the Poetry Project Podcast

Friday Reading Series

Amber Atiya is the author of the chapbook the fierce bums of doo-wop (Argos Books, 2014). Her poems have been published most recently in Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, Boston Review, Black Renaissance Noire, Atlas Review, and Apogee Journal. A proud native Brooklynite, she is a member of a women’s writing group that will be celebrating thirteen years next spring.

Laryssa Husiak is theater artist living in Minneapolis with roots in New York City. In January 2014, her original play She Is King premiered at the Incubator Arts Project. The show, in which she stars as Billie Jean King, will tour to Portland, Oregon in Spring 2015. She has written numerous short plays and solo performances that have been performed at venues throughout NYC, including La MaMa ETC, HERE Arts Center and Dixon Place. Laryssa has been awarded grants from the Iowa Arts Council, Art Matters and the Yip Harburg Foundation; and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. She was a finalist for the 2014 Leslie Scalapino Award for her play THE FORGETTABLE SAGA OF DONNA WANNA. Laryssa is a member of the Obie Award-winning theater company Two-Headed Calf and a founding member of their Dyke Division. She attended NYU’s Experimental Theater Wing and holds of Master of Social Work from Columbia University.

Wednesday Reading Series

Cristina Rivera-Garza is the award-winning author of six novels, three collections of short stories, five collections of poetry and three non-fiction books. She has translated, from English into Spanish, Notes on Conceptualisms by Vanessa Place and Robert Fitterman; and, from Spanish into English, “Nine Mexican Poets edited by Cristina Rivera Garza,” in New American Writing 31.

Prageeta Sharma is the author of four poetry collections: Bliss to Fill, The Opening Question, Infamous Landscapes and Undergloom. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at University of Montana and is co-director of the conference Thinking Its Presence: Race and Creative Writing, held at University of Montana in April 2014 and March 2015.

Friday Reading Series

Morgan Bassichis is a writer and performer whose plays include When the Baba Yaga Eats You Alive and The Witch House. Morgan’s essays have appeared in the Radical History Review, Captive Genders, and other edited volumes.

Brian Fuata is a Sydney based artist working in text and narrative performance of Samoan descent. He has performed and exhibited live and mediated works extensively in Australia since 1999. Fuata works both independently and in WrongSolo, a performance art duo with artist Agatha Gothe-Snape formed in 2009.

Monday Reading Series

Angel Nafis is a Cave Canem Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Rattling Wall, Union Station Magazine, MUZZLE Magazine, Mosaic Magazine, and Poetry Magazine. She has represented the LouderArts Poetry Project at both the National Poetry Slam and the Women of the World Poetry Slam in 2011. She is an Urban Word NYC Mentor and the founder, curator, and host of the quarterly Greenlight Bookstore Poetry Salon reading series. She is the author of BlackGirl Mansion (Red Beard Press/ New School Poetics, 2012). Facilitating writing workshops and reading poems across the United States and Canada, she lives in Brooklyn.

Bridget Talone is the author of the chapbook In the Valley Made Personal, published by Small Anchor Press. Recent work has appeared in The Atlas Review, White Elephant, The New Delta Review, and Salt Hill Journal. She lives in Queens.

Wednesday Reading Series

Michael Leong is the author of e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009) and Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions, 2012). He has also published numerous chapbooks, most recently Li Po Meets Oulipo (Belladonna*, 2015) andFruits and Flowers and Animals and Seas and Lands Do Open (Burnside Review Press, 2015).

Keston Sutherland is the author of Neocosis, Hot White Andy, Stress Position, The Stats on Infinity, The Odes to TL61P, Jenkins, Moore and Bird and other poems. His Poetical Works 1999-2015 was recently published by Enitharmon. He has published many essays, lots of them on Marx, and a book of critical theory and literary criticism, Stupefaction.

Wednesday Reading Series

“We are, thus, insistent on something structural: at most of the readings we attend, the room is mainly white. This is true even when the readers do not identify as white. This is true even when the readings happen in urban areas with an other-than-white majority. We’re also fairly confident the mainly white room defines most of the readings we didn’t attend, that it defines any number of different ‘schools’ of writing, from anything that might possibly call itself experimental to anything that might call itself lyric. From Vanessa Place to Tony Hoagland, a mainly white room. From Brown University to University of Iowa to Holy Names University, a mainly white room. From the 92nd Street Y to the St. Mark’s Poetry Project to the Omni Commons, a mainly white room.” — Juliana Spahr & Stephanie Young, “The Program Era and the Mainly White Room”

The reasons for this are what this discussion attempts to understand. In response to the findings of Spahr and Young, we’ll grapple with audience, in writing, to put forth some proposals. With Mahogany L. Browne, Cheryl Clarke, Ariel Goldberg, and Christopher Stackhouse, and contributions from Rachel Levitsky and Krystal Languell.

Monday Reading Series

Ted Rees’ recent work has appeared in Asphodel, The Drunken Boat blog, Elderly, and Armed Cell, with work forthcoming in Tripwire and ON Contemporary Practice’s monograph on New Narrative. Chapbooks include The New Anchorage (Mondo Bummer, 2014) and Outlaws Drift in Every Vehicle of Thought (Trafficker Press, 2013).

Tyrone Williams is the author of five books of poetry, c.c. (Krupskaya Books, 2002), On Spec (Omnidawn Publishing, 2008), The Hero Project of the Century (The Backwaters Press, 2009), Adventures of Pi (Dos Madres Press, 2011) and Howell (Atelos Books, 2011). He is also the author of several chapbooks, including a prose eulogy, Pink Tie (Hooke Press, 2011).

Friday Reading Series

Chialun Chang was born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan. She is a poet, translator, visual artist and an events coordinator at Belladonna* Collaborative. A recipient of two teaching fellowships, She has taught Chinese in Vietnam and Mississippi, and is a recipient of 2015 Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program from NYFA. Her most recent work has appeared or forthcoming in The Home School, The Brooklyn Rail, Bone Bouquet, iO poetry and Boog City. Two of her translation chapbooks, written by Zhang Er and Yu Wang have published by Belladonna*

Collaborative.

Cecca Ochoa’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Art XX, Aorta Magazine, Terraform, and MAKE Literary Magazine. She serves as Managing Editor for Apogee Journal.

Wednesday Reading Series

Whit Griffin is the author, most recently, of A Far-Shining Crystal (Cultural Society, 2013). His book-length poem, We Who Saw Everything, is forthcoming from Cultural Society. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Golden Handcuffs Review, Chicago Review and Hambone.

Thomas Meyer grew up in Seattle, graduated from Bard College. His most recent books of poetry are Essay Stanzas (The Song Cave) and Kintsugi (Flood Editions), and most recent translations are Easy Answers: The I Ching (BlazeVOX), Beowulf (punctum), and the Daode jing (Flood Editions). A reprint of Staves Calends Legends is in the pffering from eth press.

Friday Reading Series

STEFANO HARNEY

Stefano Harney teaches in Singapore at Singapore Management University. He is one of the artistic directors for the upcoming Bergen Assembly Triennale in Norway in 2016. He is founder with Tonika Sealy of the art and education collective Ground Provisions, and with Emma Dowling of the organisational anti-consultancy Immeasure.

FRED MOTEN

Fred Moten is author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, Hughson’s Tavern, B. Jenkins, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (with Stefano Harney), The Feel Trio and The Little Edges. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the University of California, Riverside.

This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc., through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.