Organizers: Jay Snodgrass, Kristine Snodgrass, Emile Boghos, Geoff Bouvier, Terri Carrion and Michael Rothenberg
Contact: walterblue@bigbridge.org
2 Locations Simultaneously!
Black Dog on The Square (850-841-7778) – 567 Industrial Drive, Tallahassee, Fl.
MC at Black Dog
Emile Boghos-3-5 at Black Dog
Michael -5-6 at Black Dog
Geoff Bouvier- 6-8 at Black Dog
Kristine Snodgrass-8-10 at Black Dog
621 Gallery (850-224-6163) 621 Industrial Dr., Tallahassee, Fl 32310
MC at 621
Scott Sweeney- 4-6 at 621
Terri Carrion- 6-8 at 621
Jay Snodgrass-8-10 at 621
Reading Schedule:
BLACK DOG READERS:
Michael introduction to event
Yolanda J. Franklin’s work is forthcoming or has appeared in African American Review, Sugar House Review, and Crab Orchard Review’s American South Issue. Her awards include a 2012, 2014 & 2016 Cave Canem fellowship, the 2013 Kingsbury Award at Florida State University. She is the recipient of several writing retreat scholarships, including a summer at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Squaw Valley Community of Writer’s, Postgraduate Writer’s Conference Manuscript Conference at VCFA, the Callaloo Poetry Workshop in Barbados and Colrain’s Poetry Manuscript Workshop. She is also the recipient of a 2016-17 McKnight Dissertation Fellowship, and a graduate of Lesley University’s MFA Writing Program. She is a PhD candidate at Florida State University, loves dancing and food tasting.
Cocoa Williams- Cocoa M. Williams is a PhD candidate in African American Literary and Cultural Studies with a minor concentration in American Modernism and Black Diasporic Modernism. She has a B.A. in English (2005) and a B.A. in Philosophy (2005) from Valdosta State University. She completed an M.A. in English at Clemson University in 2007. Cocoa’s critical work is forthcoming in the MLA Options for Teaching: Teaching the Harlem Renaissance. Her poetry can be found in the latest issues of Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose and december magazine and her work is forthcoming in College Language Association Journal. She is currently working on a collection of poems entitled Play.
Terri Carrión was conceived in Venezuela and born in New York to a Galician mother and Cuban father. She grew up in Los Angeles where she spent her youth skateboarding and slam-dancing. Terri Carrión earned her MFA at Florida International University. Her poetry, fiction, non-fiction and photography has been published in many print magazines as well as online, including The Cream City Review, Hanging Loose, Pearl, Penumbra, Exquisite Corpse, Mangrove, Exquisite Corpse, Jack, Mipoesia, Dead Drunk Dublin among others. Terri Carrion is also a translator and has worked collaboratively on projects with writers in Chile, Venezuela, Mexico and Spain. Currently she is assistant editor and art designer for Bigbridge.org, an online literary and arts magazine and co-founder of the global movement 100 Thousand Poets for Change.
Zachary Gerberick is a MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Florida State University. He received his bachelor’s degree in Electronic Media from the University of Cincinnati and enjoys crossing genres with his work, specifically regarding video and writing. He currently resides in Tallahassee, where he enjoys hiking and skateboarding in his free time.
Michael Rothenberg is editor and publisher of the online literary magazine BigBridge.org, co-founder of 100 Thousand Poets for Change (www.100tpc.org), and co-founder of Poets In Need, a non-profit 501(c), assisting poets in crisis. His poems have appeared in Golden Handcuffs Review, Jacket, OR, Prague Literary Review, Sycamore Review, Brooklyn Rail and Zyzzyva. His most recent book of poems is Drawing The Shade (Dos Madres Press). A Spanish/English edition of Indefinite Detention: A Dog Story, and his poetic journal collection, Tally Ho and the Cowboy Dream/The Real and False Journals: Book 5 are scheduled for publication in 2017 by Varasek Ediciones (Madrid, Spain).
Chris Hayes has published poems in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Gettysburg Review, and Zone 3 among others. He has been the recipient of the Erskine J. Poetry Prize from Smartish Pace and the Oboe Poetry Prize from Boxcar Review. He holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from FSU and is a professor there in the College of Business.
Born in Tallahassee. Saundra Kelley moved to the mountains of East Tennessee for graduate school, and decided to stay awhile. Recently returned to Florida, Kelley is a professional storyteller, poet and author. Saundra’s story bag contains original works with a Southern Gothic flair, Personal Narrative, Myths, and Folklore. Reverence and appreciation for Mother Earth are the essence of every story she tells or writes. She has recorded one CD, Legends of the Wild: Tales of North Florida. She is also the author of Southern Appalachian Storytellers: Interviews with Sixteen Keepers of the Oral Tradition published by McFarland, Danger in Blackwater Swamp and The Day the Mirror Cried, published by SYP. Kelley also works as a freelance content editor.
Tana Jean Welch is the author of Latest Volcano, winner of the 2015 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. Welch earned her MFA in Poetry from San Diego State University and her PhD in Literature from Florida State University. Her poems have appeared in journals including The Southern Review, The Colorado Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, and the anthology Best New Poets. Born and raised in Fresno, California, she currently lives in Tallahassee where she is Assistant Professor of Medical Humanities at the Florida State University College of Medicine.
Luis Eduardo is a poet, musician, and publisher of the online journal, Feather Weight Poetry. When not writing poetry or composing music, Luis cherishes life spending time with his friends and family.
Clancy McGilligan started the PhD in Fiction program at FSU in August. Before that, he worked at a refugee resettlement agency in Chicago. He’s also made a living as a journalist in Cambodia and Wyoming. His writing has appeared in USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor and Film International. He has brownish hair and loves his wife.
Jay Snodgrass is a co-director of Anhinga Press, he is a poet and artist in Residence at the Thomasville Center for the Arts in Thomasville GA.
Keith Kopka (prefers early evening) is the Managing Director of the Creative Writing program at Florida State University. His poetry and criticism have recently appeared in journals such as The International Journal of The Book, Mid American Review, New Ohio Review, Ninth Letter, and others. He is an assistant editor at Narrative Magazine, a recipient of a Chautauqua Arts Fellowship, and has been a Vermont Studio Center poetry fellow.
Barbara Hamby is the author of five books of poems, most recently On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (2014) published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, which also published Babel (2004) and All-Night Lingo Tango (2009). She was a 2010 Guggenheim fellow in Poetry and her book of short stories, Lester Higata’s 20th Century, won the 2010 Iowa Short Fiction Award. Her poems have appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and Yale Review. She has also edited an anthology of poems, Seriously Funny (Georgia, 2009), with her husband David Kirby. She teaches at Florida State University where she is Distinguished University Scholar.
Ramsey Mathews is a third year PhD poet at Florida State University where he teaches composition and literature. He is assistant production editor of The Southeast Review. Ramsey earned an MFA in poetry at Cal State University, Long Beach where he was poetry editor of RipRap Journal. His poetry has appeared in San Pedro River Review, Alpinist Magazine, Cahoots, Boaat Journal, and the anthology Northridge Review Retrospective 1989-2014 among others. Follow his photography at ramseymathews.photography or Instagram @ramseymathews.
SJ Sindu’s debut novel, Marriage of a Thousand Lies, is forthcoming in 2017 from Soho Press. Her hybrid fiction and nonfiction chapbook, I Once Met You But You Were Dead, was the winner of the Split Lip Turnbuckle Chapbook Contest, and is forthcoming in early 2017. Sindu’s creative writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Brevity, The Normal School, The Los Angeles Review of Books, apt, Vinyl Poetry, PRISM International, VIDA, rkvry quarterly, and elsewhere.
Ron Paul Salutsky, a native of Somerset, Kentucky, is the author of the poetry collection Romeo Bones (Steel Toe Books, 2013), and translator for Anti-Ferule (Toad Press, 2015), from the Spanish of Karen Wild Díaz. Ron lives in Ochlocknee, Georgia, and teaches at Southern Regional Technical College. Read more at www.salutsky.com.
Geoff Bouvier’s first book of poetry, Living Room, won the 2005 APR/Honickman Prize and was published by Copper Canyon Press. In 2009, he served as the poet-in-residence at the University of California-Berkeley. His second book, Glass Harmonica, was published in 2011 by Quale Press. He holds an MFA from Bard College, and a PhD in poetry from Florida State University.
Dorothy Chan is the Assistant Editor of The Southeast Review. She was a 2014 finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship and a 2016 semi-finalist for The Word Works’ Washington Prize. Her work has appeared in Blackbird, Spillway, Plume, Little Patuxent Review, Dialogist, and Hinchas de Poesia. In 2012, she was nominated for a Pushcart.
Erin Belieu is the author of four poetry collections, all from Copper Canyon Press. Her most recent, Slant Six, received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was named one of the top ten books of 2014 by The New York Times. Belieu’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in places such as The New Yorker, four editions of the Best American Poetry anthology series, Poetry magazine, Tin House, The New York Times’ T magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Slate, Narrative, Willow Springs, and others. Belieu is one of the original co founders of VIDA: Women In The Literary Arts, is the co director of the Mont Blanc Writing Workshops each June in Chamonix, France, and presently directs the MFA/Ph.D. in creative writing at Florida State University.
William Fargason’s poetry has appeared in New England Review, Barrow Street, Indiana Review, Rattle, New Orleans Review, Nashville Review, and elsewhere. He received two awards from the Academy of American Poets and a scholarship to Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He earned a B.A. in English from Auburn University, and a M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Maryland, where he taught creative writing. Currently, he is a Ph.D. student in poetry at Florida State University. He lives with himself in Tallahassee, Florida.
Jade Ramsey holds an MFA from Bowling Green State University and teaches English and Literature at Wakulla High School. Author of Yawns Between Strangers and Ghost Matter, her poems and stories can be found in Juked, The MacGuffin, Best New Poets 2013, Gargoyle, Whiskey Island, and many others. You can find her at jaderamseyauthor.com .
621 READERS
Jean-Luc Fontaine is a Tallahassee poet who enjoys overindulging in such things as Shia Lebouf and coffee.
Timothy Daniel Welch is the winner of the 2016 Iowa Poetry Prize. His book, Odd Bloom Seen From Space, is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press in 2017. He received his MFA in Poetry from San Diego State University and his PhD in English from Florida State University, and was the 2013-2014 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Creative Writing. Originally from Orange County, California, he lives in Tallahassee, Florida. His poetry may be found in journals such as Rattle, Arts & Letters, Best New Poets, Green Mountains Review, and elsewhere.
Cynie Cory-is the Author of American Girl and the Chapbook Fiskodoro was my Lover at the End of the World. Her Poems have appeared in Jacket, Verse Daily, La Petite Zine, and Truck. She holds a PhD from Florida State University.
Kaveh Akbar is the founder and editor of Divedapper. His poems appear recently in Poetry, APR, Tin House, Boston Review, and elsewhere. His debut full-length, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, will be published by Alice James Books in Fall 2017, and a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic, is forthcoming in January with Sibling Rivalry Press. The recipient of a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and currently lives and teaches in Florida.
Mat Wenzel is a new PhD student in Creative Writing/Poetry at Florida State University. His work has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Glitterwolf Magazine, Penumbra, Guide to Kulchur Creative Journal, Right Hand Pointing, and Off the Rocks Anthology, and Glass Poetry, among others. He is a recent MFA graduate from Ashland University and a 2015 Lambda Literary Fellow. He currently has 34 stamps in his National Parks Passport.
Maari Carter is originally from Winona, MS. Her work has appeared in such places as Superstition Review, Salt Hill Journal, and SundogLit. She currently lives in Tallahassee, FL where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Literature and serves as Poetry Editor of The Southeast Review.
Alex Quinlan’s poems and nonfiction have appeared in Bat City Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, OH NO!, Pebble Lake Review, Tampa Review, among others, as well as in The Tusculum Review, where he has been a contributing editor. He has also performed his poetry as part of Savannah, Georgia-based artist Jerome Meadows’ Words and Shadows series. Alex is the editor of The Southeast Review and a PhD student in poetry at FSU.
Danilo John Thomas was born and raised in southwestern Montana . He currently lives in Tallahassee, Florida, while he pursues a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Florida State University. His second chapbook, The Hand Implements, is forthcoming from The Cupboard, November 2017. AB Gorham fine letterpress-printed a limited run of his first chapbook, Murk, available at abgorham.com, and his work can be found most recently in Heavy Feather, Waccamaw, apt, Moon City Review, Sleepingfish, Shenandoah, and Juked.
Kristine Snodgrass is the author of Out of the World (Hysterical Books), The War on Pants (JackLeg Press 2013). Her solo poetry has appeared in decomP, Otoliths, Versal, 5_Trope, Big Bridge, Shampoo, Coconut, and others. She is the author of the chapbooks, Put the Pie Away Quietly and Without Fervor (Cy Gist Press 2012) and Fledgling Starlet (Grey Book Press 2009). Kristine’s collaborative work with Neil de la Flor and Maureen Seaton can be found in the book, Two Thieves & a Liar (JackLeg Press 2012) and a chapbook Facial Geometry (Neo Pepper Press 2006). She has also collaborated with Scott Sweeney (Hot Body Contest Grey Book Press), and with artist Niki Nolin clouds passing (Cloud 9, an exhibit) and book artist Denise Bookwalter with poet Jay Snodgrass on a letter press broadside, Carte Blanche.You can find some of Kristine’s work at TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism.
Scott Sweeney has published poems in several small-press and online journals, including BlazeVOX, Sprung Formal, Borderlands, and CaKe. He also co-founded Grey Book Press, which primarily produces poetry chapbooks. His first chapbook, Watercycle, was published in 2010. Scott lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife and daughter.
Carol Lynne Knight is the co-director of Anhinga Press, where she edits and designs books. She has worked on more than 100 literary publications, including books by Naomi Shihab Nye, Diane Wakoski, and the late Robert Dana and Judith Kitchen. Her book of poems, Quantum Entanglement (Apalachee Press) was released in 2010. Her poetry has appeared in Louisiana Literature, Tar River Review, Poetry Motel, Earth’s Daughters, The Ledge, Slipstream, Broome Review, Comstock Review, Epicenter, Redactions, Iconoclast, Epicenter, HazMat, So to Speak , and J, and in the anthologies Off the Cuffs, Touched by Eros, The Poets Guide to the Birds, Beloved on the Earth, and North of Wakulla.
Julius Rios was born and raised in New York City’s South Bronx and Manhattan. His family came to the U.S. from Puerto Rico during the 1920s. His poetry appears in the first Big Bend Poets collection “Along the Forgotten Coast.” His poems are also featured in “Stardust”, a book of paintings by the artist Steve Alpert. He has been writing most of his life, mostly poetry and short stories. He is currently working on translations of his poetry into Spanish. He is a graduate of Florida International University and received a Master’s Degree in Education from Florida State University. He is currently retired. Among his many occupations he has worked as a carpenter, telephone lineman and teacher. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida with Debby, his wife of 40 years. He is a father of three children and a very active grandfather of five.
Justis Mills wrote a long story called 8, then a long story called 9. Perhaps you can guess what comes next. He’s had a bunch of stuff published in online journals, which you can probably find by Googling his name. If you have extra money lying around, he recommends you give it to the Against Malaria Foundation.
Sean Towey has published work in Word Riot, The Rumpus, The Newer York, and elsewhere. He is working on a PhD in English/Creative Writing at Florida State University, where he was recently the recipient of an Emerging Writer Award, chosen by Debra Monroe. He serves as the Online Editor for Southeast Review. For four years, Sean was a Jesuit seminarian training to become a Catholic priest. It didn’t work out. He arrived in Tallahassee via Tacoma “God’s Country” Washington and St. Louis, MO.
Paige Lewis is an Assistant Poetry Editor at Narrative Magazine. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere.
David Kirby’s collection The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2007. Kirby is the author of Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which the Times Literary Supplement of London called “a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense.” Kirby’s honors include fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. His latest poetry collection is Get Up, Please.
Laurel Lathrop is a second-year PhD candidate in Fiction at FSU. Before coming to Florida she worked in New York City as a nanny, personal assistant, and copywriter. Her fiction has appeared in Vandal, her magazine articles have appeared in Fresh Dirt, and other writing has appeared anonymously in places like the Cornell University website and the Mayor of New York City’s report on healthcare. She has lived in New York City, in Ithaca, NY, in Singapore, in Mexico City, and in Paris.
Alien Hypnotist is a Tallahassee-based trio that performs improvised electronic music. AH combines traditional instruments and modern algorithm to create sonic topologies having both texture and tone. The end result is a controlled chaos evoking scenes from sci-fi and hypnotherapy. Currently AH is experimenting in the exploration of music inducing environments. If you have any opportunities for site specific performances, please don’t hesitate to contact us. AH is Kelly Hirai (guitar, bass, electronics), Jeff Chagnon (guitar, keys, electronics), and Angel Hirai (vocals, electronics).