Friday, April 10, 2020

Carrie Olivia Adams, Cynthia Cruz, Wendy McGrath, Niina Pollari + Franklin Bruno: virtual reading series #13


a series of video recordings of contemporary poets reading from their work, prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent cancellations, shut-downs and isolations; a reading series you can enjoy in the safety of your own protected space,

Carrie Olivia Adams :from Borderland”

Carrie Olivia Adams lives in Chicago with her husband and two cats. She is the Promotions and Marketing Communications Director for the University of Chicago Press and the poetry editor for Black Ocean. Her books include Operating Theater, Forty-One Jane Doe’s, and Intervening Absence as well as To be a thing of memory (forthcoming from Tolsun Books in 2021) in addition to the chapbooks Proficiency Badges (forthcoming from Meekling Press), Grapple, Overture in the Key of F, and A Useless Window. When she’s not making poems, she’s making biscuits.

Cynthia Cruz : “In the Porcelain Room,” “In the Porcelain Room,” from Guidebooks for the Dead

Cynthia Cruz is the author of six collections of poetry: Ruin (Alice James Books, 2006), The Glimmering Room (Four Way Books, 2012), Wunderkammer (Four Way Books, 2014), How the End Begins (Four Way Books, 2016), Dregs (Four Way Books, 2018) and Guidebooks for the Dead (Four Way Books, 2020). A collection of critical essays, Disquieting: Essays on Silence, was published by Book*hug in 2019.  Her second collection, The Melancholia of Class, is forthcoming from Repeater Books in 2021. A novella, Steady Diet of Nothing, is forthcoming from Four Way Books. Cruz's background is in German literature and philosophy. She regularly publishes essays and art writing in The Brooklyn Rail and Degree Critical. Cruz is the Kowald Visiting Writer in Poetry in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the City College of New York. Cruz for Fall 2019/Spring 2020. Cruz also teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and in the Columbia University Graduate Writing Department.

Wendy McGrath : “Lights” and “The Drive-in,” from A Revision of Forward (NeWest 2015)

Wendy McGrath’s most recent novel Broke City (NeWest Press) is the final book in her Santa Rosa Trilogy. Previous novels in the series are Santa Rosa and North East. Her most recent book of poetry, A Revision of Forward (NeWest Press) was released in Fall 2015. McGrath works in multiple genres--Before We Knew is her latest poetry/music collaboration with musician/producer Sascha Liebrand. She has also completed a collaborative manuscript of poems inspired by the photography of Danny Miles, drummer for July Talk and Tongue Helmet. Her poetry, fiction, and non-fiction has been widely published. 

Niina Pollari : “Self Love is Important,” from Dead Horse

Niina Pollari is the author of Dead Horse (Birds, LLC 2015) and the translator, from the Finnish, of Tytti Heikkinen's The Warmth of the Taxidermied Animal (Action Books 2013). Her latest is the split chapbook Total Mood Killer, written with merritt k and out from Tiger Bee Press in 2018. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Franklin Bruno : “Villanelle”; “Lub-Dup”

Franklin Bruno is a writer and musician based in Jackson Heights, Queens. His poetry collection is The Accordion Repertoire (Edge Books).