Sunday, September 6, 2015

September 21st readings: Melissa Wyse, Anthony Moll, Ashlie Kauffman, and Emily Mitchell

Anthony Moll is a poet, essayist, and military veteran. He writes about books for Baltimore Gay Life, and about queer life for Baltimore City Paper. He has taught writing at University of Baltimore and the University of California, Santa Cruz, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts from the former. His forthcoming chapbook of poems,Go to the Ant, O Sluggard, is to be released this fall by akinoga press.

Ashlie Kauffman holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and an MFA in Fiction from the University of Maryland. Her recognitions include an Individual Artist Award in Fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council as well as residencies from the Vermont Studio Center and the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. She's had work published in Washington Square, Quarterly West, and The Light Ekphrastic, and is Senior Poetry Editor for the online journal jmww, for which she administers The Claudia Emerson Poetry Chapbook Award, in honor of the late Claudia Emerson.
Melissa Wyse is a fiction writer from Baltimore. Her work has appeared in such publications as Shenandoah, Urbanite, and decomP. She has held Fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and received her Master of Fine Arts from American University. She is currently completing a collection of short stories set in World War II Hawaii, titled Moon Over Sand Island. Melissa is a 2014-15 recipient of a Ruby Grant from the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.
Emily Mitchell’s first collection of short stories, Viral, was published in June 2015. The New York Times Book Review called this collection “[A]lluring…the best stories here push towards true heartbreak,” and, in a starred review, Kirkus Reviews described Viral as “[E]xceptionally readable…A rich collection that takes the familiar obsessions of love and loneliness and views them from uncanny angles in ways that are magical, cutting, and intensely recognizable.” She is also the author of a novel, The Last Summer of the World (W. W. Norton, 2007), which was a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Harper’s, New England Review, Ploughshares, and other magazines. She teaches at the University of Maryland.