Nuit Blanche: 9 poets 9 cities

As I mentioned in my last post, I'll be performing at Toronto's Nuit Blanche on September 29. Half of my performances will encompass the 9 Poets! 9 Cities! series coordinated by CA Conrad. For your informed convenience, here's the nitty gritty on the series and the poets whose work I'll share.

"9 poets in 9 cities have been asked to give poetry readings where poems by all 9 poets are read. There will be 9 rounds of these readings, one in the spring and one in the fall each year until all 81 poets have had their readings. Below you will see the readers, their bios, and a link to a separate page for each particular reading, which includes comment space for their audience members. Please enjoy, and I hope you attend one of these readings in your city." -- CA Conrad

Jen Coleman is a Minnesota poet living in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in ixnay, Chain, Speak Easy and EOAGH and elsewhere.

Kendall Grady studies and writes in Greencastle, IN. In July, Knutschfleck published her fledgling chapbook, I Love You. Thanks. She enjoys olives, ginger, and other things that are not food, like Bucuresti. A gender-neutral restroom is a happy restroom.

Karen Hannah is originally from Santa Maria, California. She has lived in Philadelphia, where she received her MA in Creative Writing and Literature from Temple University, and is currently living in Ilsan, South Korea, teaching kindergarten and working as a curricula editor at Koreapolyschool (KPS). Her work can be found in vol.1 of the online journal zbzz (2005), Fulcrum Annual (2004), Small Brushes, Adept Press and Thought Magazine (2002). Her work is also under experimentation within the little world of her blog at: http://thenoeticfoss.blogspot.com/. She has recently returned from Tibet, which she feels has helped to unfold her writing and poetics in new ways.

Yuri Hospodar was born in southeastern Pennsylvania in the US. After several escape attempts, he made it to Boston, the city he perhaps considers "home". Over the years he has bounced to Paso Robles, San Francisco, Prague, and back to Boston and SF. He is currently exhausted and trying to stay put for a while in Sydney, NSW, Australia. He's appeared in print and/or online in several mags (Shampoo, Carve, &c) and anthologies (most recently Bay Poetics and Queering Language), and not appeared in many, many others. His only book, To You in Your Closets (Stone Soup Press, 1990) , is long out of print. He is reclusive, disorganised, and a lousy schmoozer, so his other books have been published only, as Ginsberg would say, in Heaven.

Dorothea Lasky was born in St. Louis in 1978. Her first book, AWE, just came out this fall from Wave Books. Her poems have appeared in Crowd, 6x6, Boston Review, Delmar, Phoebe, Filter, Knock, Drill, Lungfull!, and Carve, among others. She is the author of three chapbooks: The Hatmaker's Wife (Braincase Press, 2006), Art (H_NGM_N Press, 2005), Alphabets and Portraits, (Anchorite Press, 2004). Currently, she lives in Philadelphia, where she edits the Katalanche Press chapbook series (along with poet, Michael Carr) and is pursuing her doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania.

Hoa Nguyen is the author of Dark (Mike and Dales), Parrot Drum (Leroy), Let's Eat Red for Fun (Boog), Your Ancient See Through (Subpress), Red Juice (effing) and Poems (subpress). She lives in Austin TX where she edits the magazine and book imprint Skanky Possum and curates a reading series with her partner the poet Dale Smith.

Travis Nichols grew up in Ames, Iowa. A graduate of the University of Georgia and the University of Massachusetts, he now lives in Seattle where he edits the online magazine Weird Deer and writes for the Post-Intelligencer and the Stranger. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Boston Review, The Believer, The Village Voice, Poets & Writers, Stop Smiling, Crowd, Octopus, Factorial, Lungfull and Isn't It Romantic: An Anthology of Love Poems by Younger American Poets, among other places. In 2007, he co-curated the exhibition Poets on Painters, which opened at the Ulrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Wichita, KS.

Logan Ryan Smith lives in San Francisco where he publishes TRANSMISSION PRESS chapbooks. Up until recently he published a poetry mag called small town. In the summer of 2007 the San Francisco Bay Guardian recognized him for his publishing efforts with a "Best of the Bay 2007". His first book, THE SINGERS, was published by Dusie Press Books in the same summer. Other poetry has appeared in New American Writing, Bombay Gin, Spell, string of small machines, Hot Whiskey Magazine, the tiny, Mirage #4/ Period(ical), and elsewhere, as well as in the anthologies Bay Poetics (Faux Press), and The Meat Book (Hot Whiskey). A few online chapbooks can be found at detumescence.com and dusie.org.