrus Cassells is the author of four acclaimed books of poetry: The Mud Actor, Soul Make a Path through Shouting, Beautiful Signor, and More Than Peace and Cypresses. His fifth book, The Crossed-Out Swastika, and a translation manuscript, Still Life with Children: Selected Poems of Francesc Parcerisas, are forthcoming. Among his honors are a Lannan Literary Award, a William Carlos Williams Award, a Pushcart Prize, two NEA grants, and a Lambda Literary Award. He is a Professor of English at Texas State University-San Marcos and has served on the faculty of Cave Canem, the African American Poets Workshop. He divides his time between Austin, New York City, and Paris, and works on occasion in Barcelona as a translator of Catalan poetry.

Tim Peterson (Trace) is the author of Since I Moved In which received the Gill Ott Award from Chax Press. Chapbooks include the recent Violet Speech (2nd Avenue Poetry), as well as CUMULUS (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), and Trinkets Mashed into a Blender (Faux Press). Peterson continues to edit EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts which features a special issue on Queering Language dedicated to kari edwards(http://chax.org/eoagh). Peterson also curates TENDENCIES: Poetics & Practice, a talks series titled in honor of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick at CUNY Graduate Center which explores the intersection of queer poetics and the manifesto (http://tendenciespoetics.blogspot.com).

Magdalena Zurawski's novel The Bruise won the 2008 Lambda Award for lesbian debut fiction. Currently she is working on a manuscript of poems. She lives in Durham, NC.

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down one flight of stairs.
hosted by Danica Colic & Ari Banias

November 18: CAConrad, Betsy Fagin, and Rachel Levitsky

Wednesday November 18, 7pm

downstairs at Unnameable Books

CAConrad, Betsy Fagin, & Rachel Levitsy


CACONRAD is the recipient of THE GIL OTT BOOK AWARD for The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009). He is also the author of Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), (Soma)tic Midge (Faux Press, 2008), Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006), and a forthcoming collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled THE CITY REAL & IMAGINED: Philadelphia Poems (Factory School Books, 2010). CAConrad is the son of white trash asphyxiation whose childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He invites you to visit him online at http://CAConrad.blogspot.com and also with his friends at http://PhillySound.blogspot.com

BESTY FAGIN is the author of Belief Opportunity (Big Game Books, 2008), Rosemary Stretch (dusie e/chap, 2006) and For every solution there is a problem (Open 24 Hours, 2003), as well as a number of self-published chapbooks. She received degrees in literature and creative writing from Vassar College and Brooklyn College and completed a MLS degree in Information Studies at the University of Maryland. Recent work appears online at La Fovea (http://lafovea.org/La_Fovea/betsy_fagin.html) and is forthcoming in the anthology Starting Today: Poems for the First 100 Days (University of Iowa Press). She is currently living in Brooklyn, NY.

RACHEL LEVITSKY’s second book, NEIGHBOR, is published by Ugly Duckling Presse (2009). Levitsky’s first full length volume, Under the Sun was published by Futurepoem books. She’s released five chapbooks of poetry, Dearly (a+bend, 1999), Dearly 356, Cartographies of Error (Leroy, 1999), The Adventures of Yaya and Grace (PotesPoets, 1999) and 2(1x1)Portraits (Baksun, 1998). Levitsky writes poetry plays, three of which (one with Camille Roy) have been performed in New York and San Francisco. With Jan Lauwereyns she is currently guest editing DWB, in the 2010 issue of the Dutch language magazine, “The Empire of Women.” She was the founder and is now a collective member of Belladonna* a multi-faceted feminist avant-garde writing confluence. For paid work, she is an adjunct professor and is currently teaching literature and comp courses for the Bard Prison Initiative and for Eugene Lang College at Arthur Kill Correctional Facility in Staten Island.

October 28: Katz, Masini, and Teare

three poets:

AMANDA KATZ
DONNA MASINI
BRIAN TEARE

Wednesday October 28 / 7pm / free

AMANDA KATZ is a writer, editor, translator, and critic. Formerly an editor at Bloomsbury USA, she received her MFA in poetry from Brown University in 2009. She has published poetry and translations in journals including Aufgabe, EOAGH, The Germ, and the New Yinzer, and her book reviews have appeared in the Boston Globe and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. She is the editor of Fox Point Press, and she lives in Beacon, New York.

DONNA MASINI was born in Brooklyn and has always lived in NYC. She attended Hunter College and received her MFA in Poetry from New York University in 1988. Her first collection of poems, That Kind of Danger (Beacon Press, 1994), was selected by Mona Van Duyn for the Barnard Women Poet's Prize. Her second book was a novel, About Yvonne ( W.W. Norton and Co., 1997) which the New York Times called “a stunning novel of sexual obsession.” In 2004, she published her second collection of poems, Turning to Fiction (WW Norton and Co.) Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies including APR, Open City, TriQuarterly, Paris Review, KGB BAR Book of Poems, Parnassus, Boulevard, Lyric, et al. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, a Pushcart Prize, et al, she is an Associate Professor of English at Hunter College where she teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program. She is currently at work on The Good Enough Mother, a novel.

A recipient of Macdowell Colony, National Endowment for the Arts and Stegner fellowships, BRIAN TEARE is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Sight Map and the forthcoming Pleasure. He’s also published three chapbooks, including Transcendental Grammar Crown and ­, which won the 2009 Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Award. His poetry and criticism have appeared in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, HOW2, Provincetown Arts, St. Mark’s Poetry Project Newsletter, Seneca Review, Verse and VOLT, as well as in the anthologies Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century and At the Barriers: The Poetry of Thom Gunn. He lives in San Francisco, where he teaches and makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books.

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inside/downstairs