Hello, Spring. You’re just in time for the party. We’re celebrating all of your April showers and blooming flowers with… poetry! That’s right. In honor of you and for the love of poetry (this month and always), six remarkable poets will grace the stage to share their verse at Jimmys no. 43. At 7pm. We can’t wait!
Born to a Mexican mother and Jewish father, Rosebud Ben-Oni is a 2013 CantoMundo Fellow. A Leopold Schepp Scholar at New York University, she won the Seth Barkas Prize for Best Short Story and The Thomas Wolfe/Phi Beta Kappa Prize for Best Poetry Collection. She was a Rackham Merit Fellow at the University of Michigan where she earned her MFA in Poetry, and was a Horace Goldsmith Scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A graduate of the 2010 Women’s Work Lab at New Perspectives Theater, her plays have been produced in New York City, Washington DC and Toronto. Her work appears in Arts & Letters, B O D Y, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and Puerto del Sol. She writes the series “On 7 Train Love” for the blog of Sundog Lit. Nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, her debut book of poems SOLECISM was published by Virtual Artists Collective in March 2013. Rosebud is a co-editor for HER KIND at VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Find out more about her at 7TrainLove.org.
Joseph O. Legaspi is the author of Imago (CavanKerry Press) and the forthcoming chapbook, Subways (Thrush Press). He lives in Queens, NY and works at Columbia University. His poems appeared in Poem-A-Day from the Academy of American Poets, World Literature Today, jubilat, Gay & Lesbian Review, From the Fishouse, Sou’wester, and the anthologies Language for a New Century (W.W. Norton), Collective Brightness (Sibling Rivalry Press) and Flicker and Spark (Low Brow Press). He co-founded Kundiman (www.kundiman.org), a non-profit organization serving Asian American poetry.
Robert Ostrom is from Jamestown, New York. He is the author of TheYoungest Butcher in Illinois and two chapbooks, To Show the Living and Nether and Qualms. His poems have most recently appeared in Atlas, Guernica, and Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art. He lives in Queens and teaches at the City University of New York and Columbia University.
Karen Pittelman’s poems have been published in Keyhole, Blip, New South, The Pinch, Sojourner and Oberon. She is also the author of two non-fiction books about social justice philanthropy from Soft Skull Press. She lives in Brooklyn where she works as a writing coach and sings in the alt-country band Karen & the Sorrows.
Leah Umansky’s first book of poems, Domestic Uncertainties, has just been published by BlazeVOX [Books]. She has her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and has been a contributing writer for BOMB Magazine’s BOMBLOG, a poetry reviewer for The Rumpus and a live twitterer for The Best American Poetry Blog. Her poems can be found in such journals as: Barrow Street, Catch-up and Cream City Review among others. She is also the Host/Curator of COUPLET: a poetry and music series on the Lower East Side. Read more at her blog: http://iammyownheroine.com.
Helen Vitoria’s work can be found and is forthcoming in: The Offending Adam, PANK, The Awl, Ping Pong Journal, Rougarou, Gargoyle, Barn Owl Review, The Baltimore Review, Dark Sky Magazine, GRIST, Pebble Lake Review and many others. She is the author of nine poetry chapbooks, a poetry pamphlet from Greying Ghost Press, a full length poetry collection, Corn Exchange, Scrambler Books 2013 and a collaborative ekphrastic book of poetry and photographs forthcoming from Concepción Books, Fall 2013. Her poems have been nominated for Best New Poets & the Pushcart Prize. She edits THRUSH Poetry Journal & THRUSH Press. Find her here: http://www.helenvitoria.com
