Celebrate the publication of our latest anthology, Suitcase of Chrysanthemums, at the wonderful Octopus Literary Salon and meet an indie press looking for new voices.
Featuring contributors and special guests Cathyann Cusimano, Cassandra Dallett, Carol Dorf, Heikki Huotari, Kit Kennedy, and Richard Loranger, plus editors David Lawton and Jane Ormerod.
We start with a short open mic.
Suitcase of Chrysanthemums is an exhilarating collection of contemporary poetry and fiction from established and emerging writers across the United States and beyond. The anthology also contains an interview with actor/director Sonja Sohn (The Wire, The Chi, Baltimore Rising).
Submissions for our next anthology are open October 15 2018 to January 15 2019.
Cathyann Cusimano’s work has a way of making the ordinary speak as if it were a stop along a traveler’s journey. She is at once academic and undisciplined, is rebellious and constrained by the polite dance of her own way of seeing. Cathyann has published four books of poetry: Being Myself on Fire, The Soul Made Visible, The Main Content, and Ordinarily Divine.
Cassandra Dallett has been published in over a hundred online and print magazines, look for links at cassandradallett.me. Cassandra reads often around the Bay Area, she hosts the monthly writing workshop OnTwoSix, and co-hosts the quarterly reading series Moon Drop Productions. Her first full-length book of poetry Wet Reckless (Manic D Press) was released in 2014. In 2015, she authored five chapbooks one of them, On Sunday, A Finch (Nomadic Press) was nominated for a California Book Award, 2018 brought the release of another full-length collection, Collapse, also on Nomadic Press.
Carol Dorf has two chapbooks available: Some Years Ask (Moria Press) and Theory Headed Dragon (Finishing Line Press). Her poetry appears in Bodega, E-ratio, About Place, Glint, Slipstream, The Mom Egg, Sin Fronteras, Surreal Poetics, The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Scientific American, Maintenant, and The Other Side of Violet (great weather for MEDIA). She is poetry editor of Talking Writing and teaches math in Berkeley.
Heikki Huotari is a retired professor of mathematics. In a past century, he attended a one-room country school and spent summers on a forest fire lookout tower. Heikki’s poems appear in numerous journals, most recently in The Journal and The Penn Review. He is the winner of the 2016 Gambling the Aisle chapbook contest. Forthcoming work will be published by Lynx House Press, Willow Springs, and After the Pause.
Kit Kennedy serves as Poet in Residence of SF Bay Times and Poet in Residence of her church. She has published six collections of poetry. She regrets little except she never (to date) has skateboarded but she is an avid pickleball player.
Richard Loranger is a writer, performer, visual artist, and all around squeaky wheel, currently residing in Oakland, California. His recent book of flash prose, Sudden Windows (Zeitgeist Press, 2016), has been warmly received. He is also the author of Poems for Teeth, The Orange Book, and nine chapbooks. Other recent work can be found in Oakland Review, Full of Crow, and the online anthology HIV Here and Now.