Dan Chelotti is the author x (McSweeney’s, 2013) and a chapbook, The Eights (Poetry Society of America, 2006), which was selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the PSA’s National Chapbook Fellowship. His poems and reviews have appeared in Fence, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review Online, and many other magazines, and they’ve been anthologized in State of the Union (Wave, 2008) and in Free Verse’s “New Voices from New England Supplement.” He has an MFA from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and has worked as an Assistant Managing Editor for Verse Press. Chelotti is an Assistant Professor of English at Elms College in western Massachusetts.

Andrew Morgan is a professor, poet, editor and volunteer whose work can be found in magazines such as Conduit, Verse, Slope, Stride, Fairy Tale Review, Country Music, GlitterPony, Pleiades (as part of a “Younger American Poets” feature) and included in the anthology Disco Prairie Aid and Pleasure Club. He is the recipient of a Slovenian Writer’s Association Fellowship which sponsored a month long writing residency in the country’s capital city of Ljubljana, served as the Juniper Fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he facilitated the Visiting Writers Program, has worked as an Editorial Assistant for Verse Magazine, and as an Assistant Managing Editor for Verse Press. His manuscript of poetry “Month of Big Hands” was recently selected for publication by Natural History Press out of Boston and will be released in May 2013.

Kimberly Ann Southwick is getting married in June. She lives in Philadelphia. & is the founder & editor in chief of Gigantic Sequins, a bi-annual, black & white literary arts journal that debuted in April 2009. She writes poems and sometimes places like Barrelhouse and Big Lucks and Everyday Genius publish them. Follow her on twitter @kimannjosouth

APRIL 12
8pm at 1818 E Lafayette Ave
Featuring writers from Birds, LLC, one of the coolest poetry presses in the world.

Sampson Starkweather was born in Pittsboro, NC. He is the author of the First Four Books of Sampson Starkweather and 5 chapbooks from dangerous small presses. He is a founding editor of Birds, LLC and works for The Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY where he helps run the Annual Chapbook Festival and Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his girlfriend, the escape artist Paige Taggart.

Chris Tonelli is one of the founding editors of Birds, LLC, an independent poetry press. He also founded and curates the So and So Series and edits the So and So Magazine. He is the author of four chapbooks, most recently No Theater (Brave Men Press) and For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press), and his first full-length collection is The Trees Around (Birds, LLC). New work can be found in or is forthcoming from jubilat, Fou, La Fovea, and Leveler. He works at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where he lives with his wife, Allison, and their two kids, Miles and Vera.

Justin Marks’ first book of poems is A Million in Prizes (New Issues, 2009), and his latest chapbook is Best Practices (Greying Ghost, 2013). He is a co-founder of Birds, LLC, an independent poetry press, and lives in Queens, NY with his wife and their 4 year-old twin son and daughter.

AND
THERESA COLUMBUS has written many many plays, short, longer, and in the middle. She has also written many performance art pieces which may or may not at times be considered plays and could or could not be considered writing. In any case, she also makes and writes other things (sometimes they are incorporated eventually into a play.) Here are some videos and images of some of this: www.theresacolumbus.com

Hosted by Adam Robinson and Stephanie Barber at 1818 E Lafayette Ave (near Wolfe and North).  As always the event is free (and BYO), but we’ll have books for sale and a colander for donations. Also, we might have a special surprise poet guest.

Reader Bios:
ADRIAN VAN YOUNG teaches writing and literature at Boston College, Boston University and Grub Street, a creative writing non-profit, in Boston. He formerly taught at Columbia University, where he received his MFA in fiction. In 2008, he was the recipient of a Henfield Foundation Prize and was nominated for inclusion in the Best New American Voices 2010 Anthology. His collection of short stories, The Man Who Noticed Everything, won the 2011 St. Lawrence Book Award, and is forthcoming in early 2013 from Black Lawrence Press/Dzanc Books. He is currently in the midst of writing a historical novel based on the life of William H. Mumler, the father of spirit photography, and his clairvoyant wife, Hannah Mumler. His fiction and non-fiction have been published in Lumina, Gigantic, Lacuna and The Believer. He lives in Somerville, MA with his wife.

Born and raised in Southern California, ADAM PRINCE earned his MFA from the University of Arkansas and his Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee. His award-winning fiction has appeared in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, and Narrative Magazine, among others. In 2011, Narrative named him one of the top twenty best new writers. He is married to the poet Charlotte Pence and is serving as the 2012-2013 Tickner Fellow at the Gilman School while at work on a novel that takes place in Jakarta, Indonesia.

LAURA VAN DEN BERG was raised in Florida and earned her M.F.A. at Emerson College. Her stories have or soon will appear in Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, One Story, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008, Best New American Voices 2010, and The Pushcart Prize XXIV. Her first collection of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009), was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, longlisted for The Story Prize, and shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Award. Her second collection of stories, The Isle of Youth, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux in November 2013. The recipient of the Emerging Writer Lectureship at Gettysburg College and the Tickner Fellowship at the Gilman School, Laura currently lives in Baltimore and teaches creative writing at George Washington University.

http://www.facebook.com/events/452018794855666/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Blake Butler (https://twitter.com/blakebutler) will be in Baltimore to celebrate the release of SKY SAW (Tyrant Books — the publisher, Giancarlo DiTrapano, will be there too).

Blake will read and will be joined by others who will also read selections from his work.

The event is free and, as always, casual. BYO.

Blake Butler is the also the author of Nothing, There is No Year, Scorch Atlas, and Ever. He runs HTMLGiant and is a columnist at VICE.

August 13

7pm

1818 E LaFayette Ave

FREE | BYOB

FACEBOOK PAGE: http://www.facebook.com/events/335677796520516/

On May 12, Say it with Writing will host four readers from around the country and city.

Saturday, May 12
7pm (reading will probably start 15 minutes late)
1818 E Lafayette (silver door, on the corner, lots of street parking)
Free — donations for the readers appreciated — BYOB
It’s casual
FACEBOOK Invite

Jac Jemc’s novel, My Only Wife, just came out from Dzanc. She’s on tour from Chicago. She is the poetry editor at decomP and blogs her rejections at jacjemc.com.

PGP released Sean Lovelace’s book Fog Gorgeous Stag. That was in 2011. He is from Indiana, where he teaches at Ball State. He will be in town for some disc golf the day before. If you want to play, let us know.

Steve Matanle’s new collection, Nightbook (pictured above) was recently released from Passager Books. He teaches at the University of Baltimore. If Sean Lovelace’s writing is foggy like a dewy Adirondack drive, Matanle’s poems are quiet like the 3am he wrote them in — and about.

Mark Neely is a great guy and also a disc golfer. This is the bio from his website:

Mark Neely’s first book, Beasts of the Hill, won the FIELD Poetry Prize and was published by Oberlin College Press in early 2012. He is also the author of a chapbook, Four of a Kind, winner of the Concrete Wolf chapbook contest. His poems have appeared in Boulevard, Indiana Review,Salt Hill, FIELD, North American Review, Columbia Poetry Review and elsewhere. He received his BA from The University of Illinois, and his MFA from The University of Alabama, where he was poetry editor of the Black Warrior Review. He is an Associate Professor of English at Ball State University, and the editor of The Broken Plate. He lives in Muncie, Indiana with his wife—writer Jill Christman—and their two children.

What else do you need? OH, the details again:

Saturday, May 12
7pm (reading will probably start 15 minutes late)
1818 E Lafayette (silver door, on the corner, lots of street parking)
Free — donations for the readers appreciated — BYOB
Very casual

The trio of tourists will be joined by Baltimore’s own Lauren Bender, who needs no introduction (though interested parties might look into her amazing Whale Box, recently made readable online).

Word on the street is that Schomburg’s reading from his new book Fjords will be accompanied by a presentation of Fjords from Manual Cinema. Interesting. And yes, the event is on a Monday, which is cool because it just means the weekend will be longer, just maybe interrupted by 8 hours of dayjob. Show up at 7 for a 7:30 show.

Here’s a trailer for FJORDS:

WHAT IS FJORDS? from Manual Cinema on Vimeo.