Zurawski, Kunin, Conrad to hit "Kansas City" on Midwest Tour.

An Actual Kansas Reading Series, which actually happens in Lawrence, Kansas and not Kansas City, Missouri, will host three fabulous cross-_______ writers on

Friday, March 6, 2009 @ 7pm


in the


6 Gallery (716.5 Massachusetts Street, downtown Lawrence).

The three writers are:


Magdalena Zurawski is a Minor American writer living in Durham, North Carolina. Her novel, The Bruise, was published by FC2 in 2008. Visit her blog for links to things like interviews (like this one at X Poetics) and to keep up.








Aaron Kunin grew up in Minneapolis, was educated at Brown, John Hopkins and Duke, and is an Assistant Professor of 18th-Century English Literature at Pomona College in Claremont, California. His work has appeared in Boston Review, FENCE, The Germ, No: A Journal of the Arts, The Poetry Project Newsletter, The Poker, UbuWeb, and elsewhere. His poetry collection Folding Ruler Star and his novel The Mandarin were both published by FENCE Books.

CA Conrad's childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He escaped to Philadelphia the first chance he got where he lives and writes today with The PhillySound poets. Soft Skull Press published his book Deviant Propulsion in 2006. Jack Kimball's FAUX Press recently published his new series of poems (Soma)tic Midge (samples from this new work can be seen in listenlight and MiPOesias and Sawbuck and COCONUT#9). The Book of Frank is forthcoming in fall of 2008 from CHAX Press. A selection of The Book of Frank was translated into German by Berlin poet Holger, and a bilingual chapbook is now available from Carrie Hunter's YPOLITA Press. His book advanced ELVIS course will be coming out in spring of 2009. A collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled The City Real & Imagined: Philadelphia Poems, will be coming out in fall of 2009 from Factory School Press.

This Sunday! December 7! 7 O'clock!

Please come to our An Actual Kansas Poetry Reading and Christmas Cookie Eating Party on Sunday Night at 7 p.m. at the lovely Gallery 6. This Actual Kansas features two tireless poets who have found their ways near Kansas, and who we are excited to bring to you.

Matthew Henriksen edits Typo & Cannibal Books. Recent poems appear in The Cultural Society, Third Coast, Handsome Journal, and Poemeleon. He recently moved back to Fayetteville, Arkansas, from Brooklyn, but like many good poets, he is a native of Wisconsin and an avid baseball fan.

Jordan Stempleman is the author of Their Fields (Moria, 2005), What’s the Matter (Otoliths, 2007), Facings (Otoliths, 2007), The Travels (Otoliths, 2008), and String Parade (BlazeVOX, 2008). Individual poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Big Bell, Court Green, The Hat, Jacket, and New American Writing. He lives in Prairie Village, Kansas, teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute, and is the Associate Editor of The Continental Review.

Moria: http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html

Otoliths: http://stores.lulu.com/l_m_young

BlazeVOX: http://www.blazevox.org/catalog.htm

The Continental Review: http://www.thecontinentalreview.com/

Actual Kansas Pictures

Much thanks to Elaine Litzau for her impromptu intro of me at Mike, Karl, and Jim's reading, and for these pictures of said reading:

Mike Hauser, reading from Psychic Headset.

Jim "McCracken" McCrary.

K. Kenneth Saffran.

Farts.

"Buddies."

Friday Night Reading!

Friday / November 7, 2008 / 7pm

6 Gallery

(716.5 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence, KS)

Katy Lederer is the author of the poetry collection, Winter Sex (Verse Press, 2002) and the memoir Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers (Crown, 2003), which Publishers Weekly included on its list of the Best Nonfiction Books of the Year and Esquire Magazine named one of its eight Best Books of the Year. Her second poetry book, The Heaven-Sent Leaf was recently released by BOA Editions, and will be available at the reading.

Katy's poems and prose have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Harvard Review, GQ, and elsewhere. She has been anthologized in Body Electric (Norton), From Poe to the Present: Great American Prose Poems (Scribner), and State of the Union (Wave Books), among other compilations. She serves as a Poetry Editor of Fence Magazine.

Katy is keeping a blog about her current book tour.

Given An Actual Kansas' obsession with tha skrilla/tha cheddah/cash money, this blurb on Katy's new book is appropriate to include here:

. . . Lederer charts her speakers' interior landscapes according to the [New York C]ity's highly monetized geography, viewing life in the big city through the lens of expenditure— not just of money, but of all that money signifies. In poems that are both heartfelt and ruthlessly critical of our current financial milieu, in which the fates of individuals are packaged, priced out, and then bundled for sale on the open market, Lederer proves Robert Graves's famous observation wrong: though there may be no money in poetry, there is indeed poetry in money.

Katy works at "a hedge fund in midtown Manhattan."


Kazim Ali is is the author of two books of poetry, The Far Mosque (Alice James Books), winner of Alice James Books' New England/New York Award, and The Fortieth Day (BOA Editions 2008). He is also the author of the novel Quinn’s Passage (blazeVox books), named one of Chronogram magazine's Best Books of 2005.

He is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College and teaches in the low-residency MFA program of the University of Southern Maine. His work has been featured in many national journals such as Best American Poetry 2007, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Barrow Street, jubilat, and Massachusetts Review. He is one of the founding editors of Nightboat Books.

For excerpts and audio, to order books, and for other things Kazim Ali, visit his website.

McCrary, Hauser, Saffran to read at 6 Gallery.

Karl Saffran (b. 1981) works as Bookstore Guru at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee. He recently read his "dead wrestler sonnets" at an event involving live wrestlers. He is the only other person I know who is in horrible debt but doesn't change his spending habits. He is also the only person that can bring me to tears with personal criticism. He co-curates Salacious Banter Reading Series with Mike Hauser, who has said Karl looks like a bearded Peter Lorre.








Mike Hauser (b. 1978) is the author of several chapbooks of poetry, most recently Psychic Headset (Mitzvah Chaps, 2008) and Close Gauge Petcock (Dodo, 2007). His blog, The Last Billowy Shirt, provides absurd respite to all who visit. He co-curates the Salacious Banter Reading Series in Milwaukee with Karl Saffran, who has said Mike resembles a young Wilhelm Reich. Here are some poems by Mike in Dusie #5.






Jim McCrary (b. ????) is a Lawrence dood whose collected chapbooks are forthcoming (2008) by ManyPenny Press. His list of “poetic friends” includes or has included Paul Blackburn, Tom Beckett, David Ignatow, Kenneth Irby, John Moritz, and countless others. He probably now hates me for "name-dropping". But he is generous, and will probably get over it. Here are poems by Jim in Locus Point.












When: 26 October 2008, 7pm

Where: 6 Gallery (716 1/2 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence, KS)

How much: Free (but you can buy books and donate monies for traveling poets)

An Actual September 12: Brandon Brown and Judith Roitman

Brandon Brown is a poet and translator from Kansas City, Missouri. His poems have appeared or are about to appear in Abraham Lincoln, Aufgabe, Dusie, Small Town, and Work (alphabetically). Cy Press published a chapbook Memoirs of My Nervous Illness and Transmission Press published another one, 908-1078, both in 2006. TAXT Press in Oakland will publish Camels! in 2008; Mitzvah Chaps will Publish Wondrous Things I Have Seen in 2009. He currently co-curates The (New) Reading Series at 21 Grand Gallery with Alli Warren and publishes small press books under the imprint OMG!

Here is a short blog post where Brandon talks about himself and also links to several places where he has been published on-line.






Judith Roitman is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Kansas where she is, this semester, teaching "abstract algebra." Her poetry (and I'm just copying and pasting this from Judy's KU site now) "has appeared in First Intensity, Spectaculum, Black Spring, Bird Dog, Locus Point, and 31 (an unbound chapbook anthology). A chapbook, The stress of meaning: variations on a line of Susan Howe, was published in 1997 by Standing Stones Press, a second chapbook, Diamond Notebooks, was published in 1998 by nominative press collective, and a third chapbook, Slippage, was published in 1999 by Potes and Poets Press. A book No Face: Selected and New was published in 2008 by First Intensity Press. A chapbook (actually, a bunch of unbound cards) Ku: a thumb book is forthcoming from Crane's Bill Books."