On June 18th, we’re celebrating 15 YEARS of literary love in NYC! That’s right: 15! For this special event, EAST meets WEST. Two superb NYC-based writers join a marvelous trio of literary talent from California, Oregon, and Washington to make magic on the stage. Join us in welcoming these indelible voices of the literary arts and let’s raise a glass to another year of phenomenal readings. At Jimmys no. 43. At 7pm.
Hari Alluri is the author of The Flayed City (Kaya) and the chapbook The Promise of Rust (Mouthfeel). His work appears in anthologies, journals and online venues, recently through Blueshift, Sundog Lit and The Margins. A VONA/Voices and Las Dos Brujas alum who has received several grants and awards, he immigrated to Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories, at age 12, and currently writes in San Diego, Kumeyaay land, where he serves as an editor at pacific Review and a co-founding editor at Locked Horn Press.
Donald Breckenridge is the author of four novels and the editor of two fiction anthologies. His latest novel, And Then, was published by Black Sparrow Press. He also engages in editorial work as the Fiction Editor of the Brooklyn Rail, the Co-Founder and Co-Editor of InTranslation, and the Managing Editor of Red Dust Books.
Michael Copperman teaches writing to low-income, first-generation students of diverse background at the University of Oregon. His prose has appeared in The Sun, The Oxford-American, Boston Review, Creative Nonfiction, Gulf Coast, Guernica, Copper Nickel, Unsaid, Post Road 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 Writers Conference. From 2002-04 he taught fourth grade in the rural black public schools of the Mississippi Delta with Teach For America, which is the subject of his memoir, Teacher (University Press of Mississippi). Find it at www.mikecopperman.com.
Kavita Das writes about culture, race, feminism, and their intersections, having worked in social change for fifteen years, on issues ranging from homelessness, to public health disparities, to racial justice. Nominated for a 2016 Pushcart Prize, Kavita’s work has been published in The Atlantic, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Washington Post, NBC News Asian America, Guernica, Quartz, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Colorlines, and elsewhere. She’s at work on a biography about Grammy-nominated Hindustani singer, Lakshmi Shankar, who played a pivotal role in bringing Indian music to the West, to be published by Harper Collins India, as well as a collection of personal essays. Find Kavita on Twitter @kavitamix and her work at kavitadas.pressfolios.com.
Heather Ryan is a single parent of three kids who also teaches full time at Wenatchee Valley College. In her spare time, which she takes pains to find, she writes fiction and creative non-fiction. Her essay “En Passant” was a notable essay in Best American Essays 2016. She’s currently working on a dystopian novel Bait, and finishing her memoir about single motherhood and travel titled Now Entering America. She also has a deep love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
This event is funded in part by Poets & Writers with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
Bonus: WORD Bookstore will be at this event to sell our writers’ books!
