"Do Chicago"

The Burning Chair Readings
presents poets from Ahsahta Press & Typo

Carrie Olivia Adams
Ben Doller
Kathleen Jesme
Forrest Gander
Brenda Hillman
Alex Lemon
Barbara Maloutas
Rusty Morrison
G.E. Patterson
Marvyn Petrucci
Stephanie Strickland

Thursday, February 12, 2008, 6-9 pm
The Empty Bottle
1035 N. Western Ave.
Chicago, IL (Home of your Chicago Cubs!)

Poets

Carrie Olivia Adams, author of Intervening Absence, works in publishing in Chicago, where she is also Poetry Editor for Black Ocean. Her poems and criticism have appeared in such journals as DIAGRAM, Cranky, Lilies and Cannonballs, No Tell Motel, Backwards City Review, and Verse. She is also the author of the chapbook A Useless Window.

Ben Doller (né Doyle) is author of FAQ: from Ahsahta Press. His first book of poems, Radio, Radio, was selected by Susan Howe as winner of the 2000 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. He has taught in West Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, and California. Wherever he lives, he lives with his wife, Sandra Doller (née Miller) and their boxador, Ronald Johnson.

Kathleen Jesme is the author of The Plum-Stone Game, published by Ahsahta Press this month. She has written two previous collections of poetry: Motherhouse, winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize, and Fire Eater. She lives in Minnesota.

Forrest Gander is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Eye Against Eye, Torn Awake, and Science & Steepleflower, all from New Directions, Gander also writes novels (As a Friend), essays (A Faithful Existence) and translates. His most recent translations are Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho, No Shelter: Selected Poems of Pura Lopez-Colome, and, with Kent Johnson, two books by the Bolivian wunderkind Jaime Saenz: The Night and Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems of Jaime Saenz. With poet C.D. Wright, Gander lives in Rhode Island, where he is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Brown University.

Matt Hart is the Editor-in-Chief of Forklift, Ohio and the author of Who's Who Vivid (Slope Editions) and three chapbooks: Revelated (Hollyridge Press), Sonnet (H_NGM_N Books) and Simply Rocket (Lame House Press). His work has appeared in many print and online journals, including Gulf Coast, H_NGM_N, Jubilat, and Octopus. He is, as always, still trying to find a way to get Polyphemus, Todd Rundgren and Haruki Murakami into his bio permanently. Travel is his rock band.

Brenda Hillman’s seven collections of poetry—White Dress, Fortress, Death Tractates, Bright Existence, Loose Sugar and Cascadia, Pieces of Air in the Epic (2005)—are from Wesleyan University Press; she has also written three chapbooks: Coffee, 3 A.M. (Penumbra Press), Autumn Sojourn (Em Press), and The Firecage (a+bend press). Hillman has edited an edition of Emily Dickinson’s poetry for Shambhala Publications and, with Patricia Dienstfrey, has co-edited The Grand Permisson: New Writings on Poetics and Motherhood (2003). A recipient of numerous awards, Hillman has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others. She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area; she is married and has a daughter.

Alex Lemon is the author of the poetry collections Hallelujah Blackout (Milkweed Editions), Mosquito (Tin House Books 2006), At Last Unfolding Congo (horse less press) and the memoir Happy (Scribner 2010). A play will be published by cinematheque press in 2010. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including Esquire, Best American Poetry 2008, AGNI, BOMB, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Open City, Pleiades and Tin House. He was awarded a 2005 Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2006 Minnesota Arts Board Grant. He co-edits LUNA: A Journal of Poetry and Translation with Ray Gonzalez and is a frequent contributor to The Bloomsbury Review.

Barbara Maloutas is the author of the Whole Marie, winner of the 2008 Sawtooth Poetry Prize, selected by C.D. Wright. Her previous books include In a Combination of Practices (New Issues, 2004) and Practices (New Michigan Press/Diagram, 2003). In 2007 Beard of Bees (Chicago) published an online chapbook, Coffee Hazilly; Segue published a series of poems and an essay on writing them. She teaches book structures and book arts at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.

Rusty Morrison’s the true keeps calm biding its story won the 2008 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, selected by Rae Armantrout, Claudia Rankine, and Bruce Smith. It also won The Ahsahta Press 2007 Sawtooth Poetry Prize, selected by Peter Gizzi, and the 2007 Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, selected by Susan Howe. Rusty Morrison’s first poetry collection, Whethering, won the Colorado Prize for Poetry (Center for Literary Publishing 2004), selected by Forrest Gander. She is a contributing editor for Poetry Flash and co-publisher of Omnidawn.

A veteran of the slam-poetry scene, G.E. Patterson was a featured poet-performer in New York’s Panasonic Village Jazz Fest. He is also the author of two poetry collections, Tug (Graywolf Press) and To and From (Ahsahta Press). His writing can be found in several magazines and anthologies, including Blues Poetry, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Poetry 180, Isn’t It Romantic, American Letters and Commentary, nocturnes: (re)view of the arts, Open City, Provincetown Arts, Seneca Review, Swerve, Xcp: Cross Cultural Poetics, and St. Mark’s Poetry Project’s Poets and Poems. After living for several years in the Northeast and on the West Coast, G.E. Patterson now makes his home in Minnesota, where he teaches.

Marvyn Petrucci is the author of Pardon Me, Madam from Cannibal Books. His poems have appeared in Typo, Black Warrior Review, The Connecticut Review, Natural Bridge, Southern Humanities Review and Third Coast. He teaches English at Auburn University.

Stephanie Strickland’s fifth book of poems, Zone : Zero (book + CD), was published in September by Ahsahta Press. Her latest collaborative hypermedia work, slippingglimpse, was introduced in Paris and shown this year at the Zaoem poetry festival in Ghent. She teaches experimental poetry and e-lit at many colleges and universities, most recently the University of Utah, and is working on a book-length series of poems, “Huracan’s Harp.”

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Hosts

The Burning Chair Readings began in the East Village of New York City and Brooklyn in 2004 and ran regularly for four years until setting up shop in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 2008. The Burning Chair orchestrated the Fran Stanford Literary Festival in Fayetteville in October 2008 and have plans in the works for future festivals focusing on alternative and southern literature as well as independent publishing and book arts.

Ahsahta Press was founded in 1974 at Boise State University; in 2000, Janet Holmes was named director and editor. The press seeks out poetry with an innovative twist and the kind of attention to language that pushes beyond craft into art; it produces books whose design takes on these high standards as well. The name "Ahsahta" comes from the Mandan word for a Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, and was first recorded by the Lewis and Clark expedition in Idaho.

Typo was founded in Fayetteville, Arkansas by Adam Clay and Matthew Henriksen in 2002. The online-only poetry magazine, which publishes established and emerging poets, is available at typomag.com.