Izzy Casey & Ashley M. Jones

February 12, 7:00PM CDT

Online Event (Register here)

Izzy CASEY is a writer and editor based in NYC. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming from Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, Black Warrior Review, Bennington Review, BOAAT, The Columbia Review, The Yale Review, Bat City Review, and elsewhere. She received her MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was the recipient of a fellowship with the Poetry Foundation. 

 

Ashley M. JONES is Poet Laureate of the state of Alabama (2022-2026). She holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press 2017),  dark / / thing (Pleiades Press 2019), and REPARATIONS NOW! (Hub City Press 2021). Her poetry has earned several awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She was a finalist for the Ruth Lily Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship in 2020.Her poems and essays appear in or are forthcoming at CNN, POETRY, The Oxford American, Origins Journal, The Quarry by Split This Rock, Obsidian, and many others. She teaches Creative Writing at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and in the Low Residency MFA at Converse College. Jones co-directs PEN Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival. She recently served as a guest editor for Poetry Magazine.

 

 

Mark Leidner & Justin Marks

 November 6, 7:00PM CDT

Online Event (Register here)

Mark LEIDNER is the author of two books of poetry, Returning the Sword to the Stone (Fonograf, 2021) and Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me (Factory Hollow, 2011), a book of aphorisms The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover (Two Dollar Radio, 2011), and a short story collection Under the Sea (Tyrant Books, 2018). He also wrote two feature films: the sci-fi thriller Empathy, Inc. (2019) and the relationship comedy Jammed (2014). He lives in California and is originally from Georgia.

 

Justin MARKS’ books are, The Comedown, (Publishing Genius Press, 2021), You’re Going to Miss Me When You’re Bored, (Barrelhouse Books, 2014) and A Million in Prizes (New Issues, 2009). Recent poems appear in Conduit and Iterant. He is a co-founder of Birds, LLC, an independent poetry press, and lives in New York City with his family. 

This event was made possible by generous contributions by the Creative Writing Program at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Emily Spencer & Diana Khoi Nguyen

October 16th, 7:00PM CDT

Online Event (Register here)

Emily SPENCER is a poet and author of East Walnut Hills, winner of the Zone 3 Press First Book Award in Poetry. Spencer earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was a Boston University global writing fellow. Her poems appear in the Kenyon Review, POETRY, Pleiades, and elsewhere. 

 

A poet and multimedia artist, Diana KHOI NGUYEN is the author of Ghost Of (Omnidawn 2018) and recipient of a 2021 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition to winning the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Colorado Book Award, she was also a finalist for the National Book Award and L.A. Times Book Prize. A Kundiman fellow, she is core faculty in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Nate Marshall & Kaveh Akbar

September 25, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM CDT

Online Event (Register here)

Nate MARSHALL is the author and editor of numerous works including Finna, Wild Hundreds, The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, and the audio drama Bruh Rabbit & The Fantastic Telling of Remington Ellis Esq. He teaches creative writing and literature at Colorado College. Nate was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago.

Kaveh AKBAR is the author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf and has received honors such as a Levis Reading Prize and multiple Pushcart Prizes. Born in Tehran, Iran, he teaches at Purdue University and in low-residency programs at Warren Wilson and Randolph Colleges. His newest collection of poetry, Pilgrim Bell, has been received with overwhelming praise - "it is a book we need now."

This event is co-sponsored and in conjunction with Race Project KC and supported with funds from the Creative Writing program at KCAI.

 

Robert Brown & Chell Navarro

April 24, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM CDT

Online Event

Robert BROWN is a poet and multimedia artist who works with the Foundation Department at KCAI. His poems have appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review and Kansas City Ballet educational materials. He is a writer at KC Studio magazine.

Chell NAVARRO is a poet and founder and EIC of Savage Torpor Poetry. She is the author of Don’t Shoot the Augury, The Fetish of Maude Tatum, as well as her most recent collection, Sister of the Heath, which was released the week the world shut down due to the plague. Her poems appear in Bear Review, Sprung Formal, Lily Poetry Review, and forthcoming in Got Too High: An Anthology on Addiction. Navarro works freelance as a writer and copy editor. And to afford her lavish lifestyle as a poet, as a personal shopper for Instacart. She looks forward to the day she can once again hug The Lawrence Tree in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico.

Emily Pettit & Jason Teal

March 27, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM CDT

Online Event

 

Emily PETTIT is the author of Goat in the Snow (Birds LLC) and Blue Flame (Carnegie Mellon University Press).

 

Jason TEAL is the author of We Were Called Specimens (KERNPUNKT Press, 2020). He edits Heavy Feather Review and lives in Kansas. His MFA is from Northern Michigan University. Writing appears in Sprung Formal, 3:AM, Quarterly West, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and Hobart, among others. Recently, he and others organized the 100% free to participate virtual book fair SMOL Fair, smolfair.com.

Kiki Petrosino & BJ Soloy

February 27, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM CDT

Online Event

Kiki Petrosino is the author of four books of poetry: White Blood: a Lyric of Virginia (2020), Witch Wife (2017), Hymn for the Black Terrific (2013) and Fort Red Border (2009), all from Sarabande Books. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Best American Poetry, The Nation, The New York Times, FENCE, Gulf Coast, Jubilat, Tin House and on-line at Ploughshares. She teaches at the University of Virginia as a Professor of Poetry. Petrosino is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Fellowship in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Al Smith Fellowship Award from the Kentucky Arts Council.

 

 

BJ Soloy is the author of Our Pornography and other disaster songs, selected by Ocean Vuong as winner of the Slope Editions Book Prize, and Selected Letters, out with New Michigan Press. He has work in places like FIELD, Forklift, Ohio, Colorado Review, New American Writing, and Court Green, and lives and teaches in and around Kansas City, MO.

 

KCAI Creative Writing Double-Majors Reading

JANUARY 30TH, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM CDT

Online Event

Please click on the following link to register for this reading.

Featured Readers:

Emily Mooney
Rylie Lawver
Opal Roberts-Baca

Diannely Antigua & Caryl Pagel

Oct 17, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM CDT
Online Event

Please click on the following link to register for this reading.

Diannely ANTIGUA is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. Her debut collection Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019) was the winner of the Pamet River Prize and a 2020 Whiting Award. She received her BA in English from the University of Massachusetts Lowell where she won the Jack Kerouac Creative Writing Scholarship; and received her MFA at NYU where she was awarded a Global Research Initiative Fellowship to Florence, Italy. She is the recipient of additional fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, and the Fine Arts Work Center Summer Program. Her work has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her poems can be found in Washington Square Review, Bennington Review, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. Her heart is in Brooklyn. 

Caryl PAGEL is the author of Out of Nowhere Into Nothing (FC2, fall 2020), Twice Told (University of Akron Press), and Experiments I Should Like Tried At My Own Death (Factory Hollow). She teaches in the NEOMFA program, directs the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, and is a publisher and editor at Rescue Press.

This event was made possible by generous contributions from the KCAI Gallery: Center for Contemporary Practice and the Creative Writing Program at the Kansas City Art Institute.
 

 

Carrie Lorig & Jane Wong

 

Oct. 17th, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM CDT 
Online Event
Please click on the following link to register for this reading. 

 

 

Carrie LORIGis a school psychologist and a poet. She is the author of The Pulp vs. The Throne (Artifice Books) and several chapbooks, including The Blood Barn (Inside the Castle), The Book of Repulsive Women (Essay Press), and NODS. (Magic Helicopter Press). She is currently a doctoral student in School Psychology at Georgia State University. 

 

 

Jane WONG's poems can be found in places such as Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019, American Poetry Review, Agni, Poetry, Third Coast, and others. Her essays have appeared in McSweeney's, Black Warrior Review, Ecotone, The Georgia Review, The Common, Shenandoah, and This is the Place: Women Writing About Home. A Kundiman fellow, she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships and residencies from the U.S. Fulbright Program, Artist Trust, the Fine Arts Work Center, Willapa Bay AiR, Hedgebrook, the Jentel Foundation, and the Mineral School. She is the author of Overpour from Action Books, and How to Not Be Afraid of Everything, which is forthcoming from Alice James in 2021. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Western Washington University.

This event was made possible by generous contributions from the KCAI Gallery: Center for Contemporary Practice and the Creative Writing Program at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Anaïs Duplan & Tim Earley

Sep 12, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM CDT 
Online Event
Please click on the following link to register for this reading. 

Anaïs DUPLAN is a trans* poet, curator, and artist. He is the author of a forthcoming book of essays, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (Black Ocean, 2020), a full-length poetry collection, Take This Stallion (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016), and a chapbook, Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus (Monster  House Press, 2017). He has taught poetry at the University of Iowa,  Columbia University, and will teach at Sarah Lawrence College and St.  Joseph’s College. His video works have been exhibited by Flux Factory, Daata Editions,  the 13th Baltic Triennial in Lithuania, Mathew Gallery, NeueHouse, the Paseo Project, and will be exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art in L.A in 2021.

 

As an independent curator, he has facilitated curatorial projects in  Chicago, Boston, Santa Fe, and Reykjavík. He was a 2017-2019 joint  Public Programs fellow at the Museum of Modern Art and the Studio Museum  in Harlem. In 2016, he founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies,  an artist residency program for artists of color, based at Iowa City’s  artist-run organization Public Space One. He works as Program Manager at  Recess.

 

 

Tim EARLEY is the author of five collections of poems, including Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (Horse Less Press, 2014), winner of the 2015 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Award, and Linthead Stomp (Horse Less Press, 2016). He is the recipient of fellowships from the  Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Hawthornden Castle in Lasswade, Scotland. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, jubilat, the Ecopoetry Anthology, and the Hick Poetics Anthology (edited by Abraham Smith and Shelly Taylor). He is the lead designer of  the forthcoming tabletop role-playing game, Holler, an Appalachian dark fantasy that focuses on regional folklore, labor conflict, ecological collapse, and demonic infestation.

 

This event was made possible by generous contributions from the KCAI Gallery: Center for Contemporary Practice and the Creative Writing Program at the Kansas City Art Institute.

HADARA BAR-NADAV, ANDREW FARKAS & MARIANNE KUNKEL

Saturday, March 28th, 7pm, Epperson Auditorium, Kansas City Art Institute (4415 Warwick Blvd, KCMO)

Hadara BAR NADAV’s most recent book of poetry is The New Nudity (Saturnalia Books, 2017). Her previous books include Lullaby (with Exit Sign) (Saturnalia Books, 2013), awarded the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize; The Frame Called Ruin (New Issues, 2012), Runner Up for the Green Rose Prize; and A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight (Margie/Intuit House, 2007), awarded the Margie Book Prize. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Fountain and Furnace (Tupelo Press, 2015), awarded the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and Show Me Yours (Laurel Review/Green Tower Press 2010), awarded the Midwest Poets Series Prize. In addition, she is co-author with Michelle Boisseau of the best-selling textbook Writing Poems, 8th ed. (Pearson, 2011). Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, the Lucille Medwick Award from the Poetry Society of America, and others. She is a Professor of English and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Andrew FARKAS is the author of a novel: The Big Red Herring (KERNPUNKT Press), and two short fiction collections: Sunsphere (BlazeVOX Books) and Self-Titled Debut (Subito Press). His work has appeared in The Iowa Review, North American Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Florida Review, Western Humanities Review, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. He has been thrice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, including one Special Mention in Pushcart Prize XXXV and one Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2013. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago, an M.F.A. from the University of Alabama, an M.A. from the University of Tennessee, and a B.A. from Kent State University. He is a fiction editor for The Rupture (the new iteration of The Collagist) and an Assistant Professor of English at Washburn University. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas.

Marianne KUNKEL is the author of Hillary, Made Up (Stephen F. Austin State University Press) and The Laughing Game (Finishing Line Press), as well as poems that have appeared in The Missouri Review, The Notre Dame Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Publishing at Missouri Western State University, where she directs the creative writing program. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. While earning her Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, she was the managing editor of Prairie Schooner and the African Poetry Book Fund. She currently is the editor-in-chief of Missouri Western State University’s national literary journal, The Mochila Review, and advisor of its campus literary journal, Reach.

ROBERT LONG FOREMAN, HAI-DANG PHAN & STEFANIE WORTMAN

Saturday, February 22nd, 7pm, Epperson Auditorium, Kansas City Art Institute (4415 Warwick Blvd, KCMO)

Robert LONG FOREMAN has won a Pushcart Prize and published two books, AMONG OTHER THINGS, a collection of essays, and I AM HERE TO MAKE FRIENDS, a collection of short fiction. His novel WEIRD PIG comes out October 2020. He lives in Kansas City.

Hai-Dang PHAN is the author of Reenactments: Poems and Translations (Sarabande, 2019). His work has been recognized by fellowships and scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the American Literary Translators Association, and has been appeared in The Fabulist, The Iowa Review, New England Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, Prelude, and Best American Poetry 2016. Born in Vietnam and raised in Wisconsin, he currently teaches at Grinnell College and lives in Iowa City.

Stefanie WORTMAN is the author of In the Permanent Collection. Her poems and essays have appeared in the Boston Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, and other publications. She lives in Kansas City.

KCAI CREATIVE WRITING DOUBLE MAJORS READING

Saturday, January 25th, 7pm, Epperson Auditorium, Kansas City Art Institute (4415 Warwick Blvd, KCMO)

Bri CROZIER

Rylie LAWVER

Pyrindaria RILEY

Mia ROBBINS

CLAYTON ADAM CLARK, JUDITH ROITMAN & CHRIS TONELLI

Saturday, November 9th, 7pm, KCAI Crossroads Gallery: Center for Contemporary Practice (1819 Grand Blvd. KCMO)

Clayton Adam CLARK lives in Saint Louis, his hometown, where he works as a public health research scientist and volunteers for River Styx magazine. His debut poetry collection, A Finitude of Skin, won the 2017 Moon City Poetry Award and was published by Moon City Press in November 2018. His poems have recently appeared in Poetry Daily, The Massachusetts Review, Mid-American Review, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. He earned the MFA in creative writing at Ohio State University and is studying clinical mental health counseling at University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Judith ROITMAN’s books are No Face (First Intensity Press) and Roswell (theenk Books); her most recent chapbook is Provisional (dancing girl press). Her work has appeared most recently in Equalizer, the tiny, December, Galataea Resurrects, E.Ratio, YEW, Futures Trading, Eleven Eleven, and Otoliths. She lives in Lawrence, KS.

Chris TONELLI is a founding editor of the independent poetry press Birds, LLC and co-director of the NC Book Festival. For thirteen years, he has hosted the So & So Reading Series, and he edits the online So & So Magazine. He works in the Libraries at NC State University and co-owns So & So Books in downtown Raleigh, where he lives with his wife Allison and their kids Miles and Vera. He is the author of five chapbooks and two full-length poetry collections, most recently Whatever Stasis (Barrelhouse Books).

DARREN CANADY, HYEJUNG KOOK & DEREK GRAF

Saturday, September 14th, 7pm, KCAI Crossroads Gallery: Center for Contemporary Practice (1819 Grand Blvd. KCMO)

Darren CANADY hails from Topeka, KS. His work has been produced at the Alliance Theatre, American Conservatory Theatre, Aurora Theater, Congo Square Theater, Horizon Theatre, London’s the Old Vic Theatre, M Ensemble, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, American Blues Theater, and others. His awards include the Alliance Theater's Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Award, Chicago’s Black Excellence Award, the Black Theatre Alliance Award, and the American Theatre Critics Association’s Osborn Award. His work has been developed at numerous festivals including the O'Neill Theater Center’s National Playwright's Conference. His play You’re Invited appeared in The Best American Short Plays 2010-2011. His work has been seen or developed at the Quo Vadimus Arts’ ID America Festival, the Fremont Centre Theatre, Premiere Stages, the BE Company, Penumbra Theatre, and American Blues Theater. Darren is an alum of Carnegie Mellon University, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Juilliard School. He is a current member of the Core Writers Program at the Playwrights’s Center and Midwest Dramatists Center. He is an artistic associate with American Blues Theater and Congo Square Theatre. He currently teaches playwriting at the University of Kansas.

Hyejung KOOK’s poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit, Half Mystic Radio, The Massachusetts Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Hyphen Magazine, and Pleiades. Other works include an essay in The Critical Flame and a chamber opera libretto. Hyejung was born in Seoul, Korea and now lives in Kansas with her husband and their two young children. She is a Fulbright grantee and a Kundiman fellow.

Derek GRAF's poems have appeared in Salt Hill, The Boiler, Portland Review, Booth, and elsewhere. He is currently a PhD student in creative writing at the University of Kansas, and he completed his MFA at Oklahoma State University. Starting this summer, he joined the Charlotte Street Foundation as one of their 2019-2020 Studio Residents.

KEVIN KILROY, MERCEDES LUCERO & BEN NICKOL

Saturday, September 14th, 7pm, KCAI Crossroads Gallery: Center for Contemporary Practice (1819 Grand Blvd. KCMO)

Kevin KILROY is a writer and educator who works to blend genres and reimagine learning. His novella The Escapees (Spuyten Duyvil) was described as "a philosophical mystery set in a city where keys are plenty but locks are few." His book of poetic fictions, Dead Ends or Laughing Gas (Spuyten Duyvil), is "two-parts pulp, one-part Genet, with a twist of Beckettian humor.” He sells progressive science curriculum for Activate Learning, and he teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute. Currently, he is a Writer-in-Residence at the Charlotte Street Foundation.

Mercedes LUCERO is an Afro-Latinx writer and the author of Stereometry (Another New Calligraphy 2018). She is the winner of the Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award for Poetry and you can see more of her work at www.mercedeslucero.com.

Ben NICKOL was raised in Idaho and attended the University of Arkansas and the University of Notre Dame, where he played basketball for the Fighting Irish. His prose has been recognized by the Arkansas Arts Council, Best American Sports Writing, and the University of Arkansas, among other organizations, and he's the author of the books Sun River (2019), Adherence (2016) and Where the Wind Can Find It (2015). His stories and essays have appeared widely, in Alaska Quarterly Review, Boulevard, Fourth Genre, Crab Orchard Review, Fugue, Tin House Online, The Los Angeles Review and elsewhere. In 2018, he joined the Creative Writing faculty at Wichita State University.

JAMEELAH LANG & MIKE YOUNG

Thursday, April 25th, 9pm, Velo Garage & Tap House (1403 Swift St. North Kansas City, MO. 64116)

Jameelah LANG holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston, where she served as Senior Nonfiction Editor for Gulf Coast and co-organizer for the award-winning Poison Pen Reading Series. Her fiction and nonfiction appear or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Cincinnati Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, and Witness, and her work has received fellowships and support from Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Hub City Writers Project, Sewanee Writers' Conference, and VCCA. She directs graduate-writing programming at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, is a Lecturer at the Kansas City Art Institute, and serves on the board for The Radius of Arab-American Writers. 

 Mike YOUNG is the author of three books: 2014’s Sprezzatura (poetry), 2010's Look! Look! Feathers (stories), and 2010’s We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough, which was selected by readers of The Believer as one of the Top 20 Poetry Books of 2010.

Since 2007, he's run Magic Helicopter Press, which puts out chapbooks and full length books and interactive art. MHP has received nice nods from the New York Times, Nylon, The Rumpus, American Book Review, and others. He lives in Santa Fe, NM, where he makes music: with a band (http://clementinewasright.bandcamp.com/) and by himself (http://blackcake.org/album/imagine-a-fire-you-can-wear-as-a-coat-by-anthony-graytone).

DANNY CAINE, MEGAN KAMINSKI, ALICIA MOUNTAIN & JERMAINE THOMPSON

Saturday, April 13th, 8pm, KCAI Crossroads Gallery: 

Center for Contemporary Practice (1819 Grand Blvd. KCMO) 

Danny CAINE is the author of the poetry collections Continental Breakfast (Mason Jar Press 2019) and El Dorado Freddy's (Collaboration with Tara Wray, Belt Publishing 2020). His poems have appeared in DIAGRAM, Hobart, Barrelhouse, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere. He hails from Cleveland and lives in Lawrence, Kansas where he's owner of the Raven Book Store. More: dannycaine.com

Megan KAMINSKI is the author of two books of poetry, Deep City (Noemi Press, 2015) and Desiring Map (Coconut Books, 2012), with a third book Gentlewomen forthcoming from Noemi Press. She is an associate professor in the University of Kansas' Graduate Creative Writing Program and a Keeler Intra-University Professor studying trauma and healing in the School of Social Welfare. She also curates the Taproom Poetry Series in downtown Lawrence. Currently she is working on a book about indeterminacy, attraction, and plant thinking.

Alicia MOUNTAIN is the author of the collection High Ground Coward (Iowa 2018), which won the Iowa Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Thin Fire (BOAAT Press 2018). She is a lesbian poet, a PhD candidate, and an assistant editor of the Denver Quarterly. Keep up with her at aliciamountain.com and @HiGroundCoward.

Jermaine THOMPSON was born in Louisville, Mississippi. He learned language from big-armed women who greased their pans with gossip and from full-bellied men who cursed and prayed with the same fervor. Jermaine has an M.F.A. in poetry and currently lives in Kansas City, Missouri.

MIKE KLEINE, JOANNA NOVAK, JOHN TREFRY & CANDICE WUEHLE

Saturday, March 16th, 7pm, KCAI Crossroads Gallery: 

Center for Contemporary Practice (1819 Grand Blvd. KCMO) 

Mike KLEINE is the author of Lonely Men Club and other texts. He grew up in West Africa and graduated from Grinnell College with a BA in French Literature. He currently lives in the Midwest.                                                                                                                                                     

JoAnna NOVAK is the author of the novel I Must Have You and the book-length poem Noirmania. Her writing has appeared in publications including The Paris Review, The New York Times, the Washington Post, BOMB, Slate, and Guernica. She is a founding editor of Tammy, a literary journal and chapbook press.

John TREFRY is an architect and the author of the books Plats, Thy Decay Thou Seest By Thy Desire, and Apparitions of the Living. His current work-in-progress is called Massive. More diminutive writings have appeared in various other outlets. He is the editor of Inside the Castle, a small press in Lawrence, Kansas.

Candice WUEHLE is the author of the full-length collection BOUND (Inside the Castle Press, August 2018) and the chapbooks VIBE CHECK (Garden-door Press, 2017), EARTH* AIR*FIRE*WATER*ÆTHER (Grey Books Press, 2015) and curse words: a guide in 19 steps for aspiring transmographs, (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). Poems from her collection in progress, DEATH INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, appear in Best American Experimental Writing 2020, Black Warrior Review, The Bennington Review, and The New Delta Review. She is originally from Iowa City, Iowa and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Candice currently resides in Lawrence, Kansas where she is a Chancellor’s Fellow at The University of Kansas.