Sunday Salon is thrilled to be hosting the fourth annual Bread Loaf Writers From the Dark Tower Reading on March 17th. Thanks to Ru Freeman, author of On Sal Mal Lane and the MC for the evening, this special event will feature talented writers of color, who’ve all had the honor of connecting and cultivating their work at past Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences, and shared their illuminations on race and identity on the Salon stage. This year’s line up of five talented, award-winning writers and a marvelous musical guest is guaranteed to bring the house down.
Michael Copperman’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Sun, The Oxford-American, Creative Nonfiction, Gulf Coast, Guernica, Copper Nickel, GOOD, Post Road, New Madrid, Camera Obscura, Brevity, Unsaid, The Oregonian and Southword, among others. He is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Munster Literature Center, the Oregon Arts Council, Literary Arts, and Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, and currently teaches writing to low-income, at-risk, first-generation students of color at the University of Oregon. From 2002-04 he taught fourth grade in the rural black public schools of the Mississippi Delta with Teach For America, and his memoir-in-progress, “Gone,” concerns that experience.
Nicole Terez Dutton’s work has appeared in Callaloo, Ploughshares, 32 Poems, Indiana Review, and Salt Hill Journal. Nicole earned an MFA from Brown University and has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Load Writers’ Conference and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is the winner of the 2011 Cave Canem Poetry Prize for her collection of poems, If One Of Us Should Fall. Nicole currently lives in Boston and is a lecturer at Boston University.
Alexandra Kleeman is a Brooklyn-based writer working on a dissertation on experimental poetics and brain science. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Conjunctions, Zoetrope, and Tin House, and is forthcoming in Gulf Coast and Henry.
Matthew Salesses was adopted from Korea at age two. He writes a column about his marriage to a Korean woman and their toddler for The Good Men Project. He also edits the fiction there. He has published stories and essays in Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, Guernica, The Rumpus, Hyphen Magazine, and others. His new book, I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying, is out in February.
Mario Alberto Zambrano grew up in Texas and was a professional, award-winning ballet dancer with major international companies such as Nederlands Dans Theater and Ballett Frankfurt for fourteen years. He has since graduated as a Riggio Fellow from The New School and is currently an Iowa Arts Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Lotería, his first novel, will be coming out this summer with HarperCollins.
MUSICAL GUEST:
Matthew Brookshire is a songwriter and performer originally from North Carolina. In 2012, Matthew’s collaboration with modern dance choreographer Keely Garfield, Twin Pines, received a Bessie Award nomination for Outstanding Production. Matthew’s music for film includes original songs for Palindromes directed by Todd Solondz. Matthew’s two albums, 8 Songs and Best Friend, are available on iTunes and elsewhere. www.matthewbrookshire.com.
