KRYSTAL LANGUELL, STEPHANIE ELLIS SCHLAIFER & EMILY SKILLINGS

Saturday, October 28th, 7pm, KCAI Crossroads Gallery: 
Center for Contemporary Practice (1819 Grand Blvd. KCMO) 
FREE!

Krystal LANGUELL lives in Chicago. She is the author of two books, Call the Catastrophists (BlazeVox, 2011) and Gray Market (1913 Press, 2016), and five chapbooks. A NYSCA/NYFA 2017 Artist Fellowship Finalist in Poetry, she previously completed a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council workspace residency in 2014-15 and a Poetry Project Emerge-Surface-Be fellowship in 2013-14. She was an adjunct in New York City for seven years.

Stephanie ELLIS SCHLAIFER is a poet and installation artist in St. Louis. She is the author of Cleavemark (BOAAT Press, 2016), a full-length collection of poems selected by Shane McCrae. Schlaifer has an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and her poems and art have appeared in Best New Poets 2015, Georgia Review, Harvard Review, AGNI, The Offing, Denver Quarterly, LIT, Colorado Review, Fence, and elsewhere. She frequently collaborates with other artists, most recently with Cheryl Wassenaar on the installation Cleavemark Drive. Her work can be viewed at criticalbonnet.com.

Emily SKILLINGS is the author of the poetry collection Fort Not (The Song Cave, 2017) as well as two chapbooks, Backchannel (Poor Claudia) and Linnaeus: The 26 Sexual Practices of Plants (No, Dear/ Small Anchor Press). Recent poems can be found/are forthcoming in Poetry, Harper's, Boston Review, Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, Hyperallergic, LitHub, and jubilat. Skillings is a member of the Belladonna* Collaborative, a feminist poetry collective, small press, and event series. She received her MFA from Columbia University, where she was a Creative Writing Teaching Fellow in 2017. She splits her time between Brooklyn and Hudson, NY.

SOPHIE KLAHR, GLENN NORTH & MARK TARDI

Saturday, September 23rd, 7pm, KCAI Crossroads Gallery: 
Center for Contemporary Practice (1819 Grand Blvd. KCMO) 
FREE!

Sophie KLAHR’s first full-length collection, Meet Me Here at Dawn, was released by YesYes Books. Her work can be found in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, Four Way Review, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. She has been on the editorial staff of Gigantic Sequins since 2009, where she currently co-edits Teen Sequins. Her interdisciplinary work includes dance, drama, and sculpture. Born in Pittsburgh, she now lives mostly in Los Angeles.

Glenn NORTH is the author of City of Song, a collection of poems inspired by Kansas City’s rich jazz tradition and the triumphs and tragedies of the African American experience. He is a Cave Canem fellow, a Callaloo creative writing fellow and a recipient of the Charlotte Street Generative Performing Artist Award and the Crystal Field Poetry Award. His work has appeared in Kansas City Voices, One Shot Deal, The Sixth Surface, Caper Literary Journal, Platte Valley Review, Kansas City Voices, KC Studio, Cave Canem Anthology XII, The African American Review, and American Studies Journal. He collaborated with legendary jazz musician, Bobby Watson, on the critically acclaimed recording project, Check Cashing Day and was recently appointed Poet Laureate of the 18th & Vine Historic Jazz District.

Mark TARDI is originally from Chicago and earned his MFA from Brown University. His previous books were Airport music (Burning Deck, 2013) and Euclid Shudders (Litmus Press, 2003). His newest book, The Circus of Trust, is recently out from Dalkey Archive Press. He guest-edited an issue of the literary journal Aufgabe devoted to contemporary Polish poetry and poetics and has translated poetry from the Polish by Kacper Bartczak, Miron Białoszewski, Monika Mosiewicz, and Przemysław Owczarek. He has received fellowships from the Djerassi Artist Colony, Millay Colony for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. Recent work has appeared in Jet Fuel Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Sukoon, and diode. A former Fulbright scholar, he lives with his wife and two dogs in a village in central Poland and is on the faculty at the University of Łódź.

LAUREN HUNTER & ERICA LEWIS

Saturday, August 26th, 7pm, KCAI Crossroads Gallery: 
Center for Contemporary Practice (1819 Grand Blvd. KCMO) 
FREE!



LAUREN HUNTER is the author of HUMAN ACHIEVEMENTS (Birds, LLC 2017). Her voice can be found inside the Poetry Jukebox in New York's East Village, on the experimental track AM Radio by Marselle, and in poems recently published in The Recluse & Jubilat. Lauren currently lives in her hometown of Durham, North Carolina.

erica lewis lives in San Francisco where she is a fine arts publicist. In addition to mary wants to be a superwoman, her books include the precipice of jupiter, camera obscura (both collaborations with artist Mark Stephen Finein), murmur in the inventory, and daryl hall is my boyfriend. She was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.

IRIS APPELQUIST, STEPH FRENCH, CRISTA SIGLIN & LESLEY WHEELER

Saturday, April 22nd, 7pm, KCAI Crossroads Gallery: 
Center for Contemporary Practice (1819 Grand Blvd. KCMO) 
FREE!

Iris APPELQUIST is a native of Kansas City, Missouri. Her endeavor to carve out a niche for herself has been rewarded with publication of two full-length volumes of poetry, Blunt Trauma (Co-authored by Jason Ryberg, 2009, Spartan Press, KCMO), BRIAR (2012, Spartan Press, KCMO), and WHERE WE WERE WE WERE THERE (Spartan Press, 2015)  -- not to mention appearing to read and discuss poetry on her local NPR affiliate, in the local Kansas City Star, and several independent online and print magazines and journals. NICE FEELINGS, is a small collection that details the mystifying process of personal growth through the confessional style and surrealist conjecture.

Steph FRENCH resides in Kansas City. She’s a graduate of Drake University and holds a BA in English and psychology. Her first book, DELUGE was recently published by Spartan Press as part of Prospero’s Pop Poetry series.

Crista SIGLIN grew up in Iowa, and moved to KCMO in 2011. She graduated with a BFA in Painting and Creative Writing from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2015. She has shown her visual work in various Kansas City galleries and at the LUMA Westbau Museum in Zürich, Switzerland. Crista’s poetry has been published in Sprung  Formal; KCAI’s Compendium; Not Sorry Zine; Retrograde Craft; Desolate Country: We the Poets, United, Against Trump; Finding Zen in Cow Town; and Prospero's 20th Anniversary Anthology. Siglin released her first book of poetry, Fleeting, Sacred with Spartan Press in 2015. Her practice—paralleled in both visual and written works—is an exploration of the body and the mind’s relationship to environment, trauma, time, and phantasmagoria.

Lesley WHEELER is a writer and artist in Lawrence, Kansas. Her photo-essay "A Little Hell of Its Own" won the 2013 Bone Bouquet Experimental Prose Contest, and other work has appeared in Omniverse, Forklift, Ohio, and ILK. She studied at the Pratt Institute, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and currently at KU. You can find her at home with her dogs.

CYRUS CONSOLE-SOICAN, ROBERT FERNANDEZ, MARY HICKMAN & SIMONE SAVANNAH

Saturday, March 18th, 7pm, KCAI Crossroads Gallery: 
Center for Contemporary Practice (1819 Grand Blvd. KCMO) 
FREE!

Cyrus CONSOLE-SOICAN is from Topeka, Kansas. He is the author of the acclaimed books of poetry, Brief Under Water and The Odicy, and, most recently, the memoir Romanian Notebook. He teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Robert FERNANDEZ is the author of the poetry collections We Are Pharaoh (Canarium, 2011), Pink Reef (Canarium, 2013), and Scarecrow (Wesleyan, 2016). He holds an MFA in poetry from Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His poems have appeared in Boston Review, The New Republic, Poetry, Conjunctions, A Public Space, and elsewhere. He was selected by Robyn Schiff as a New American Poet by the Poetry Society of America, and received a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He is co-translator of Azure: Poems and Selections from the “Livre” (Wesleyan, 2015).

Mary HICKMAN was born in Nampa, Idaho, in 1979, and grew up in China and Taiwan. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. Hickman is the author of Rayfish (Omnidawn Publishing, 2017), which won the James Laughlin award from the Academy of American Poets, and This Is the Homeland (Ahsahta Press, 2015). A visiting professor at Nebraska Wesleyan University, she also teaches in the University of Iowa International Writing Program’s Between the Lines exchange program.

Simone SAVANNAH is from Columbus, Ohio and studies Creative Writing at The University of Kansas. Her poems are forthcoming and have appeared in Big Lucks, Powder Keg, Apogee, GlitterMOB, The Fem, The Pierian, Blackberry: A Magazine & Voicemail Poems. When she’s not writing, she’s fucking and lifting. You can find her on Instagram at PerfectVerse22

PAUL HANSON CLARK, ROBERT LONG FOREMAN & KYLE MCCORD

Saturday, February 18th, 7pm, KCAI Crossroads Gallery: 
Center for Contemporary Practice (1819 Grand Blvd. KCMO) 
FREE!

Paul Hanson CLARK is a poet who lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. His work has recently been featured in local music zine as well as the self-published chapbooks i want more life, fucker and fireball in the please mine. He has a Soundcloud page that he likes to think of as an audiozine called MERRILYMERRILY MERRILY MERRILY where he posts audio recordings of all sorts made by himself, friends, and strangers. Paul also makes drawings and has collaborated with numerous people on a variety of creative and social projects.

Robert Long FOREMAN has won a Pushcart Prize and the hearts of his wife and children. His first book, Among Other Things, is available. He lives in Kansas City.

Kyle MCCORD is the author of five books of poetry including National Poetry Series Finalist Magpies in the Valley of Oleanders (Trio House 2016). His work has been featured in AGNI, Boston Review, Crazyhorse, Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly and elsewhere. He serves as executive editor Gold Wake Press and lives in Des Moines, Iowa where he teaches at Drake University.