Celebrate the publication of our latest anthology, Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea at the iconic KGB Bar (2nd floor) and meet an indie press looking for new voices.
Featuring contributors Adina Dabija, Rico Frederick, Robert Gibbons, Amy Holman, Richard Jeffrey Newman, Mario Poncé Pagán, Ellen Pober Rittberg, and Sarah Sarai.
Free admission but please note there is a 2 drink minimum. 21+
Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea 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 musician/artist Walter Steding.
Submissions for our next anthology are open October 15 2019 to January 15 2020
Adina Dabija is a writer, philosopher, and western esoteric arts practitioner, currently living in New York. Born in Romania, she has published several books of poetry and fiction. Her first book, poezia-papusa, was awarded the Bucharest Writers’ Association Guild Prize and her second book, Stare nediferentiata, won the Tomis Award. Beautybeast, from NorthShore Press, is her first poetry collection appearing in English. Since 2001 she has worked as an editor for Respiro.
Rico Frederick is a graphic designer and the author of Broken Calypsonian (Penmanship Books). He holds an MFA in Writing from Pratt Institute, is a Poets House Emerging Poets Fellow, a Cave Canem Fellow, and the first poet to represent all four original New York City poetry venues at the National Poetry Slam. Rico is a Trinidadian transplant, lives in New York, loves gummy bears, and scribbles poems on the back of maps in the hope they will take him someplace new.
Robert Gibbons received his MFA in Creative Writing from City College in 2018. He has been published in journals including Promethean, Killer Whale, Suisun Valley Review, Turtle Island Quarterly, Brooklyn Poets, and Fruita Pulpa. His first collection, Close to the Tree, was published in 2012 by Three Rooms Press. Robert’s chapbook, You Almost Home, Boy, was published by Harlequin Press in 2019. His next chapbook, Flight, is due out in the fall of 2019.
Amy Holman is the author of Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window (Somondoco Press) and four chapbooks. Recent poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly, and are forthcoming in Gargoyle and Westchester Review.
As a poet and essayist, Richard Jeffrey Newman explores the impact of feminism on his life as a man. As a co-translator of classical Persian poetry, he writes about the impact of that canon on our contemporary lives. His most recent books are For My Son, A Kind of Prayer (Ghostbird Press) and the translation The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahameh (Junction Press). His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in a wide range of publications, including Another Chicago Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Diode, and Unlikely Stories. Richard is Professor of English at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York, and curates the First Tuesdays reading series in Jackson Heights.
Mario Poncé Pagán is founding member of the Títere Poets, a writing collective that explores the boundaries of masculinity, vulnerability, and male trauma. He is the guy in every boricua neighborhood that everybody knows: generally to be found on the corner, sometimes with other títeres, commenting on people, politics, the news, the hood rumors, the universe’s mysteries, and stories from the past. Mario follows in the tradition of Capicu, Nuyorican, and Black arts movements. He is LaSopaNYC: School of Poetic Arts alum and his work has been published on Sofrito for Your Soul.
Ellen Pober Rittberg’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Brooklyn Quarterly, Long Island Quarterly, Persian Sugar in English Tea vol. 1, Raw Ary Review, SlowTrains, and many other journals and anthologies. A former journalist, her essays and features have appeared in the New York Times, Huffington Post, Reader’s Digest, and other national outlets. Ellen’s plays have been performed at festivals and Off-Off-Broadway, and she is also the author of the humorous parenting book, 35 Things Your Teens Won’t Tell You, So I Will.
Sarah Sarai’s second poetry collection, That Strapless Bra in Heaven, will be published by Kelsay Books in 2020. Her poems are in The Collagist, Golden Walkman, Ethel, Posit, Gone Lawn, Barrow Street, decomP, Oddball Magazine, Zocaolo Public Square, Sinister Wisdom, and many other journals. Find her @farstargirl on Instagram or Facebook; or roaming Central Park in New York City.