(8th Anniversary Reading with Chicago Indie Presses!)
Wednesday, August 26th
7:30 PM
The writers: Adam Clay, Kathleen Rooney, Steve Halle, Mary Hamilton, Kristen Orser, and Patrick Durgin with Hannah Weiner
The presses: Cinematheque Press, Switchback Books, Cracked Slab Books, Featherproof Books, Dancing Girl Press, and Kenning Editions
Eight years in. It’s hard to believe. While we spend a lot of our time hosting poets and writers from elsewhere, as we venture into our ninth season, we thought it appropriate to turn our eye on our hometown. We’d like to celebrate the work of a selection (there are so many more!) of Chicago indie presses and their authors. Diverse in publishing vision, ideals, and execution—all committed to defining quality for themselves, the imagination, to the vast work on the part of the author to bring it to life, and to the vastly detailed work of bringing it to our hands and eyes—we salute and celebrate the necessary parts all of them play in bringing Chicago to life and the world to light. And, as always, celebrating the audience that gives us life and is our light.
Joel Craig & Chris Glomski
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Adam Clay is the author of The Wash (Parlor Press, 2006) and A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World (Milkweed Editions, forthcoming). A new chapbook, In a World of Ideas, I Feel No Particular Loyalty, is now available from Cinematheque Press. He co-edits Typo Magazine and lives in Michigan. Recent poems appear in Ploughshares, The Laurel Review, The Tusculum Review, and elsewhere. (cinemathequepress.com)
Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, and the author, most recently, of the memoir Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object and the poetry collection Oneiromance (an epithalamion), winner of the Gatewood Prize from Switchback Books. Founded in 2006, Switchback is a nonprofit feminist press publishing poetry by women. (switchbackbooks.com)
Steve Halle's first collection of poems, Map of the Hydrogen World was published by Cracked Slab Books in 2008. Halle edits the online journal Seven Corners, which publishes Chicago and Midwestern poets, and he is a staff poetry reviewer for Oranges & Sardines (O&S). He holds an MFA from New England College and is currently a PhD candidate at Illinois State University. (crackedslabbooks.com)
Mary Hamilton has had stories in SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Storyglossia, Thieves Jargon and others, and is the author of Flash Flicker Fire, available from Featherproof Books. She lives in Chicago where she's the co-founder and co-host of the QUICKIES! reading series. Featherproof Books is a young indie publisher based in Chicago, dedicated to the small-press ideals of finding fresh, urban voices. (featherproof.com)
Kristen Orser is the author of Squint, published by Dancing Girl Press. Kristen Orser is anxious. She is probably behind on work and her students are probably wondering what their grades are. She is hoping all clocks will bend backwards and take her somewhere less fast. The Dancing Girl Press Chapbook Series was founded in 2004 to publish and promote the work of women poets and artists through chapbooks, journals, book arts projects, and anthologies. (dancinggirlpress.com)
Patrick Durgin is a poet, critic, editor, publisher, and educator. His latest book is a collaboration with poet and translator Jen Hofer, The Route (Atelos, 2008). He edited the selected works of Hannah Weiner, Hannah Weiner's Open House, for Kenning Editions, of which he is the founder and publisher. Weiner (1928-1997) was an influential poet whose work bridged conceptual, intermedia, New York School, and Language school poetics. Her books include The Fast, We Speak Silent, and PAGE. (kenningeditions.com)
Danny’s Tavern is located at 1951 W. Dickens (near the intersection of Armitage and Damen). 21+ (please have ID) 773-489-6457
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Next Month:
Wednesday, September 23rd
Poetry by Kate Greenstreet and Jared Stanley
