Celebrate the publication of our latest anthology, Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea, and meet an indie press looking for new voices.
Featuring contributors John Paul Davis, SaraEve Fermin, Janet Hamill, Ngoma Hill, E Penniman James, PJ Jones, Craig Kite, Ptr Kozlowski, Valery Oisteanu, Alena Singleton, John J Trause, and Francine Witte.
Special guest musician: Walter Steding
Free admission, 2 drink min. 21 +
Hosted by Thomas Fucaloro.
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
John Paul Davis was born in Durham, North Carolina, and has lived in Chicago, San Francisco, Ohio, and New York City. He is a graduate of East Carolina University and DePaul University. His writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Word Riot, The Journal, MUZZLE Magazine, Rattle, Four Way Review, and Bat City Review. His first poetry collection Crown Prince of Rabbits was published by great weather for MEDIA in 2016. John Paul lives with his wife in New York City, where he works as a web developer, makes music and visual art, and writes poems.
SaraEve Fermin is a performance poet and epilepsy advocate from northeast New Jersey. She has performed for both local and national events, including the Women of the World Poetry Slam, and the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Los Angeles Care and Cure Benefit to End Epilepsy in Children. Her work can be found in GERM Magazine, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, and The Careless Embrace of the Boneshaker (great weather for MEDIA). She is the author of You Must Be This Tall to Ride (Swimming with Elephants Publishing) and View From the Top of the Ferris Wheel (Clare Songbirds Publishing House). Her latest collection Trauma Carnival (Swimming with Elephants Publishing) was published in 2019. She believes in the power of foxes and self-publishing.
Janet Hamill is a “neo-Surrealist” writer and the author of eight collections of poetry and short fiction including, Real Fire, Knock, Tales from the Eternal Café, Body of Water, and Nostalgia of the Infinite. In collaboration with the bands Moving Star and Lost Ceilings, she has released the CDs Flying Nowhere and Genie of the Alphabet. Janet is the director of Megaphone Literary Arts at the Seligmann Center in Sugar Loaf, New York.
Ngoma Hill is a performance poet, multi-instrumentalist, singer / songwriter, and paradigm shifter, who for over fifty years has used culture as a tool to raise socio-political and spiritual consciousness through work that encourages critical thought. A former member of Amiri Baraka’s The Spirit House Movers and Players and the contemporary freedom song duo Serious Bizness, he weaves poetry and song that raise contradictions and searches for a solution to a just and peaceful world. Ngoma was selected as the Beat Poet Laureate of New York for 2017 by The National Beat Poetry Foundation. Conversation with Esu, his latest CD, features poetry, jazz, funk, reggae, and blues.
E Penniman James is a poet and performer from Brooklyn. His work has been presented at many venues throughout New York City and internationally in Chile, Canada, Thailand, Vietnam, and throughout Europe. He has been a fixture on the Brooklyn jazz jam scene for the last decade, reading in accompaniment to improvised music by such artists as Donnie McCaslin (Black Star), David Cook (Taylor Swift), and Tivon Pennicott (Gregory Porter).
P J Jones is a pediatric occupational therapist servicing preschoolers with learning and developmental delays. By her own admission, it’s fun work with immeasurable rewards. The other half of her dual love is writing flash fiction and short stories. A transplant from Harlem to Brooklyn, she is a regular attendee of New York Writers Coalition and a co-founder of LOTP / Ladies Of The Pen.
Craig Kite is a poet, musician, director of Mad Gleam Press, and slam champion of Staten Island, New York, which he represented at the National Poetry Slam. His work appears in various literary presses including Fjords Review, Paris Lit Up, Maintenant, and The Opiate. Craig has a background in journalism / human rights work and led field teams in Iraq in 2008-9. In addition, he has worked in Turkey, Chiapas, Guatemala, New Orleans, and Algonquin territory, Canada.
Ptr Kozlowski drove a lot of trucks and cars and cabs, set type in letterpress shops, and had to throw the drunks out when managing in a movie house. He was singing and songwriting and playing guitar in folk rock and new wave configurations, and writing poems along the way. Now he lives in Brooklyn and reads and performs around the New York City area.
Valery Oisteanu is a writer and artist with international flavor. Born in Russia and educated in Romania, he adopted Dada and Surrealism as a philosophy of art and life. Immigrating to New York City in 1972, he has been writing in English for the past forty-five years. Valery is the author of over fifteen books of poetry, short fiction, and essays, including the poetry-collage collection Lighter Than Air (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2017). He is also a contributing writer for French, Spanish and Romanian art and literary magazines. In addition, Valery exhibits his collages and assemblages at galleries in New York and collaborates regularly with jazz musicians.
Alena Singleton is a queer, brown, disabled, femme poet/writer that lives and loves in Brooklyn. A 2018 VONA poetry fellow, she was a featured performer with The Americas Poetry Festival of NY, the NYC Poetry Festival, Dixon Place, and at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Her work has been published by Sinister Wisdom and The Operating System, among others, and is also part of “Viewfinding” – a public outdoor sculpture and queer poetry collaboration designed by artist Sarah E. Brook in conjunction with the NYC Parks Department.
Walter Steding is a musician, visual artist, and former painting assistant to Andy Warhol. A violinist, Steding first played with The Electric Symphony where he developed his own electronic instruments—namely a synthesizer triggered by a biofeedback device that coordinated his music with light-up goggles. He later performed as a soloist at art galleries and at NYC clubs such as CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City, opening for bands such as Blondie, Suicide, and The Ramones. He has worked as a recording artist and performer with Blondie, Jim Carroll, David Byrne, Chic, and Robert Fripp. In 1980, he formed his band Walter Steding and The Dragon People and released records on Red Star and Animal Records. Puma Perl interviews Walter in Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea.
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John J. Trause, the Director of Oradell Public Library, New Jersey, is the author of Why Sing? (Sensitive Skin Press, 2017), This: For Your Eyes and Ears (Dos Madres Press, 2016), and Exercises in High Treason (great weather for MEDIA, 2016). His translations, poetry, and visual work appear internationally in journals and anthologies, including The Antioch Review, Crossings, Maintenant, Offerta Speciale, and Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books). He has 120 turtlenecks in every shade thanks to Uniqlo and Dalton’s.
Francine Witte is the author of four poetry chapbooks, two flash fiction chapbooks, and the full-length poetry collections Café Crazy (Kelsay Books) and the forthcoming The Theory of Flesh (Kelsay Books). Her play, Love is a Bad Neighborhood, was produced in New York City in December 2018.