Tuesday, December 30, 2014

January 19th Readings: Jeffrey Condran, Kate Wyer, James Magruder, and Rosalia Scalia

Jeffrey Condran is the author of the story collection, A Fingerprint Repeated. His debut novel, Prague Summer, was published by Counterpoint in August 2014. His fiction has appeared in journals such as The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, and Epoch, and has been awarded the 2010 William Peden Prize and Pushcart Prize nominations. He is an Assistant Professor of English at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and the Co-founder of Braddock Avenue Books.

Kate Wyer is the author of the novel Black Krim (Cobalt Press). Her work can be found in The Collagist, Unsaid, PANK, elimae, wigleaf, and other journals. Wyer is the recipient of the Joan Scott Memorial Fiction and Elizabeth Woodward Reese awards. She received a fellowship from FENCE to study in Lithuania with the Summer Literary Seminars. In addition to writing, she is the manager of a non-profit in the public mental health system. www.katewyer.wordpress.com

James Magruder's stories have appeared in New England Review, The Normal School, The Gettysburg Review, Bloom, Subtropics, and the anthologies Boy Crazy and New Stories from the Midwest, among others. His debut novel, Sugarless (University of Wisconsin Press), was a Lambda Literary Award finalist and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelists Award and the 2010 William Saroyan International Writing Prize. His first story collection, Let Me See It, published in June 2014 from TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press.

Rosalia Scalia's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Amarillo Bay; The Baltimore Review; Blue Lake Review; Crack The Spine; The Oklahoma Review; North Atlantic Review; and Willow Review, among others. The first chapter of her novel-in-progress, Delia's Concerto, was one of seven finalists in a competition held by the National League of American Pen Women and a more recent version was published as a story titled “Soul Music,” in Crack The Spine #109. Her story, “Henry’s Fall,” was a finalist in the Gival Press Short Story competition, and her story “Uncharted Steps” merited a 2010 Individual Artist Grant from the Maryland State Art Council. “Sister Rafaele Heals the Sick,” first published by Pebble Lake Review and nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005, appeared again in an anthology titled City Sages: Baltimore (CityLit Press, May 1, 2010). Her story, “You’ll Do Fine,” was a recipient of the Willow Review Award for the Spring 2011 issue and a previous version of her story collection, Sister Rafaele Heals the Sick & Other Stories, was shortlisted in the 2013 Santa Fe Writers Project Fiction Awards. Scalia, who earned a masters in writing from Johns Hopkins University, lives in Baltimore.

Thursday, October 30, 2014

November 17th Readings: Mikita Brottman, Elizabeth Evitts-Dickinson, Sara Lippman, and Dolan Morgan

Come celebrate our first year (and final reading of 2014) with debut collections, dogs, and decor!

Mikita Brottman is an Oxford-educated scholar, critic, and psychoanalyst. Her books include Hyena and Thirteen Girls and her latest, The Great Grisby: Two Thousand Years Of Literary, Royal, Philosophical, And Artistic Dog Lovers And Their Exceptional Animal (Harper 2014). She is a professor for the Department of Humanistic Studies and co-director of the MA Program of Critical Studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

For nearly two decades, Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson has written about architecture, design, and cities for national publications like The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Slate, The Atlantic’s CityLab, and Fast Company, among others. She began writing fiction in 2011 and her short stories have since published in PANK, Revolver, and The Little Patuxent Review. She received an Individual Artist Award in Fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council in 2013 and her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her stories have been a finalist for the Orlando Prize, the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, and the Writers@Work Fellowship, and she has been awarded fiction fellowships to the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and the Vermont Studio Center. This past spring she was a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Elizabeth teaches writing in the Graphic Design MFA program at MICA and is a contributing editor with Architect magazine.

Sara Lippmann is the author of the story collection Doll Palace. Her stories have been published in The Good Men Project, Wigleaf, Slice magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, Joyland and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2012 fellowship in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts and co-hosts the Sunday Salon, a longstanding reading series in the East Village.

Dolan Morgan is the author of That's When the Knives Come Down (Aforementioned Productions, 2014) and an editor at The Atlas Review. His work can be found in The Believer, The Lifted Brow, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, apt, Pank, Field, The Collagist, and elsewhere.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

October 27 Readings: Susan Coll, Howard Norman, and Betsy Boyd

Howard Norman is a three-time winner of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and a winner of the Lannan Award for fiction. His 1987 novel, The Northern Lights, was nominated for a National Book Award, as was his 1994 novel The Bird Artist. He is also author of the novels The Museum Guard, The Haunting of L, and Devotion. His books have been translated into twelve languages. Norman teaches in the MFA program at the University of Maryland. He lives in Washington, D.C., and Vermont with his wife and daughter.
photo credit: Lauren Shay Lavin







Susan Coll is the author of The Stager (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus, and Giroux). Her other books include Beach Week, Acceptance, Rockville Pike, and karlmarx.com. Acceptance was made into a television movie starring Joan Cusack. She is the events and programs director at Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, DC.
Betsy Boyd's fiction has been published most recently in Shenandoah, Sententia, Welter, and Verb. Her short story "Scarecrow" received a Pushcart Prize. She is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council award, an Elliot Coleman Writing Fellowship, a James A. Michener Fellowship and residencies through Fundación Valparaíso, the Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program for Artists, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. She teaches creative writing at the University of Baltimore and serves as literary editor for Baltimore Fishbowl.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

September 22nd Readings: Robin Black, Dylan Landis, and Julia Fierro

Robin Black’s story collection If I loved you, I would tell you this, was published by Random House in 2010 to international acclaim by publications such as O. Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Irish Times, and more. Her stories has been noticed four times for Special Mention by the Pushcart Prizes and also deemed Notable in The Best American Essays, 2008, The Best Nonrequired Reading, 2009 and Best American Short Stories, 2010. She holds degrees from Sarah Lawrence College and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Her debut novel is Life Drawing (Random House 2014).
Dylan Landis is the author of the debut novel Rainey Royal (Soho Press 2014), and Normal People Don’t Live Like This, a linked story collection. Her fiction has appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories 2014 and in Bomb, Tin House, and Best American Nonrequired Reading, and she has won a fellowship in fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts. Landis has covered medicine for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and interior design for the Chicago Tribune, and has written six books on decorating. She lives in New York City.
Julia Fierro's debut novel, Cutting Teeth was published by St. Martin's Press. Her work has been published, or is forthcoming, in Guernica, Ploughshares, Poets & Writers, Glamour, and other publications, and she has been profiled in the L Magazine, The Observer, and The Economist. In 2002, she founded the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop, and what started as eight writers meeting in her Brooklyn kitchen has grown into a creative home for over 2,500 writers.

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

August 25 Readings: Michael Kimball, Sarah Pinsker, and Matthew Zingg

Michael Kimball is the author of seven books, including Galaga, Big Ray, and Dear Everybody. His work has been translated into a dozen languages, and featured on NPR's "All Things Considered" and in Vice, as well as in The Guardian and Bomb.
Sarah Pinsker's novelette "In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind," won the 2014 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and was a finalist for the Nebula Award. Her fiction has been published in magazines including Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, the Baltimore City Paper, and more, and in anthologies including Long Hidden, Fierce Family, and The Future Embodied. She co-hosts the Baltimore Science Fiction Society's Dangerous Voices Variety Hour, a reading series/quiz show. She is also a singer/songwriter with three albums on various independent labels and a fourth forthcoming. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Matthew Zingg's work can be found in Blackbird, Muzzle, Sink Review, The Madison Review, The Awl, HTML Giant, 32 Poems, The Rumpus, The Paris-American, and Everyday Genius among others. Originally from Tennessee, Zingg now lives in Baltimore, where he host the Federal Dust Reading Series.

Monday, June 16, 2014

July 7th Readings: Paula Bomer, Michael Downs, and Megan Stielstra

(All Starts Here! events begin at 7 pm)



Paula Bomer is the author of the collection, Inside Madeleine (Soho Press, May 2014), the novel Nine Months (Soho Press, August 2012), which received exuberant reviews in The Atlantic, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, and elsewhere. Her collection, Baby and Other Stories (Word Riot Press, December 2010), received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, calling it a “lacerating take on marriage and motherhood…not one to share with the Mommy and Me group”, Kirkus Review deemed it “a worthy, if challenging, entry into the genre of transgressional fiction”, and O Magazine referred to it as a “brilliant, brutally raw debut.” Links to various work, interviews and more can be found here. She also is the publisher of Sententia Books and edits Sententia: The Literary Journal.






Michael Downs is the author of The Greatest Show (Louisiana State University Press), a collection of linked stories featuring the famous Hartford Circus Fire of 1944, in which a circus tent burned during a matinee killing more than 150 people. His first book book, House of Good Hope (University of Nebraska Press), won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize. His recent fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Missouri Review, New Letters, River Teeth, The Kenyon Review, and AARP: The Magazine. A former newspaper reporter, he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. He lives in Baltimore’s Hamilton neighborhood, and teaches at Towson University.







Megan Stielstra is the author of Once I Was Cool, Everyone Remain Calm and the Literary Director of the 2nd Story storytelling series. She’s told stories for all sorts of theaters, festivals, and bars including The Goodman, The Steppenwolf, and The Museum of Contemporary Art. Her writing has appeared in Best American Essays 2013, The Rumpus, The Nervous Breakdown, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at Columbia College Chicago.

Monday, May 5, 2014

May 12th Readings: Lisa Gornick, Gabriel Brownstein, Mary Kay Zuravleff, Stephen Dixon

Please join us for this special segment of Starts Here! at the Artifact hosted by author Jane Delury!

Gabriel Brownstein is the author of a collection of stories, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt 3W (winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award) and a novel, The Man from Beyond (a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice). His short fiction has recently appeared or will soon appear in Agni, Glimmer Train, The Harvard Review, the Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere. He teaches at St. John's University in Queens, New York.
Stephen Dixon was born in 1936 in New York City. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1958 and is a retired faculty member of Johns Hopkins University. He is also a two-time National Book Award nominee, for his novels Frog and Interstate. He still hammers out his fiction on a vintage typewriter. His latest novel is His Wife Leaves Him.
Lisa Gornick is the author of two novels: Tinderbox and A Private Sorcery. Her stories and essays have appeared widely, including in Agni, Prairie Schooner and The Sun, and have received many awards. She holds a B.A. from Princeton, a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Yale, and is a graduate of the writing program at NYU and the psychoanalytic training program at Columbia. A collection of linked stories, Louisa Meets Bear, is forthcoming.
Mary Kay Zuravleff's latest novel, Man Alive!, was chosen as a 2013 Notable Book by The Washington Post, which called it "a family novel for smart people." People Magazine praised its "impressive intelligence and sly humor." Her first novel, The Frequency of Souls, was hailed by The Chicago Tribune as "a beguiling and wildly inventive debut novel," and The New York Times deemed her second book, The Bowl Is Already Broken, "a tart, affectionate satire of the museum world." Honors for her work include the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award and the James Jones Award. Mary Kay lives in Washington, DC, where she serves on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and is a co-founder of the DC Women Writers Group.

Friday, April 11, 2014

April 28th Readings: Maud Casey, D. Foy, and Joseph Riippi

Maud Casey is the author of the novels The Man Who Walked Away, The Shape of Things to Come (a New York Times Notable Book), and Genealogy; and a collection of stories, Drastic. She is the recipient of the Calvino Prize and has received fellowships from the Fundación Valparaiso, Hawthornden International Writers Retreat, Château de Lavigny, Dora Maar, and the Passa Porta residency at Villa Hellebosch. Casey teaches at the University of Maryland and lives in Washington, D.C.
D. Foy is the author of the novel Made to Break. His story, “Barnacles of the Fuzz,” appeared in Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial, edited by Cal Morgan. His essay on the American laundromat came out in Snorri Bros.’s Laundromat, an homage in photographs to the laundromats of New York City (powerHouse Books). His work has appeared in Revolver and in Post Road, along with other work in Frequencies, Salon, The Literary Review, The Georgia Review, and BOMB, to name a few. He lives in Brooklyn.
Joseph Riippi is the author of A Cloth House, The Orange Suitcase, and Do Something! Do Something! Do Something! and a chapbook called Treesisters. His latest is Puyallup, Washington (an interrogation), from Publishing Genius Press, and two novels will come out in 2014 from Civil Coping Mechanisms, Because, and Research (A Novel for Performance). He lives with his wife in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

March 31st Readings: Pamela Erens, John Rowell, and Jennifer Lee, 7 pm

Pamela Erens’s second novel, The Virgins, published by Tin House Books, was heralded by John Irving in The New York Times Book Review as "flawlessly executed and irrefutably true." It was named a Best Book of 2013 by The New Yorker, The New Republic, Library Journal, and Salon. Pamela's debut novel, The Understory, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. It will be reissued on April 15 by Tin House Books. Pamela’s short fiction, reviews, and essays have appeared in a wide variety of literary, cultural, and mainstream publications, including Chicago Review, Boston Review, New England Review, Tin House, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, The New York Times, and Elle.
John Rowell is the author of the short story collection The Music of Your Life, a finalist for the 2004 Ferro-Grumley Prize for Best Fiction Book of the Year. His stage adaptation of his book, with the same title, opened at the Jermyn Street Theater in London’s West End in November of 2010, and was a 2012 semi-finalist at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s National Playwrights Conference. A native of North Carolina, John holds a BA from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MFA in Writing and Literature from the Writing Seminars at Bennington College. His fiction, essays, and reviews have been featured in such publications as Tin House, Bloom, Theatermania, and Show Business Weekly, among others. Most recently, John was represented with a story in Long Story Short: Flash Fiction From Sixty-Five of North Carolina’s Finest Writers, published by UNC Press, and he is currently at work on a novel entitled People Come and Go So Quickly Here.

Jennifer Lee is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins MA Writing Program. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in JMWW, Brink Magazine, The Potomac Review, the Bellevue Literary Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, and Cobalt. Her work has won the Maryland Writers’ Association short fiction prize and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She recently finished writing a novel and is hard at work on a pair of novellas and a looming science fiction trilogy. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

February 10th, 7 pm: Jane Delury, Rob Roberge, and Gina Frangello

Jane Delury’s fiction has appeared in publications including The Southern Review, Narrative, The Yale Review, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. She is the Klein Professor of Writing and Literature at the University of Baltimore.






Rob Roberge is the author of four books of fiction: The Cost of Living (Other Voices Books 2013), Working Backwards From the Worst Moment of My Life (Red Hen 2010), More Than They Could Chew (Harper Perennial 2005) and Drive (Hollyridge 2001). A core faculty member at UCR/Palm Desert’s MFA, his stories and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He plays guitar and sings with the LA bands The Danbury Shakes and The Urinals. www.robroberge.com





Gina Frangello is the author of three books of fiction: A Life in Men (Algonquin 2014), Slut Lullabies (Emergency Press 2010) and My Sister’s Continent (Chiasmus 2006). She is the Sunday editor for The Rumpus and the fiction editor for The Nervous Breakdown, and is on faculty at UCR-Palm Desert's low residency MFA program in Creative Writing. The longtime Executive Editor of Other Voices magazine and Other Voices Books, she now runs Other Voices Queretaro (www.othervoicesqueretaro.com), an international writing program. She can be found at www.ginafrangello.com