CAROLINA WREN PRESS & COCKEYED PRESS present an evening with four poets
7pm, Friday, May 29th, 2009
Sound Pure, 808 Washington Street Durham, NC 27701

Shirlette Ammons
Karen Leona Anderson
Andrea Selch
Chris Tonelli

Shirlette Ammons is the author of Stumphole Aunthology of Bakwoods Blood (Big Drum Press, 2002) and Matching Skin, featuring the John Anonymous EP (Carolina Wren Press, 2008). Her work recently appeared in The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South and What Your Momma Never Told You: True Stories about Love and Sex. She has received a John Hope Franklin Grant for Documentary Studies, the Ebony-Harlem Award for Literary Talent, as well as Emerging Artist Grants from the Durham Arts Council and the United Arts Council. She was a Cave Canem Fellow in 2008. She is also vocalist and co-bassist for the hip-hop rock band Mosadi Music, whose debut album,
The Window, was released in 2006.

Chris Tonelli co-curates The So and So Series and is the author of No Theater (Brave Men Press, forthcoming), For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press, forthcoming), A Mule-Shaped Cloud (with Sarah Bartlett, horse less press, 2008), and WIDE TREE: Short Poems (Kitchen Press, 2006). He edits the Golden Gloves Chapbook Series for Rope-A-Dope Press and is the On-Line Editor for Blcak Ocean. He teaches at N.C. State in Raleigh.

Andrea Selch has an MFA from the UNC-Greensboro, and a PhD from Duke University. Her poetry has appeared in Calyx, The Greensboro Review, The Asheville Poetry Review, Luna, The MacGuffin, Oyster Boy Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others, as well as on the Best American Poetry Website. She received a 2008 “Hippo” Award from The Monti for her spoken story, "Replacement Child.” Her three collections of poetry are Succory (Carolina Wren Press, 2000), Startling (Turning Point, 2004) and Boy Returning Water to the Sea: Koans for Kelly Fearing (Cockeyed Press, 2009). She has directed the Carolina Wren Press since 2002.

Karen Leona Anderson, author of Punish honey (Carolina Wren Press, 2009), has an MFA from the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, an MA from Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, and a PhD from Cornell University. Her poems have appeared in jubilat, Verse, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, The New Republic, Fence, Sycamore Review, Pleiades, Third Coast, Columbia, Volt, Colorado Review, Sonora Review, and Poetry Ireland Review. She is an assistant professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.