If nothing else is specifically noted for a certain event the following General Admission Policy applies:
Admission $7, students/seniors/children $5, members FREE
Free street parking.
* This event is supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.
Please send all your inquiries concerning our events to bbproposals@gmail.com
Event schedule is subject to change without prior notice.

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FEBRUARY 2012

2 February, Thursday - 7:00 PM
7 DUDLEY CINEMA - NATASHA MAIDOFF FILMS & MORE
7 DUDLEY CINEMA screens every first Thursday from 7-10pm. Free admission, more info at Laughtears.com, 310-306-7330.
GERRY FIALKA screens experimental films from political activist cinema to lit, art, music flicks to avant-garde documentaries, with fiery discussions.
NATASHA MAIDOFF FILMS & MORE - Venice dancer/filmmaker - Maidoff's sensual cinematic explorations set modern fables in motion.
With more experimental films by MARC OLMSTED, ALFONSO ALVAREZ, THAD POVEY, JEANNE C. FINLEY and JOHN MUSE.
Natasha Maidoff ____

NATASHA MAIDOFF FILMS:
A Young Girl In A Small Room, 8 minutes, super-8
A young woman plays duck-duck-goose with her stuffed animals in Ohio and gets frustrated when they don't respond.
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Is There a Cure for my Friend? (This film is in the permanent collection of MoMA), 10 minutes, 16mm
Two best friends embark on a mystical odyssey to find a cure for HIV.
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Traverse, 2 minutes, 16mm
A woman chases a lizard through Joshua Tree National Park and learns about the illusive nature of love.
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The Orange Orange, 2 minutes, 35mm
A young woman gets locked out of her house and then hit over the head by an orange, which sends her on an odyssey through Venice, California.
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The Stone Thieves, 18 minutes, mini DVD and super-8
A modern fable shot in Italy about a thief who enlists the help of donkeys, wild boar and a toad to help him steal stones from his American neighbor. This film weaves a tale of hope as the thief's niece befriends the Americans and the thief realizes the stones belong to everyone.
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Burroughs on Bowery (1977, 4 minutes)
MARC OLMSTED's cut-up and rephotography of WILLIAM BURROUGHS in NYC, outside the Bunker, echoing xerox punk-art at the time in 1977. "To move the camera or not to move the camera." "Right."
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American Mutant (1978, 4 minutes)
MARC OLMSTED's pretend movie-trailer in narrative format with WILLIAM BURROUGHS, ALLEN GINSBERG, TIM LEARY, MARC OLMSTED and SISTER STACEY.
About mutants and their battle with the CIA.
ALLEN GINSBERG said "MARC OLMSTED inherited Burroughs' scientific nerve and Kerouac's movie-minded line, nailed down with gold eyebeam in San Francisco."
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Manhole 452 (2011, 13 minutes)
by JEANNE C. FINLEY and JOHN C. MUSE
Despite assurances from local municipalities, a fact of life is that Manholes blow sky high more frequently than most people realize. Manhole 452 directs the viewer’s attention to the shapes, sizes and patterns of manhole covers on Geary Street in San Francisco, and then plunges deep below into the manholes themselves to explore the hidden threat that lies below.The fictionalized film is a first person narrative, drawn from documentary interviews and research that follows the reflections of a middle-age man whose car was hit from below by an exploding manhole. He is now forced to ride the 38 Geary Limited bus for the entire length of the street (from the Pacific Ocean to the San Francisco Bay) to his job, fitting prosthetic limbs. His narrative explores an obsession with calculating odds and the possibility of miracles, amid the presence of random violent occurrences. "Finley and Muse construct a darkly lyrical hybrid of rumination and documentation, so slightly tinted with humor as to leave viewers wondering whether they perceive it or imagine it." - KENNETH BAKER, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
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Down On The Farm, 2003, 6:30 minutes, 16mm, Color/so
Director: ALFONSO ALVAREZ, Music: THE OVERDUB CLUB
Amid the rolling flatlands west of Toronto, Canada, there is a place they call the Film Farm. Here in a rustic old Mennonite barn, filmmaking pilgrims make hand-crafted films every summer. This short work is ALFONSO ALVAREZ' version of a week’s worth of inspired exploration.
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Repeat Performance, 2011, 4:03 minutes, video
Director: ALFONSO ALVAREZ, Music: LUCIO MENAGON
The apex predator in the suit and tie isn’t so different from the animals fighting in the basement. The young tiger has my name; black rooster in one hand, white snake in the other. I’m off the leash and I’m not coming home again.
Gerry Fialka

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3 February, Friday - 7:30 PM
GEORGIA JONES-DAVIS
GEORGIA JONES-DAVIS, a former book review editor at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and Los Angeles Times Book Review, has published poetry in numerous literary journals including West Wind, Brevities, the California Quarterly, The Bicycle Review and South Bank Poetry London. She is a co-director of Valley Contemporary Poets and the founder of The Jewish Home for the Aged poetry club. She was honored as one of the 2010 Newer Poets by the Los Angeles Poetry Festival and Beyond Baroque in the Los Angeles County Library ALOUD series.
The poems in her book Blue Poodle have been described as ripe and plumy, as the "liquid poetry of roller skating, snow and blood." "Keep knives hidden," Georgia writes, but she doesn't! These poems are sometimes lyrical or humorous or tough -- sometimes all three at once -- yet "easy listening" poems that will go on playing a tune in your head, as SUZANNE LUMMIS described them. Ghosts of beloved writers, murdered ancestors, mothers, daughters and the vanishings all around us abound in the familiar yet original stories these poems tell.
Co-features tba soon.
Georgia Jones-Davis ____

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4 February, Saturday - 2:00 PM to 7:00 PM
SECOND ANNUAL POETRY OF VENICE PHOTOGRAPHY EVENT
2-4pm: panel discussion , 4-7pm: Opening for PHOTO SHOW in Gallery, free admission.
Paramedia ecologist GERRY FIALKA hosts a panel discussion of award-winning Venice photographers, who explore landscapes of the human psyche and push pictorial representation beyond! Examine the trance-inducing transforming power of cameras in our community by way of McLuhan.
Featuring:
MARGARET MOLLOY
KRISTY CAMPBELL (http://www.kristycampbell.com)
PAULA GOLDMAN photographer, teacher, specimen-collector http://paulagoldman.com/
SARAH SEELINGER http://purple-waves.posterous.com
Photo show also includes images by:
DAVE HEALEY http://www.davidhealeyphotography.com/ (Time Magazine, NY and LA Times)
ALFRED BENJAMIN who photographed Adolf Hitler in 1934 http://photo.net/leica-rangefinders-forum/00JFeb
LELAND AUSLENDER who shot experimental films of Venice West Cafe over 4 decades ago
NED SLOANE
TODD VON HOFFMANN
DON BESWICK
and others.
Gerry Fialka

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Event has been cancelled.
4 February, Saturday - 8:00 PM
STRAIGHT OUT OF THE WEST

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5 February, Sunday - 5:00 PM through 29 February, Wednesday
DAN MUELLER: ART SHOW OPENING
His work will be on display in our upstairs Gallery.

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5 February, Sunday - 5:00 PM
FIRST SUNDAY OPEN READING
Our popular monthly open reading. Featuring CONNEY WILLIAMS and REBECCA GONZALES. Hosted by BILLY BURGOS. Sign-up at 4:45 PM. FREE.
Cultivated by the sun and moon peeking past the shoes dangling from the phone lines, REBECCA GONZALES was raised “one block East of El Pino”. Rebecca collects the energy of the streets with the passion of poetry and sweetness of her son’s laughter, to find positivity and optimism for the future. As a mother she is humbled as a poet she is obedient and as a woman she is unapologetic.You can find Rebecca’s work at “Ladydrug.wordpress.com”
Rebecca Gonzales

CONNEY WILLIAMS is a Los Angeles based poet and performance artist who has performed his poetry across the country. A member of the Anansi Writers Workshop at the World Stage in Los Angeles, he has been published in various journals and anthologies. In 2002, Passage Publishing released a collection of his poetry, Leaves of Spilled Spirit from an Untamed Poet.
Conney Williams

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5 February, Sunday - 7:00 PM
FLORENCE WEINBERGER
FLORENCE WEINBERGER will be reading from her latest collection of poems, Sacred Graffiti. JEANETTE CLOUGH, comparing Weinberger's themes with PHILIP LEVINE's, said these poems "evolve masterfully from the ordinary into the extraordinary.....what we wake up to is the first step towards insight and illumination."
Florence Weinberger

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5 February, Sunday - 8:30 PM
SUNDAY NIGHTS IN FEBRUARY AT BEYOND BAROQUE:
"Cracked Open - Let Go and Let Gook"
In her one-person-show, SUZANNE WHANG reveals her truth about being an over-achieving Asian woman. By way of what she calls "screamotherapy," she radically and comically dissects issues of race, culture, gender and politics, as well as how she has made Stage 4 cancer her "bitch." The world of SUZANNE WHANG is funny, spiritually revealing, poetic and notorious. Directed by EVE BRANDSTEIN.

"This is the most powerful piece of theatre I've ever seen." ~ JIM VALLELY, writer/producer of "Arrested Development"

Special Admission: $20.00 for everybody if you purchase tickets online NOW! Pre-Sale ends one hour before the show. At-the-door price: $25.00

Suzanne Whang

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10 February, Friday - 7:30 PM
DAVID STEINER READS FROM PARADISE: 1943-1960
DAVID STEINER - The writer believes that every life is intimately connected to every other life but it takes a broken heart to see it. He grew up in the valley crazy for sports, girls, rock and roll and his country. He received the finest of educations, practiced civil rights law, entered politics, fled politics, wandered Europe and North Africa and has had his heart broken many times. He has written poetry, legal articles, short stories, screenplays, a book of haiku, and directed two feature films. He currently teaches high school and lives in a family of musicians and artists. His recent book is Paradise: Book One of The Burning of Desire, his cycle of life in America.


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11 February, Saturday - 7:00 PM
POETS STACY GNALL AND ALISSA NUTTING
"STACY GNALL is from Cleveland, Ohio. She earned her undergraduate degree at Sarah Lawrence College and her MFA at the University of Alabama, and she is currently pursuing her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. Her first collection of poetry, Heart First into the Forest, was published by Alice James Books in 2011. Her work has previously appeared in The Cincinnati Review, The Florida Review, The Gettysburg Review, Indiana Review,The Laurel Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. She lives in Los Angeles.
Stacy Gnall

ALISSA NUTTING is author of Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls (Starcherone/Dzanc 2010), which won the Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction judged by author Ben Marcus. An Assistant Professor of Fiction Writing at John Carroll University, her work appears in anthologies such as My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (Penguin 2010) and Fantastic Women (Tin House Books, August 2011), and in journals including Tin House, Bomb, and Fence. She is currently guest editing The Grey Issue of Fairy Tale Review, and is the fiction editor at Witness magazine. She received her MFA from the University of Alabama, where she served as editor for Black Warrior Review literary journal, and her PhD from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she held Schaeffer and Cobain fellowships in fiction. http://alissanutting.com/.
Alissa Nutting

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11 February, Saturday - 9:00 PM
BILL MOHR READING FROM HOLD OUTS
In Hold-Outs, BILL MOHR, long a figure on the Los Angeles poetry scene, reveals the complicated evolution of the literary landscape in a city famous for its production of corporate culture. Mohr’s multigenerational account of the role of the poet-editor-publisher in Los Angeles community formation is nothing less than a radiant mosaic of previously little-known details about an important center of American poetry. While explaining the important role of L.A. in contemporary American poetry, Mohr also explores the ideals and perils of the small press movement in the twentieth century, providing a new generation of literary activists with the knowledge that is needed to inspire their own redefinitions of the social value of alternative artistic practices.
Bill Mohr

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12 February, Sunday - 4:00 PM
POETRY READING: THE OLD BOYS CLUB
SHERMAN PEARL, LEE ROSSI AND DAVID ALPAUGH
Three long-toothed poets whose work has ravaged the L.A. and Bay Area communities confess and atone.
SHERMAN PEARL, a native of Los Angeles, is a co-founder of the L.A. Poetry Festival and a former director of the Valley Contemporary Poets reading series. He has authored three poetry collections (the latest, Working Papers, was published by Pacific Writers Press in 1999). He currently is editor of the poetry journal CQ (California Quarterly). His work has appeared in more than 30 literary journals and he has won several awards in national competitions (including 2nd price in the Atlanta Review’s 1998 International Poetry Contest and 1st places in contests conducted by Verve Magazine and CQ). A retired journalist and publicist, he lives in Santa Monica, California, with his wife, the artist Meredith Gordon.

LEE ROSSI was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He studied 5 years for the Roman Catholic priesthood before leaving the seminary. He has published two ESL (English as a Second Language) textbooks from Prentice-Hall, as well as a critical study of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He is the author of two books of poetry, Ghost Diary (2002) and Beyond Rescue (1992). His poetry, reviews, interviews and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including The Sun, Poetry East, Chelsea, The Wormwood Review, Nimrod, Beloit Poetry Journal, Poet Lore and many others. He is a winner of the Sense of Site poetry contest sponsored by the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.
Lee Rossi

DAVID ALPAUGH's poems and essays have appeared in Able Muse, California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Evergreen Review, Exquisite Corpse, Mudlark, Poetry, Poets & Writers, Rattle, Zyzzyva and many other journals and anthologies. His first collection won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize from Story Line Press, and he has been a finalist for Poet Laureate of California. Alpaugh is the monthly poetry columnist for Scene4 Arts & Media Review, and his essays on "Po-Biz" have been widely discussed on the internet.
David Alpaugh

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12 February, Sunday - 6:00 PM
BLUEPRINT FOR POETS
DOUGLAS KEARNY, MICHAEL C FORD, MELISSA F. FORD, BRENDAN CONSTANTINE, CORRIE GEATHOUSEe, BILLY BURGOS and CARLYE ARCHIBEQUE read poets who inspired them and the poems that resulted from that inspiration.

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12 February, Sunday - 7:30 PM
SUNDAY NIGHTS IN FEBRUARY AT BEYOND BAROQUE:
"Cracked Open - Let Go and Let Gook"
In her one-person-show, SUZANNE WHANG reveals her truth about being an over-achieving Asian woman. By way of what she calls "screamotherapy," she radically and comically dissects issues of race, culture, gender and politics, as well as how she has made Stage 4 cancer her "bitch." The world of SUZANNE WHANG is funny, spiritually revealing, poetic and notorious. Directed by EVE BRANDSTEIN.

"This is the most powerful piece of theatre I've ever seen." ~ JIM VALLELY, writer/producer of "Arrested Development"

Special Admission: $20.00 for everybody if you purchase tickets online NOW! Pre-Sale ends one hour before the show. At-the-door price: $25.00

Suzanne Whang

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17 February, Friday - 7:00 PM
CAROL V. DAVIS SOLO: BETWEEN STORMS
In these lyrical poems, CAROL V. DAVIS explores earthy and mysterious themes. A well-known fairy tale or historical figure is given a contemporary twist. Using haunting imagery, art, the natural world and place, Between Storms raises questions of faith and reflects on doubts. 
Winner of the 2007 T. S. Eliot Prize, CAROL V. DAVIS is the author of Into the Arms of Pushkin: Poems of St. Petersburg. She has also published a bilingual collection, It’s Time to Talk About, and two chapbooks, Letters From Prague and The Violin Teacher. She was a senior Fulbright scholar in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1996-97 and 2005. She teaches at Santa Monica College, California.
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17 February, Friday - 8:00 PM
CHARLOTTE INNES READING WITH  LESLIE MONSOUR AND MEHNAZ TURNER
LESLIE MONSOUR won Finishing Line Press’ Open Chapbook competition 2010 (judged by Ned Balbo) with The House Sitter. 
Leslie Monsour ___

CHARLOTTE INNES was a semi-finalist in the same competition with Licking the Serpent.
Charlotte Innes

MEHNAZ  TURNER was born in Pakistan and raised in southern California. She is a 2009 PEN USA Emerging Voices Fellow in poetry. Her story, The Alphabet Workbook, was published in the August 2010 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Her poems have appeared in publications such as Asia Writes, The Journal of Pakistan Studies, Cahoots Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine, Desilit Magazine and An Anthology of California Poets. She is currently at work on her first poetry manuscript, Tongue-tied: A Memoir in Poems. To learn more aboutMehnaz, visit her at www.mehnazturner.blogspot. com
Mehnaz Turner

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17 February, Friday - 9:30 PM
WYATT PENN KEUSCH MUSIC PERFORMANCE
Following up on the four-year-long concert series decay fest, WYATT PENN KEUSCH and KHALIJA present transmigrations, a new series of experimental electronic music performances focussing on one-off collaborations between artists within the KHALIJA collective. This, the first installment, will feature performers such as DANIEL EATON, JINKU KIM, WYATT PENN KEUSCH, SCOTT CAZAN and more. Please visit www.khalija.com for more info.
Wyatt Penn Keusch

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18 February, Saturday - 4:00 PM
NEW MEXICO'S MALPAÍS REVIEW
An afternoon with Los Angeles poets who've appeared in New Mexico's Malpais Review with DOROTHY BARRESI, RON KOERTGE and special guest GARY BROWER. Presented by SUZANNE LUMMIS.
DOROTHY BARRESI is the author of four books of poetry: American Fanatics (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), Rouge Pulp, The Post-Rapture Diner, winner of an American Book Award and All of the Above. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, the Emily Clark Balch Prize from Virginia Quarterly Review, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is currently serving as a judge for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at California State University, Northridge, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.
Dorothy Barresi

RON KOERTGE writes fiction for teenagers and poetry for everybody. His latest book of poems is Indigo (Red Hen Press) and his latest YA is NOW PLAYING;  STONER 7 SPAZ II (Candlewick Press). He is also a serious handicapper of thoroughbred race horses.
Ron Koertge

GARY L. BROWER who holds among others M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of Missouri at Columbia, is a specialist in Hispanic Literature, especially of Latin America. He has published numerous essays in Spanish and English on writers such as ANGEL GONZALEZ, OCTAVIO PAZ, JORGE LUIS BORGES and CARLOS FUENTES, to name a few, in various academic journals. He has also written two books on the impact of Japanese haiku on western poetry: The Haiku in Spanish American Poetry (Ann Arbor, University Micro) and An Annotated Bibliography of Haiku In Western Languages (with D.W. FOSTER), (Metuchen, NJ, Scarecrow Press). An associate editor of American Haiku magazine in its heydey, he also translated poems of PABLO NERUDA. His poetry (and translations from Hispanic poetry) have been published in Puerto del Sol, The Poetry Bag, Put Poems, Tansy Sagitario, Thunderbird, Cottonwood Review, New America and Ann Arbor Review, among others. One of his chapbooks is Planting Trees in Terra Incognita, which was issued in 2006. He has read widely with flamenco guitarist EL NINO DAVID and dancer SUSANNAH GARRETT and released CDs named A Tribute to Federico Garcia Lorca (Vox Audio, 2007) and Duende & Friends read in Placitas (Vox Audio, 2006). He is the editor of the Malpais Review, a poetry quarterly, which is now gaining national and international as well as in-state attention (See malpaisreview.com website). Born in Kansas City, Mo., he lives in Placitas, NM.
Gary Brower

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18 February, Saturday - 7:00 PM
JESUS ANGEL GARCIA PRESENTS BADBADBAD
MULTIMEDIA PERFORMANCE: Two dynamic poets, one dynamic reading! With JESUS ANGEL GARCIA and special guest poet AMY SCHROEDER.
JESUS ANGEL GARCIA is a writer, musician and filmmaker based in San Francisco. His debut (transmedia) novel, badbadbad, is available as an old-school book on real live paper, a CD of songs derived from the narrative and a DVD documentary film based on the novel’s themes of fear, hypocrisy, sexual morality, intimacy in e-culture and self-destruction versus redemption. His fiction has appeared in Monkeybicycle, 3:AM Magazine, HTML Giant and other literary venues. His non-fiction has been published in The Faster Times, Vol. 1 Brooklyn and Electric Literature’s The Outlet, where he’s a regular contributor. His work has also been featured in podcasts at Inside Higher Ed (Radio Free AWP), Orange Alert and Dr. Dick’s Sex Wisdom. More info and lit-audio-video samples may be found at http://badbadbad.net.
Jesus Angel Garcia ___
(Photo: Timothy Faust )

AMY SCHROEDER's poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Field, Ploughshares, Seneca Review, Colorado Review, and LIT, among others. Her reviews have appeared in Boston Review, Georgia Review, Antioch Review, Rain Taxi, and she reviews regularly for Publisher's Weekly.Her manuscript has been a finalist for the Alice James Beatrice Hawley Award, the Persea Books Lexi Rudnitsky Prize, the Carnegie Mellon first-book series, and a semi-finalist for the Walt Whitman Award sponsored by the American Academy of Poets. A founding editor of POOL, she now edits the online journal Slope and is a doctoral fellow of USC.
Amy Schroeder

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18 February, Saturday - 9:00 PM
POETRY IN MOTION
EVE BRANDSTEIN presents the usual array of writers from the Hollywood community and the literary world at large.
Special admission: $10.00 for non-members.
Eve Brandstein

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19 February, Sunday - 2:00 PM
DEDICATION OF THE SCOTT WANNBERG BOOKSTORE AND POETRY LOUNGE
**At Beyond Baroque** We will be unveiling a painting of the late, great poet SCOTT WANNBERG as rendered by L.A. artist Louie Metz as part of the dedication for the new SCOTT WANNBERG BOOKSTORE AND POETRY LOUNGE at Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd. in Venice, CA. Also on hand to help launch the new space and lend his bookstore magic will be DOUG DUTTON of the once glorious Dutton's Books, and present Director of Beyond Baroque, RICHARD MODIANO. Afterwards, there will be a screening of one of Scott's favorite films, Budd Boetticher's iconic western 7 Men From Now starring RANDOLPH SCOTT, GAIL RUSSELL and LEE MARVIN. Free popcorn.

**At Skylight Books** February 20th is the birthday of legendary Los Angeles poet SCOTT WANNBERG. Join family, friends and fans at **Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Ave. in Los Angeles ** as we all sing Scott's simultaneous languages of love at the first whenever SCOTT WANNBERG UNINVIATIONAL BIRTHDAY READ INDEED!, an open reading hosted by S.A. GRIFFIN. Festivities begin at 7:30pm. If you would like to be a part of the open reading, please bring poems by or for Scott. A largely unsung hero while he was here, Scott was a long playing heart beat at Dutton's Books in Brentwood. A big man, Scott was and is one of the most original, vital voices in American verse. He never met a soul he didn't touch.
Born February 20, 1953 in Santa Monica, sadly, Scott passed away very suddenly August 19, 2011 in Florence, Oregon.
Come help us celebrate his work and bring him home on what would've been Scott's 59th birthday.
Both events are free.

_______
Scott Wannberg 1953 - 2011

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19 February, Sunday - 5:00 PM
HITCHED: L.A. NEIGHBORHOODS OR ECHO PARK TO CITY TERRACE
Featuring ELOISE KLEIN HEALY with XOCHITL-JULISA BERMEJO and SESSHU FOSTER. Guest host: BRITTANY MICHELSON.
Author of six collections of poetry and founder of Arktoi Books, ELOISE KLEIN HEALY is professor emerita at Antioch University Los Angeles and the co-founder of Eco-Arts. She lives in Los Angeles.
Eloise Klein Healy

SESSHU FOSTER  (born April 5, 1957) is an American poet. He has taught composition and literature in East LA since 1985, taught the Jack Kerouac School's summer writing program and was in residence at the California State University, Los Angeles. He is also author of the critically acclaimed City Terrace Field Manual.
Sesshu Foster

BRITTANY MICHELSON's short work can be found on: Flashquake, The Citron Review, and In the Know Traveler. Print work is forthcoming in PMS Journal as well as an anthology by Bona Fide Books. She is an MFA student at Antioch University Los Angeles.
Brittany Michelson

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19 February, Sunday - 7:30 PM
SUNDAY NIGHTS IN FEBRUARY AT BEYOND BAROQUE:
"Cracked Open - Let Go and Let Gook"
In her one-person-show, SUZANNE WHANG reveals her truth about being an over-achieving Asian woman. By way of what she calls "screamotherapy," she radically and comically dissects issues of race, culture, gender and politics, as well as how she has made Stage 4 cancer her "bitch." The world of SUZANNE WHANG is funny, spiritually revealing, poetic and notorious. Directed by EVE BRANDSTEIN.

"This is the most powerful piece of theatre I've ever seen." ~ JIM VALLELY, writer/producer of "Arrested Development"

Special Admission: $20.00 for everybody if you purchase tickets online NOW! Pre-Sale ends one hour before the show. At-the-door price: $25.00

Suzanne Whang

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23 February, Thursday - 7:30 PM
ELLYN MAYBE'S POETRY RODEO
ELLYN MAYBE'S POETRY RODEO is a monthly series where the ELLYN MAYBE BAND (HARLAN STEINBERGER, ROBBIE FITZSIMMONS, DANNY MOYNAHAN, TOMMY JORDAN and PAUL BUSHNELL) performs and improvise alongside your performance! (5-minute limit). They have toured internationally and received critical acclaim from luminaries such as HENRY ROLLINS, GREIL MARCUS and JACKSON BROWNE.
General Admission $8.00, Students/Seniors $5.00, Members FREE.


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24 February, Friday - 7:00 PM
JACQUELINE BERGER AND ERIC GUDAS
JACQUELINE BERGER is the author of three books of poetry: The Gift That Arrives Broken, winner of the Autumn House Poetry Prize; Things That Burn, winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Prize, University of Utah Press; and The Mythologies of Danger, winner of the Bluestem Award and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. Her poetry has also appeared in numerous journals including The Iowa Review, River Styx, and New Millennium Writings. She teaches creative writing and directs the graduate program in English at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California. She was born and raised in Los Angeles and now lives in San Francisco with her husband.
Jacqueline Berger

ERIC GUDAS was born in Annapolis, Maryland. His poems, book reviews, and interviews with American poets have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Crazyhorse, The Iowa Review, Poetry Flash, The Southern Review, and other journals. Beautiful Monster, his chapbook of poems, was published by Swan Scythe Press in 2003. His book Best Western and Other Poems, winner of the 2008 Gerald Cable Book Award, was published in 2010 by Silverfish Review Press. He holds a doctorate in English from UCLA. He and his wife, Alyssa Sherwood, live with their daughter in Los Angeles, where he is completing a book about the life and writing of contemporary American poet Eleanor Ross Taylor.
Eric Gudas

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24 February, Friday - 9:00 PM
POETRY READING: JIMMY CVETIC
JIMMY CVETIC, aka Dog, is a retired Allegheny County cop who writes like Bukowski with a badge. Having worked for over 30 years in Pittsburgh as a uniformed officer, an undercover narcotics agent, and a homicide detective, Cvetic offers a unique glimpse into the real life trials, tribulations, and black humor of police work. Having amassed over three thousand poems over the past fourdecades, he bears witness to the full range of the human drama - from horrific tragedies to dark comedies of folly.


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25 February, Saturday - 7:00 PM
JORDAN MARGOLIS: EXCUSEMAN™
Poetry with JORDAN MARGOLIS, AKA EXCUSEMAN™, a costumed bundle of fun.

Chicago Trial Lawyer, JORDAN MARGOLIS, is EXCUSEMAN™, saving the world from insincere apologies for bad behavior from celebrities, politicians and general neer-do-wells!
Follow Excuseman as he negates the use of insincere and half-hearted apologies with his own humerous and outrageous explanations.
EXCUSEMAN: Saving the world from insincere apologies, one funny excuse at a time!
To learn more about Excuseman’s mission, click here!

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25 February, Saturday - 9:00 PM
BEYOND MUSIC: LESLIE ROSS
LESLIE ROSS, a NY-based bassoonist performs with multi- channel electronics. Leslie has been on the vanguard of experimental performance practices since the early 1980s, creating music for herself and collaborators who include JIM STALEY, ZEENA PARKINS, IKUE MORI, PHILL NIBLOCK, PAUL LOVENS and EUGENE CHADBOURNE.
Special Admission $5 Members, $5 Students/Seniors, $10 General.
This event has been sponsored by:

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26 February, Sunday - 6:30 PM
POETRY READING: ELIZABETH ARNOLD AND SARAH MACLAY
Winner of the Amy Lowell travelling scholarship for 2010-2011, ELIZABETH ARNOLD has also received a Whiting Writer’s Award and fellowships from the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown. Arnold has three books, The Reef (University of Chicago Press, 1999), Civilization (Flood Editions, 2006), and Effacement (Flood Editions, 2010), and her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Nation and Paris Review. She is on the MFA faculty at the University of Maryland and lives outside Washington, D.C.
Elizabeth Arnold

SARAH MACLAY is the author of Whore (Tampa Review Prize for Poetry) and The White Bride. Her poems and criticism appear in APR, Ploughshares, FIELD, The Writer’s Chronicle, Poemeleon, and numerous other spots including Poetry International, where she serves as Book Review Editor. In 2003, her debut book won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry and she was a finalist for the Blue Lynx Prize. In 2008 she became the founding artistic director of The Third Area: Poetry at Pharmaka, a reading series now running at Frank Pictures Gallery in Santa Monica. She teaches creative writing and literature at Loyola Marymount University, conducts workshops at The Ruskin Art Club, Beyond Baroque and the LMU Extension Summer Workshop Series.
Sarah Maclay

MARCH 2012

1 March , Thursday - 7:00 PM
7 DUDLEY CINEMA - HELEN HILL FILMS
7 DUDLEY CINEMA screens every first Thursday from 7-10pm. Free admission, more info at Laughtears.com, 310-306-7330.
GERRY FIALKA screens experimental films from political activist cinema to lit, art, music flicks to avant-garde documentaries, with fiery discussions.
HELEN HILL FILMS - Magical cinema by seminal experimental animator and social activist who championed low-budget and do-it-yourself approaches to filmmaking.
Helen Hill

The Florestine Collection (2009, 31min)
Experimental Animator HELEN HILL found more than 100 handmade dresses in a trash pile on one Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans. She set out to make a film about the dressmaker, a deceased African-American seamstress. The dresses and much of the film footage were later flood-damaged by Hurricane Katrina while Helen was still working on the film. Helen was murdered in a home invasion in New Orleans in 2007. Her husband PAUL GAILIUNAS completed the film, which includes Helen’s original silhouette, cut-out, and puppet animation, as well as flood-damaged and restored home movies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Hill.
Gerry Fialka

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2 March , Friday - 7:30 PM
PUBLICATION READING: ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN
ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN's BLACK TALK, BLUE THOUGHTS, AND WALKING THE COLOR LINE is a far-ranging collection of features, commentary and essays about race and its role in history and daily life. Drawn from the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Salon.com and elsewhere, this collection also features major new articles on President Barack Obama, black and Hispanic conflicts, and clinical depression. By turns angry, bewildered, empowered and absurdist, ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN's new book is nonfiction by a black woman that isn't exclusively about relationships, self affirmation, race, hair or motherhood, although it does look at all those things.

"ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN ostensibly writes about race. But what she really writes about is human beings in all their puzzling, contradictory, glorious complexity. Whether she's writing about confronting depression or about the attractions of Tiger Woods, her essays are eloquent, honest and compelling. And they are extremely fun to read."
-SUE HORTON, Op-Ed Editor, Los Angeles Times

"Finely nuanced and finely chosen, Kaplan's essays reflect the ever-changing, never-ending, always-amazing story of race in America. Insight, humor, pathos, and her eye for detail produce revelations on every page."
-TOM HAYDEN

"In this age of bloggers and pundits and self-made culture critics, ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN rises above all of that noise and shows us why we still need writers. And like all great essayists, she is not afraid to write against the grain, to take on race when we're told it is passe, to tell our stories even when we're supposed to be out of style."
-ROBIN D. G. KELLEY, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

The book will be available in October 2011 as a paperback for $19.95.
For more information about BLACK TALK, BLUE THOUGHTS, AND WALKING THE COLOR LINE, please go to http://www.upne.com/1-55553-754-5.html
Erin Aubry Kaplan ___

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3 March, Saturday - 4:00 PM
LIV ZUTPHEN: EXHIBIT OPENING AND READING
LIV ZUTPHEN is a self taught painter. She began by painting watercolor trees with faces as a child and then abstract eyes and hands in high school. Today, she uses acrylics to paint her unconcious psychic awareness. The paintings are mostly titled after her favorite city Venice and it's streets.
Liv's first show was at 7 Dudley Sponto in 2007 and she currently shows her work through Focus Gallery in North Beach, San Francisco. Please join Liv and her fun friends for the opening March 3rd where she will perform poetry from her book, Sex Poems.
Liv Zutphen
Eye of the Baked Potato, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 18 in.

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3 March, Saturday -7:30 PM
POETRY READING: CLAUDIA HANDLER, MITCH UNTCH AND J. MARK BEAVER
A native New Yorker who lives happily in Los Angeles, CLAUDIA HANDLER is the author of the poetry collection, Going Under. She was selected to appear at the award-winning Nye Beach Writers Series, hosted by the literary organization Writers on the Edge. She has been featured on Public Broadcasting’s Live Wire Radio, and appeared in Favorite Moments/Best Ever Of Live Wire. Chosen by Beyond Baroque as one of six Newer Poets and featured in the Aloud Series, Claudia is a Squaw Valley Alumni and studies with LAUREL ANN BOGEN. She has also served as co-director of Valley Contemporary Poets.
Claudia Handler

MITCH UNTCH is an emerging writer and has been published in The Los Angeles Review 2007, White Pelican Review 2007, Third Wednesday 2008, Two Hawks Quarterly 2010, New Millennium Writers 2011, Monadnock Review Anthology 2011, the Aurorean 2011, Jabberwock Intl. 2011, Nimrod Intl., 2011, Finalist in the Atlanta Review 2011 and was chosen as one of six ALOUD Newer Poets, sponsored by the Los Angeles Book Festival, The Mark Taper Forum and the James Irvine Foundation. A Squaw Valley Alumni, 2010, and Gettysburg Writer's Conference Alumni, 2011, he currently works and studies with LAUREL ANN BOGEN and MOLLY BENDALL.
Mitch Untch

J. MARK BEAVER lives in Pasadena, California, and has studied poetry with STEVE KOWIT and SANDRA ALCOSSER at San Diego State University, MARY D'ALLEVA at San Francisco State University, and is a long-standing member of a poetry work group led by Los Angeles poet, LAUREL ANN BOGEN. Oakland's Augustino Dance Theater has staged performances of his poems, and in 2008, Mark was presented as a Newer Poet by Beyond Baroque and L.A. Poetry Festival. He has been published in Active Voices IV, Tea Party magazine, L.A. Poetry Festival/Tebot Bach's on-line quarterly, Speechless and in the Perigee on-line Literary Magazine.

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4 March, Sunday - 5:00 PM 
FIRST SUNDAY OPEN READING
Our popular monthly open reading. Featured readers this month: ABRAHAM GREATSON, SUMIKO BRAUN and STEVE ABEE.
Hosted by BILLY BURGOS. Sign-up at 4:45 PM. FREE. 

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4 March , Sunday - 7:30 PM
SUNDAY NIGHTS IN FEBRUARY AT BEYOND BAROQUE:
"Cracked Open - Let Go and Let Gook"
In her one-person-show, SUZANNE WHANG reveals her truth about being an over-achieving Asian woman. By way of what she calls "screamotherapy," she radically and comically dissects issues of race, culture, gender and politics, as well as how she has made Stage 4 cancer her "bitch." The world of SUZANNE WHANG is funny, spiritually revealing, poetic and notorious. Directed by EVE BRANDSTEIN.

"This is the most powerful piece of theatre I've ever seen." ~ JIM VALLELY, writer/producer of "Arrested Development"

Special Admission: $20.00 for everybody if you purchase tickets online NOW! Pre-Sale ends one hour before the show. At-the-door price: $25.00

Suzanne Whang

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9 March, Friday - 7:30 PM 
TEBOT BACH PUBLICATION READING: BRIAN TRACY AND DAVID ST. JOHN
Tebot Bach celebrates its latest publication, Opaque Traveller by BRIAN TRACY.
Brian M. Tracy
DAVID ST. JOHN was born in Fresno, California. He received his bachelor’s degree at California State in Fresno and went to the University of Iowa for an M.F.A. His works of poetry include Hush (1976), Terraces of Rain (1991) and The Red Leaves of Night (1999). Most recently, he wrote The Face: A Novella in Verse (2004). He has received numerous awards and honors, including the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award, the James D. Phelan Award, the Academy Award in Literature, and various grants and fellowships. St. John has taught at Oberlin College, John Hopkins University, and currently teaches at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

David St. John

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10 March, Saturday - 9:00 PM 
POETRY IN MOTION
EVE BRANDSTEIN presents the usual array of writers from the Hollywood community and the literary world at large. Special admission price is $10 for non-members.
Eve Brandstein

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11 March, Sunday - Schedule Below  
KEROUAC AT 90: BEYOND BAROQUE PRESENTS A CELEBRATION OF THE WORK OF JACK KEROUAC
4:00 PM - READING
Readings from Kerouac with RAFAEL ALVARADO, IRIS BERRY, EVE BRANDSTEIN, PHILIP DAUGHTRY, MICHAEL C FORD, S.A. GRIFFIN, DOUG KNOTT, GERALD NICOSIA, HARRY NORTHUP, MARC OLMSTED, ELLYN MAYBE, DANI ROTER and ARAM SAROYAN.

7:30 PM - PANEL
Panel discussion of Kerouac’s life and works with GERALD NICOSIA, ARAM SAROYAN, S.A. GRIFFIN and MARC OLMSTED. Hosted by Beyond Baroque director, Richard Modiano.

When On the Road hit the bookstores in September 1957, JACK KEROUAC ironically found himself in a most enviable position for an emerging author: by the time his second published novel made the best-seller list, he had at least four others ready to go, not to mention numerous poems, several religious works and a few experimental pieces. Though many of these works soon came into print, Kerouac was unable to parlay his fame into either literary or financial security. Instead of assuming his place as a distinguished author, he found himself vilified by critics whose respect he had hoped to win. Though he continued to write and publish until the end of his life, this twist of fate by which he attained celebrity in place of respect exacerbated his marginalization as an important American writer. Nevertheless, Kerouac’s work endures to the present day with new generations of readers re-discovering his remarkable body of work.
Jack Kerouac

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16 March, Friday - 7:30 PM  
AHADADA PRESS FUNDRAISER: JAPAN RELIEF
A poetry reading JESSE GLASS, JEROME ROTHENBERG, AMY UYEMATSU, HIROMI ITO and MARTHE REED.

HIROMI ITO is one of the most prominent women writers of contemporary Japan, with more than a dozen collections of poetry, several works of prose, numerous books of essays and several major literary prizes to her name. She divides her time between the towns of Encinitas, California and Kumamoto in southern Japan.
Hiromi Ito

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17 March, Saturday - 5:00 PM  
CATHY COLMAN WORKSHOP READING: TONGUE IN GROOVE
New, cutting-edge prose and poetry from the published writers of CATHY COLMAN's Workshop: DEBBON AYER, HAL ACKERMAN, RICHARD CAMPBELL, TRACY DEBRINCAT, LIZ DUBELMAN, JERI EDWARDS, FRANK GANNON, BARRY HERZOG, MEREDITH MUNCY, ROGER SOFFER, DEBORAH STREIT, RACHEL VOGEL and AL WALTON.

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17 March, Saturday - 7:30 PM  
IN DISCUSSION: GORDON BALL
GORDON BALL reads from and discusses East Hill Farm: Seasons with Allen Ginsberg
"This was Allen Ginsberg," GORDON BALL declared after recounting intimate moments with the cultural icon and beloved Beat Generation poet on East Hill Farm, outside Cherry Valley, New York.

During the late 1960s, when peace, drugs and free love were direct challenges to conventional society, ALLEN GINSBERG, treasurer of the Committee on Poetry, Inc., funded what he hoped was "a haven for comrades in distress" in rural upstate New York. First described as an uninspiring, dilapidated four-bedroom house with acres of untended land, including the graves of its first residents, East Hill Farm became home to those who sought pastoral enlightenment in the presence of Ginsberg’s brilliance and generosity.

A self-declared member of a "ragtag group of urban castoffs," including GREGORY CORSO, PETER ORLOVSKY, HERBERT HUNCKE and the mythic BARBARA RUBIN, farm manager Ball tended to a nonstop flurry of guests, chores and emotional outbursts while also making time to sit quietly with Ginsberg and discuss poetry, Kerouac, sex and Vietnam.

GORDON BALL was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and grew up in Tokyo, Japan. Ball is also the author of 66 Frames: A Memoir and a volume of prose poems, Dark Music. His photographs, “Ginsberg & Beat Fellows,” have appeared in many publications and have been exhibited widely. He lives and teaches at VMI in Lexington, Virginia.

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17 March, Saturday - 9:00 PM  
ELLYN MAYBE'S POETRY RODEO
ELLYN MAYBE'S POETRY RODEO is a monthly series where the ELLYN MAYBE BAND (HARLAN STEINBERGER, ROBBIE FITZSIMMONS, DANNY MOYNAHAN, TOMMY JORDAN and PAUL BUSHNELL) performs and improvise alongside your performance! (5-minute limit). They have toured internationally and received critical acclaim from luminaries such as HENRY ROLLINS, GREIL MARCUS and JACKSON BROWNE.
General Admission $8.00, Students/Seniors $5.00, Members FREE.

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18 March, Sunday - 2:00 PM  
THE GREAT BEYOND OPEN READING
Our every-third-Sunday open reading series hosted by ELLIS MARTIN welcomes poets and writers of all ages. 5-minute limit. FREE. Sign-up starts at 1:45 PM.

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18 March, Sunday - 5:00 PM  
HITCHED: TRAVERSING THE CITY
This montly installment of HITCHED features L.A. Times columnist and novelist, HECTOR TOBAR and SUZANNE LUMMIS with emerging poets and writers.

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22 March, Thursday - 7:30 PM  
COFFEE HOUSE PRESS READING: JOSEPH LEASE
With singular grace and musicality, the accomplished poems in JOSEPH LEASE's Testify summon the voices of a divided country. With a storyteller’s rhythm, Lease braids humor, political bite, psychological intensity and lyric beauty, taking us to a place of warning, critique and elegy. With a focus on the nation as a dynamic, yet indissoluble, collectivity, Lease deftly brings the conversation to a place of subtle reflection that is as passionate as it is ground-breaking. JOSEPH LEASE's critically acclaimed books of poetry include Broken World and Human Rights. His work has been featured on NPR and published in The Agni 30th Anniversary Poetry Anthology, VQR, Bay Poetics and Paris Review, among others. Originally from Chicago, Lease lives in the Bay area and chairs the MFA Program in Writing at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

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23 March, Friday - 7:00 PM  
LECTURES FROM BEYOND LAUREL ANN BOGEN DISCUSSES THE POETRY OF ERICA ERDMAN
LAUREL ANN BOGEN is an MPW, award-winning poet and author of 10 books of poetry and short fiction, including Washing a Language (Red Hen Press). Her work has been included in numerous publications such as California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, Stand-Up Poetry (University of Iowa Press) and Spot Literary Magazine. She received the UCLA Extension Outstanding Instructor Award in Creative Writing, 2008.
Laurel Ann Bogen

ERICA ERDMAN was the daughter of actors RICHARD ERDMAN and SHARON RANDALL and a long time student of LAUREL ANN BOGEN. Erdman is the author of the book The Apocalyptic Kid (Sacred Beverage Press.) She passed away in 2010.
Erica Erdman

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23 March, Friday - 9:00 PM  
BEYOND MUSIC: wildUP! BROOKLYN TO L.A.
New music from one coast to the other coast: Brooklyn/ LA featuring music by TIMO ANDRES, ART JARVINEN, ANDREW NORMAN, ANDREW THOLL, MISSY MAZZOLI and CHRIS KALLMYER.
Special Admission $5 Members, $5 Students/Seniors, $10 General.
wildUP!

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24 March, Saturday - 3:00 PM to 5:30 PM
BEYOND MUSIC: wildUP! MAKING MUSIC
In Coorporation with Venice-Arts, Inc.
Join the musicians of the wildUP! (wildup.la) as they teach kids about making music and making musical
instruments. Check Venice-Arts.org to register your children. Phone: (310) 578-1745      
Email: info@venice-arts.org
Adminssion $5 Members, $5 Students/Seniors, $10 General.

wildUP!

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24 March, Saturday - 7:00 PM
MARK RHODES: READS THE WASTE LAND
The Waste Land, published in 1922, was T.S. ELIOT’s poem about “What was wrong with the world, and why.”
Poet MARK RHODES brings this classic to life with a powerful and dramatic recitation.
MARK RHODES is a Santa Monica poet whose books include his Selected Poems: Towards A Field In County Fermanagh and The Plains Of Mayo. He has written fifteen plays with staged readings and productions in New York, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Hollywood, CA.

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30 March, Friday - 7:30 PM
POETRY READING: KENT SHAW, CARRIE OEDING AND JOSHUA KRYAH
CARRIE OEDING's first book, Our List of Solutions, was selected by DAVID DODD LEE as the winner of the Lester M. Wolfson Prize and published in August, 2011 by Indiana University South Bend Press's new poetry series, 42 Miles Press. She has taught at Ohio University and The University of Houston.
Carrie Oeding

KENT SHAW recently received his Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Houston. His first book, Calenture, was published by University of Tampa Press in 2008. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Boston Review, Missouri Review, Denver Quarterly and elsewhere.
Kent Shaw

JOSHUA KRYAH was born and raised in Saint Louis, Missouri. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a Ph.D. from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he was a Schaeffer Fellow in poetry. He is the author of two collections of poetry, WE ARE STARVED (2011) and GLEAN (2007), winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, FIELD, The Iowa Review and Ploughshares, among other journals. He lives with his wife and two children in Las Vegas and teaches at UNLV. He is also the poetry editor of WITNESS. You can learn more about him at www.joshuakryah.com.
Joshua Kryah

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31 March, Saturday - 7:30 PM
POETRY READING: AN EVENING WITH AUTHORS FROM WHAT BOOKS PRESS
WHAT BOOKS PRESS, an imprint of the Glass Table Collective, presents its new books
for 2012 with authors CHUCK ROSENTHAL, MONA HOUGHTON, RAMON GARCIA, KATHARINE HAAKE and visual artist GRONK.

CHUCK ROSENTHAL is the author of numerous books, including the novels: Loop's Progress, Experiments with Life and Deaf, Loop's End (the Loop Trilogy), Elena of the Stars, Avatar Angel: The Last Novel of Jack Kerouac, My Mistress Humanity, The Heart of Mars, Coyote O’Donohughe’s History of Texas, the memoir: Never Let Me Go and Are We Not There Yet? His work has been nominated for The National Book Award, The PEN West Award for Fiction, the PEN International Award for Fiction, the Critics Book Circle Award for Fiction, the American Library Association Most Notable Book Award and for Best American Creative Non-fiction. He is a three-time winner of the Utah Arts Council Award for Fiction.

MONA HOUGHTON has had stories published in Carolina Quarterly, Crosscurrents, Bluff City, West Branch, Oracle and Livingston Press’ Tartts 2. Her short story Sex was performed as part of the New Short Fiction Series (Sally Shore) at the Beverly Hills Library. She has an essay, What I Learned from a Bricoleur, in Everyday Urbanism. Houghton won the John Gardner Memorial Prize for Fiction for her story A Brother, Some Sex, and an Optic Nerve.

RAMON GARCIA is the author of the collection of poems, Other Countries.
He has published poetry in a variety of journals and anthologies including The Americas Review, Best American Poetry 1996, Ambit (UK), Poesida: Aids Poetry from Latin America, the United States and Spain, New Chicano Writing #1, Urban Latino Cultures, California Dreams and Realities and The Floating Borderlands: Twenty-Five Years of U.S.-Hispanic Literature, Crab Orchard Review, Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), Borderland: The Texas Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review and Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas.

KATHARINE HAAKE's books include The Origin of Stars and Other Stories, That Water, Those Rocks, No Reason on Earth and the LA Times best-selling collection of stories, The Height and Depth of Everything, from the University of Nevada Press Western Literature Series. Her short fiction has appeared widely in such magazines as The Iowa Review, Witness, One Story, The Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters and The Santa Monica Review. Haake is a recipient of an Individual Artist's Grant from the Cultural Affairs Department of the City of Los Angeles, along with distinguished story recognitions from Best American Short Stories and Best of the West, an Editor's Choice Award from Cream City Review, and an Honorable Mention in the Fountain Award for Speculative Literature. She teaches at California State University, Northridge.

Chicano painter, printmaker and performance artist GRONK contributes the cover art for WHAT BOOKS PRESS. Known for his murals, GRONK also has created stage design for the Latino Theater Company, the East West Players, the LA Opera and the Santa Fe Opera. He's also collaborated on music composed for the KRONOS QUARTET. He has exhibited at or curated work for many museums, including the UCLA Hammer, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the M.H. de Young Museum in San Francisco, the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, the San Francisco Mexican Museum, the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco and the San Jose Museum of Art. He was given a career retrospective at the University of New Mexico, where he was in residence. He was a founding member of ASCO, a multimedia arts collective in the 1970s. Born in East Los Angeles, he now makes his home in downtown LA.

 

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