Offsite Reading at AWP – 2p – 4p @ Mass Ave Tavern

We are hosting a reading Thursday March 7th at Mass Ave Tavern from 2p – 4p (94 Mass. Ave). Just a 5 minute walk from the Hynes Convention Center. Seven incredible Brooklyn Writers representing Crumpled Press, Press 53, Ugly Ducking Press, Tin House, and Sock Monkey Press will read new or recently published work. The readers are Lauren Belski, Nicole Callihan, Kate Hill Cantrill, Corina Copp, Terence Degnan, Martin Kleinman, and Elissa Schappell.

LAUREN BELSKI is the author of Whatever Used to Grow Around Here (Crumpled Press, 2012) and also the collective collection of fiction, The Trout Family Almanac (forthcoming, Papercut Press, 2013). Her work has appeared in StoryQuarterly, J: New Writing on Justice, The Rio Grande Review, and other literary fun mags. Though now a Brooklynite, she once lived in Boston in the summer of 2002 and worked as a barista at Trident Booksellers and also as a tour guide at the JFK Museum and Library. That was the last time she set foot in this city. And it was such a long time ago she can barely remember herself.

NICOLE CALLIHAN, formerly Nicole Hefner, writes poems, stories and essays. Her work has appeared in, among others, Painted Bride Quarterly, Salt Hill, New York Quarterly, North American Review and cream city review and has been translated into German and Spanish. A finalist for the Iowa Review’s Award for Literary Nonfiction, she was named as Notable Reading for Best American Non-required Reading and awarded Best of the Net 2010 for fiction. In addition, Nicole was a contributor to Playing with Poems, an educational textbook published by Heinemann, and is a frequent contributor to Teachers & Writers Magazine. She has received grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and from the Rockefeller Institute and is a founding member of the Brooklyn Writers Collaborative. Her book, Henry River Mill Village, which she co-authored with Ruby Young Keller was published by Arcadia Press in July 2012. Currently a teaching artist with Teachers & Writers Collaborative, as well as, a full-time Language Lecturer at New York University where she has received an Excellence in Teaching Award every year since she began in 2002, Nicole lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughters.

KATE HILL CANTRILL‘S writing has appeared in various literary publications, including Story Quarterly, Salt Hill, The Believer, Blackbird, QuickFiction, Mississippi Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Swink, Wigleaf and others. She has been awarded fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo, the Jentel Artists Residency, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the James A. Michener Fund. She has taught fiction writing at The University of the Arts, The University of Texas, and the Sackett Street Workshop. She curates the Rabbit Tales reading and performance series in DUMBO, Brooklyn and she recently published her first story collection, Walk Back From Monkey School from Press 53.

CORINA COPP is most recently the author of Miracle Mare (Trafficker 2013), and Pro Magenta/Be Met (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011), with publications forthcoming from Bad Press and Minutes Books. Poetry, performance texts, and critical writing can be found at SFMOMA’s Open Space, The Claudius App, The Cambridge Literary Review, Boston Review, BOMB, Mrs. Maybe, Hi Zero, and elsewhere. The first installment of her three-part play, The Whole Tragedy of the Inability to Love, was presented at the CUNY Graduate Center’s three-day PRELUDE 12 Festival. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

TERENCE DEGNAN is a poet and spoken word artist. He’s been published in various literary magazines including The Other Herald, The OWS Poetry Anthology, The Front Weekly, as well as in the anthology “My Apocalypse”. His two spoken word albums (2008’s “BC” & 2010’s “Calling Shotgun” ) were produced in Pittsburgh, PA and Raleigh, NC, respectively. They can be found on iTunes, Spotify, and a sundry of many, more complicated music databases. His book The Small Plot Beside the Ventriloquist’s Grave was released in August (SMP, 2012) He authored the play Unattended Packages, which saw it’s debut in 2007 in New York City and was directed by David Little. Terence was recently named the poetry editor for Sock Monkey Press in Brooklyn, NY.

MARTIN KLEINMAN will read Rain from his soon-to-be published collection of short fiction, Home Front. He is a New York-based storyteller that has captivated audiences with his tales of Real New Yorkers in venues from KGB to Brooklyn’s Union Hall. Born and raised in The Bronx, Kleinman has lived and worked throughout New York City and, today, resides in the northwest Bronx, high atop a mountain overlooking the Hudson River. He is honored to have his first reading outside of New York here in Boston. He promises to keep his references to NYC sports teams to a minimum.

ELISSA SCHAPPELL is an American novelist, short story writer, editor and essayist. Her first book of fiction, Use Me, a collection of ten linked short stories, was published in 2000 by William Morrow, and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. She is the co-founder of the literary magazine Tin House and Editor-at-Large. She was previously a Senior Editor at The Paris Review. Schappell has co-edited two anthologies of essays The Friend Who Got Away, published in 2005 by Doubleday and Money Changes Everything, published in 2007 by Doubleday. She is a Contributing-editor at Vanity Fair, and author of the “Hot Type” book column. Her second book of fiction, Blueprints for Building Better Girls, was published by Simon and Schuster in 2012