No Thousands "at" AWP

Friday, February 13, 2009 at 6:00pm
The Empty Bottle
1035 N. Western Ave.
Chicago, IL

Black Ocean:
From early silent films to early punk rock, Black Ocean brings together a spectrum of influences and combines them with a radical social perspective on the nature of art and humanity. We manifest our aesthetic in the books we print, the shows we produce, and the work we promote. Based out of Boston, New York and Chicago, our intent is to saturate the public with skillful and passionate forms of expression through a wide variety of mediums. In conjunction with our book releases, we stage parties, concerts, exhibitions and other celebrations around the country. We are committed to promoting artists we firmly believe in, and sharing our enthusiasm for their work with a global audience.

Johannes Göransson was born in Sweden, but has lived around the US for several years. He is the author of: Dear Ra (Starcherone, 2008), Pilot (Fairy Tale Review Press, 2008) and A New Quarantine Will Take My Place (Apostrophe Books, 2007)—and the chapbook Majakovskij en tragedy (Dos Press, 2008). He is also the translator of: Collobert Orbital by Johan Jonsson, Gingerbread Monuments by Victor Johansson & Klara Kallstrom, Remainland: Selected Poems by Aase Berg and Ideals Clearance by Henry Parland. He is the co-editor of Action Books and the online journal Action, Yes.

Joshua Harmon is the author of Quinnehtukqut, a novel. His fiction, poems, and essays have appeared in many journals, including Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, New England Review, Southern Review, and Verse. A graduate of Marlboro College and Cornell University, he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and the Dutchess County Arts Council. He likes rainy days, vinyl records, bicycles, pit bulls, tube amplification, and single malt whisky.


Cannibal Books:
Cannibal Books publishes hand-sewn literary journals and chapbooks which focus on divergent and emerging poetics. While our products fit into the category of book arts, the focus is entirely on presenting daring work from a broad range of styles. An aesthetic definition cannot define the hunger. Founded in Brooklyn, NY in 2004, Cannibal Books currently nests in Fayetteville, AR.

Claire Donato is an MFA Literary Arts candidate at Brown University in Providence, RI. Recent poems have been published in Caketrain, Coconut, Harp & Altar, and Cannibal. A first chapbook, Someone Else's Body, is forthcoming from Cannibal Books in 2009. Her hometown is Pittsburgh, PA.

Kevin Holden is from Rhode Island and lives and teaches in Iowa. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as Colorado Review, Ecopoetics, The Harvard Advocate, The Liberal, Parcel and Typo.


Forklift, Ohio:
Eric Appleby and Matt Hart founded Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking and Light Industrial Safety in 1995 (that's 14 years without a lost time accident!), and since then have published 19 issues of the journal, several chapbooks, numerous recipes, and all manner of light industrial effects. Operations-wise, the journal now is pretty much exactly the same as it was in the beginning, except now Hart and Appleby have some help: Brett Price is the Assistant Poetry Editor. Merrill Feitell is the Assistant Fiction Editor. And Tricia Suit is the Test Kitchen Supervisor. Issue 20 of Forklift, Ohio will appear at this year's AWP Conference in Chicago, along with chapbooks by Russell Dillon and Alexis Orgera, and a book-book called 31 Poems by Dean Young. Learn more about Forklift, Ohio at: www.forkliftohio.com.

Russell Dillon was born in New York during the mid 70s and hasn't been able to get over it. However, in an effort to put the past behind him, he's attended a number of schools in various places, learned things at each one of them, and received degrees from Emerson College and the Bennington Writing Seminars. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alligator Juniper, Big Bell, Forklift, Ohio, and Tight, among others. He currently lives in San Francisco, where he does almost everything life asks of him.

Alexis Orgera is freelance writer/editor based in Florida and the Assistant Director of the Writing Resource Center at the New College of Florida. Her work has appeared in Bat City Review, DIAGRAM, Folio, Forklift, Ohio, Green Mountains Review, Gulf Coast, jubilat, storySouth, and The Rialto, among others. Her website is www.alexisorgera.com.

Dean Young has published ten books of poetry, recently Elegy on Toy Piano, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Primitive Mentor. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, two from the National endowment for the Arts as well as an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has taught in the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College and was on the permanent faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop until becoming the William Livingston Chair of Poetry at the University of Texas at Austin in 2008. A book on poetics, The Art of Recklessness will be published in 2010.


Octopus Books:
Octopus Magazine was founded in 2003 & through its 11 issues has showcased the best of emerging poets. Additionally the magazine has published the work of such established writers as Paul Muldoon, Barbara Guest & CD Wright. Octopus Books is a small press founded in
2006, which has published hand-made, limited edition chapbooks & full-length books. Their first two full length book releases are Eric Baus' Tuned Droves and Julie Doxsee's Undersleep.

Eric Baus is the author of The To Sound (Verse Press/Wave Books), Tuned Droves (Octopus Books) and several chapbooks. His poems have appeared in Hambone, Web Conjunctions, The Poets On Painters
Anthology, and elsewhere. He edits Minus House chapbooks and lives in Denver.

Shane McCrae went to school at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and Harvard Law. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The American Poetry Review, American Letters & Commentary, African
American Review, Colorado Review, New Orleans Review and others. His chapbook, One Neither One, is forthcoming from Octopus Books. He lives in Iowa City.


Rope-A-Dope Press:
Founded in the spring of 2007 by painter Robert daVies and poet Mary Walker Graham, Rope-a-Dope Press fosters collaborations between artists, writers, and their communities through the publication of handmade, letterpress printed chapbooks, broadsides, and artists' books.

Sampson Starkweather is the author of City of Moths from Rope-A-Dope Press and The Photograph from horse less press. He lives in the woods alone.

Chris Tonelli is the author of three chapbooks: For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press, forthcoming), A Mule-Shaped Cloud (w/ Sarah Bartlett, horse less press, 2008), and WIDE TREE: Short Poems (Kitchen Press, 2006). He teaches at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC.