Also, to bookend the festival, please attend two readings put on by some of the terrifically talented, thoroughly energetic MFA students. Come see some of the best of emerging writers the state offers.
So please do join us for one, two, or all of these readings. And in the coming weeks, please keep an eye out for our first call for poetry and mixed-genre chapbook submissions.
Brent Hendrick’s first book,
Thaumatrope, was published by Action Books in 2007. His work has appeared in a number of magazines, including
Black Warrior Review, Bomb, Conjunctions, Carolina Quarterly, First Intensity, Iowa Review, The New Review of Literature, Ploughshares, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, Southern Review and
Tarpaulin Sky. He is general counsel for the environmental group, the Center for Biological Diversity, and lives in Tuscaloosa with the writer, Kate Bernheimer, and their daughter Xia.
Clay Matthews has recent work in
H_NGM_N, Black Warrior Review, The Laurel Review, LIT, Court Green, Forklift, Ohio, and elsewhere. He has two chapbooks:
Muffler (H_NGM_N B_ _KS) and
Western Reruns (End & Shelf Books), which is available for free online. His first book,
Superfecta, was released by Ghost Road Press.
Brian Morrison currently attends the MFA program at the University of Alabama. He has volunteered as poetry editor for Prairie Margins, a national undergraduate literary journal, interned with Mid-American Review, and is currently an assistant editor at Black Warrior Review. He has poems upcoming in
Greatcoat and
Fourteen Hills and a previous publication at
42opus.
Daniela Olszewska is the author of two chapbooks,
The Partial Autobiography of Jane Doe (dancing girl press) and
Resort to Humming (Scantily Clad Press). Her poems have appeared in recent issues of
La Petite Zine, No Tell Motel, and
Conduit. She works as an editorial assistant for Switchback Books.
Renee Wells received her M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Her work has appeared in journals such as
The Spoon River Poetry Review, Poem, Poet Lore, Pearl, MARGIE, Backwards City Review, and
Sou’wester. She dearly wishes she had more time to write.
Saturday April 25th, 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m.
Arboretum Amphitheater
University of Alabama Arboretum
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487
(In case of rain, please go to Gorgas Library, Room 205, University of AL)Note: Please enter Arboretum Way through the Arboretum/Golf Course Gate. Due to parking restrictions, please park at the top of the golf course and walk Arboretum Way a half mile down to the arboretum’s main building where we will meet at 11:15 a.m. sharp & head to the amphitheater together.
Alex Chambers is a graduate student in poetry and nonfiction at the University of Alabama. He grows arugula on the side.
Tim Earley is the author of
Boondoggle (Main Street Rag, 2005). His poems have appeared in
Chicago Review, Muthafucka, jubilat, Fascicle, La Petite Zine, Conduit, Pindledyboz and other journals. He is the recepient of two Writing Fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and is an enthusiastic member of the Lucifer Poetics Group. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.
Kwoya Fagin is a poet from Charleston, South Carolina. She spent seven years in Tuscaloosa studying at the University of Alabama. She now lives in Birmingham, Alabama.
Bellee Jones graduated from the M.F.A. Program at Georgia College & State University in 2005. After a few years of teaching full-time, taking an M.A. in Renaissance Studies at the University of Alabama seemed the thing to do. Her apartment is full of library books, unfinished poems and correspondence, small boxes, and various types of tea. Her poems have appeared in
Rhino, honeydü, and
Roger.
Jessica Fordham Kidd lives in Coker. She loves the woods. She is associate director of the first-year writing program at the University of Alabama.
Hank Lazer is the author of 14 books of poetry, including
The New Spirit and
Days. His new collection of poems,
Portions, will appear very soon.
Lyric & Spirit: Selected Essays 1996-2008 was published by Omnidawn in 2008.
Peter Streckfus's first book,
The Cuckoo, was the 2004 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. His most recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in
Chicago Review, Colorado Review, Practice: New Writing + Art, and
Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University.
Patti White teaches creative writing and American literature at the University of Alabama. Her poems have appeared in journals including
Mississippi Review, Nimrod, North American Review, Iowa Review, and
River Styx. Her first collection of poems,
Tackle Box (2002), won the Anhinga Prize for Poetry; an award winning short film of the title poem was released in 2003 (www.tackleboxthemovie.com). Her second collection,
Yellow Jackets, was published by Anhinga Press in 2007.
Saturday April 25th, 3:00-5:30 p.m.
Little Willies
2350 Fourth St.
Tuscaloosa, AL 35401
Molly Dowd recently received an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Alabama where she served as Editor of
Black Warrior Review. Her work is forthcoming in the
Helen Burns Poetry Anthology: New Voices from the Academy of American Poets' University & College Prizes, 1999–2008.
Caroline Klocksiem grew up in South Carolina, studied Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, and received an MFA from Arizona State University. She has received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, a Swarthout Award, and a grant from the Arizona Arts and Letters Commission for her writing. Most recently, her poems appear in
Hotel Amerika, Drunken Boat, and
Shampoo. She co-edits the online journal
42opus.
Jan LaPerle received her M.F.A from Southern Illinois University. Her writing is published or forthcoming in
Subtropics, PANK, Boxcar Poetry Review, 42opus, Tar River Poetry Review, Dislocate, and elsewhere. She currently lives in East Tennessee with the poet Clay Matthews.
Kirk Pinho is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Alabama.
Nate Pritts is the author of two books of poetry –
Sensational Spectacular (BlazeVOX) and
Honorary Astronaut (Ghost Road Press) - as well as several chapbooks including the recent
Shrug (Main Street Rag),
Spring Psalter (Cannibal), and
All My Poems (SCP).
[butterfly], a collaborative work with the painter Keith Gamache, is forthcoming from Cinematheque Press. A regular reviewer for
Rain Taxi, and editor/founder of
H_NGM_N, an online journal of poetry & poetics, Nate lives with his family in Louisiana.
Abraham Smith hails from Ladysmith, Wisconsin, land of wolves, bears, sheep, deer, beer, and snapping turtles. Last year, Action Books published his
Whim Man Mammon. Last summer, Smith read in the Academy of American Poets Rooftop Reading Series. This summer, you can find him on a porch, near a baaa, with a guitar, beside the craggy moon, near a coyote, with Angus, his 2-year old nephew, singing along on every chorus.
Ray Wachter was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin and grew up in Iowa. After high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard, and traveled extensively on both coasts. He returned to the mid-west and earned a Bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Iowa. He studied creative writing at the University of Southern Mississippi where he received a PhD in English in 2006. His poems have appeared in many online and print journals and in 2007 he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He teaches in the English department at the University of Alabama.
Emily Wittman is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Alabama.
Saturday April 25th, 6:30-9:00 p.m.
Riverboat Landing Area Pavilion
1# Greensboro Ave. (Next Bama Belle Docks)
Tuscaloosa, AL 35401
Note: Please park in the parking lot for the Bama Belle and walk over to the pavilion.
daniel Ereditario was born in Ohio in 1981 and later studied at Miami University. Various video poems of his can be found at
Meshworks, an online archive of writing in performance, and other places on the web.
Pia Simone Garber is in her first year of the MFA Creative Writing Program at University of Alabama, where she is studying poetry. She is originally from Staten Island, NY.
Matt Henricksen is the author or the chapbooks
Is Holy (horse less press),
Another Word (DoubleCross Press), and
Only Grows (Cue Editions). He has recent poems in
The cultural Society and
Front Porch. He co-edits
Typo, an online poetry journal, and Cannibal Books, a literary book arts press.
Ashley McWaters’ work has appeared in
DIAGRAM, Painted Bride Quarterly, Hunger Mountain, Northwest Review, Spinning Jenny, Fairy Tale Review, Caketrain, and
Pindeldyboz, among others.
Whitework, her first book of poems, is forthcoming in the summer of 2009 from Fairy Tale Review Press. A chapbook of poems entitled
How It Began with Red is forthcoming from DoubleCross Press. She is currently an instructor at the University of Alabama.
Nathan Parker lives in Alabama with his wife Christie and two kids, Noah and Clara. Some of his poems have appeared in
American Letters & Commentary, Colorado Review, and
Conduit.
John Pursley III is the author of three chapbooks,
Supposing, for Instance, Here in the Space-Time Continuum (2009),
A Conventional Weather (2007), and
When, by the Titanic (2006).
If You Have Ghosts, his first book, was the Editor’s Prize Selection for the Zone 3 Poetry Prize and will be published in early 2010. He teaches writing and literature at Clemson University.
Lee Ann Roripaugh second volume of poetry,
Year of the Snake, was published by Southern Illinois University Press as part of the Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry and received the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award in Poetry/Prose for 2004. Her first book,
Beyond Heart Mountain (Penguin Books, 1999), was a 1998 winner of the National Poetry Series. A third volume,
On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year, will be forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press in Fall 2009. Roripaugh is an Associate Professor of English at the University of South Dakota, and blogs at Octopus' Garden.
Shanti Weiland is a lecturer in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Alabama. She holds a PhD from Southern Miss.
Saturday April 25th, Sat 10:30 p.m.-1:00 a.m.
CarpeVino
2232 Fourth Street
Tuscaloosa, AL 35401
Sarah Blackman graduated from the University of Alabama's MFA program in 2007 and is currently the Director of Creative Writing at the Fine Arts Center, a public arts high school in Greenville, South Carolina. She has published work in
Best New American Voices, 2006, Oxford-American Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, Columbia Poetry Review and
The Pinch, among other journals. In 2009 she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by a member of the Board of Contributing Editors.
Ryan J. Browne teaches poetry in Alabama state prisons with the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project. He is a Colorado native and a (soon-to-be) graduate of the University of Alabama MFA program. His work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in
Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, West Branch, Phoebe, Broadsided, Portland Review, and elsewhere.
Bruce Covey is Lecturer of Creative Writing at Emory University and the author of
The Greek Gods as Telephone Wires (Front Room Publishers),
Ten Pins, Ten Frames (Front Room),
Elapsing Speedway Organism (No Tell Books), and the forthcoming
Glass Is Really a Liquid (No Tell). His recent poems also appear or are forthcoming in
Sonora Review, Jacket, OCHO, Cake, Ping-Pong, The Best American Poetry Blogsite, and other journals. He edits the web-based poetry magazine
Coconut and curates the What’s New in Poetry reading series in Atlanta.
Matt Hart is the author of the poetry collections
Who’s Who Vivid (Slope Editions, 2006) and
YOU ARE MIST (MOOR Books, forthcoming) and the chapbooks,
Revelated (Hollyridge Press, 2005),
Sonnet (H_NGM_N Books, 2006) and
Simply Rocket (Lame House Press, 2007). A collaborative chapbook,
Deafening Leafening, with poet Ethan Paquin, has just been published by Pilot Books. Additionally, his work has appeared in many print and online journals, including
Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, Jubilat, and
Octopus. He lives and teaches in Cincinnati where he edits
Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety. His blog is:
http://www.sincerityincblogspot.com/.
MC Hyland’s most recent chapbook,
Residential As In, was released this winter by Blue Hour Press. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in
Fairy Tale Review, LIT, Fourteen Hills, H_NGM_N, Colorado Review, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Minneapolis, where she teaches letterpress and creative writing through local nonprofits and edits DoubleCross Press.
Friedrich Kerksieck runs Small Fires Press (http://www.smallfirespress.com) and is the author of two collaborative chapbooks with Aaron James McNally,
Stammer/Caw (Further Adventures) and
Cruel, Yes, But Company (Pilot). He's recently really developed a thing for tinned seafood products.
Curtis Rutherford received his B.A. in English from New Mexico State University. Currently, he is a graduate poet at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa where he is a Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Fellow. He is the recipient of the C. Peterson Creative Writing Scholarship and winner of the Robert A. Wichart Award for Poetry in 2007. Curtis is a native of Vidor, Texas.
Joseph P. Wood’s first book of poetry,
I & We, is forthcoming from CustomWord Editions in November 2010. He is also the author of two chapbooks of poetry,
Travel Writing (Scantily Clad Press) and
In What I Have Done & What I Have Failed to Do (Elixir Press). His poetry has appeared in
Beloit Poetry Journal, Drunken Boat, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Prairie Schooner, Typo, among others. He serves as an editor for Slash Pine Press.
B. J. Hollars
So you probably already know that the new beers are slowly but surely making their way to Tuscaloosa. Egans is the bar to get them, and there are a few stores stocking the new stuff too. One of these stores is right on the edge of campus - a beer store masquerading as a stationary shop. Letters (you can look at the google maps here) is right off Bryant near Tutwiler. It has a courageous number of new-to-the-state beers, and they would sure appreciate your business. We've put the list below for your perusal.
