MC Extraordinaire:

Paul Siegell

On The Stage:

Emma Brown Sanders

David Olimpio

Katie Ionata

Sevé Torres

Mai Schwartz

Kirwyn Sutherland

Alina Pleskova

Engineering Producer:

Joe Zang

This week, we have a holiday special for you all! Just a few months ago, we had the privilege of hosting an event for Philalalia, a small press festival. We had a great reading at the Pen and Pencil Club in Philadelphia with a superbly talented group of writers, and we know you’re gonna love them as much as we did!

Let us know what you think on our event page or on Twitter with #holidayextravaganza

Interested in learning more about (or participating in) our Slam, Bam, Thank You, Ma’am? Sign up for our newsletter and join us on January 26!

Happy holidays, and read on!

Emma Brown Sanders is a queer philly poet originally from chicago. she co-hosts POETRY JAWNS: A PODCAST with Alina Pleskova. She recently put out a chap called RELEASE FANTASY that will be available at philalalia. You can find her work at full stop, fungiculture, bedfellows and recreation league.

David Olimpio grew up in Texas, but currently lives and writes in Northern New Jersey. He believes that we create ourselves through the stories we tell, and that is what he aims to do every day. Usually, you can find him driving his truck around the Garden State with his dogs. He has been published in Barrelhouse, The Nervous Breakdown, The Austin Review, Rappahannock Review, Crate, and others. He is the author of THIS IS NOT A CONFESSION (Awst Press, 2016). You can find more about him at davidolimpio.com, including links to his writing and photography. He Tweets, Instagrams, and Tumbles as @notsolinear and would love for you to join him.

Kathryn (Katie) Ionata is the author of the chapbook Yield Signs Don’t Exist (PS Books, 2016). Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Toast, The Best of Philadelphia Stories, Cleaver Magazine, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Hawai’i Review, U.S. 1 Worksheets, and other publications. She has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and has been a finalist for the Sandy Crimmins National Poetry Prize and the Bucks County Poet Laureate Competition. She teaches writing and literature at Temple University and The College of New Jersey.

Sevé Torres is a poet, father, and college professor. His work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Mead: The Magazine of Literature and Libations, and Dismantle: The Vona Anthology. He currently teaches at Rowan University and Rutgers-Camden.

Mai Schwartz is a poet, a storyteller, a sometime-beekeeper, an unofficial historian, and a native of New Jersey with