Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Switchback Books Housewarming / Release Party


Saturday, March 6th
7:30pm - 10:30pm
Fulton Street Collective
2000 W Fulton St.

You betcha we have a space at the Fulton Street Collective! We would like to invite all of you to join us in celebrating new spaces and new books. We are kicking off this new Switchback Books chapter with a housewarming and book release party.

Simone Muench, Lina ramona Vitkauskas, Carlo Matos, and our very own Brandi Homan

will be sharing from their new work. In addition to poetry, we will graciously provide beer and other various entertainments. Hope to see you there!

Simone Muench was raised in Louisiana and Arkansas and now lives in Chicago, IL. She is the author of The Air Lost in Breathing (Marianne Moore Prize for Poetry; Helicon Nine, 2000), Lampblack & Ash (Kathryn A. Morton Prize for Poetry; Sarabande, 2005), and Orange Crush (Sarabande, 2010). Her latest chapbooks are Orange Girl (dancing girl press, 2007) and Sonoluminescence written with Bill Allegrezza (Dusie Press, 2007). She also works collaboratively with Philip Jenks, writing a book of epistolary poems titled Little Visceral Carnival. She is a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, the 49th Parallel Award for Poetry, the PSA's Fine Lines Contest, the Charles Goodnow Award, the AWP Intro Journals Project Award, the Poetry Center's 9th Annual Juried Reading Award, the Frederick Stern Award for Teaching, and the PSA's Bright Lights/Big Verse Contest. She received her Ph.D from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and is director of the Writing Program at Lewis University where she teaches creative writing and film studies. Currently, she serves on the advisory board for Switchback Books and UniVerse: A United Nations of Poetry, and is an editor for Sharkforum.

Lina ramona Vitkauskas is a Lithuanian-American poet and short fiction writer who has authored three poetry books and chapbooks: Shooting Dead Films with Poets (Fractal Edge Press), Failed Star Spawns Planet/Star (dancing girl press), and THE RANGE OF YOUR AMAZING NOTHING (Ravenna Press). She is the 2009 recipient of The Poetry Center of Chicago’s 15th Annual Juried Reading award, judged by Brenda Hillman, and was nominated by Another Chicago Magazine for an Illinois Arts Council Award (in both poetry and fiction categories).

Carlo Matos is a poet, essayist and playwright. His poems have appeared in such publications as The Houston Literary Review, DIAGRAM, Radiant Turnstile, 63 Channels, and The Mad Hatters' Review. His essays and book reviews have appeared in Modern Drama, Kritikon Literarum, Puppetry Journal, The Explicator, and Origins of English Dramatic Modernism. He has also had readings and productions of his plays in cities across the country including New York, Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis, Amherst (MA), Valdez (AK), Lawrence (KS) and L.A. He currently lives in Chicago, IL where he teaches English at the City Colleges of Chicago. His first book of poems, A School for Fishermen, is available from BrickHouse Books.

Brandi Homan was raised in Iowa but grew up in Chicago. She is the author of Hard Reds (Shearsman, 2008) and Bobcat Country (Shearsman, 2010). She earned her MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago and is Editor-in-Chief of the feminist press Switchback Books.