KGB Bar

Spire Press New Author Reading
January 23rd, 7:00 pm, KGB Bar

FICTION

Damian Dressick - Fables of the Deconstruction (Spire Press, forthcoming)
Two-time Pushcart nominee, Damian Dressick’s stories have appeared in more forty literary journals, including failbetter.com, New Delta Review, McSweeney’s (online), Caketrain, Vestal Review and Alimentum. Currently a PhD. candidate at the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi, Damian can be found online at www.damiandressick.com.

NONFICTION
Shelly Reed - Editor, Spire Press
Shelly, a recovering poet, has published online here and there including Rougarou, The Furnace Review, and quite a few small print journals currently decomposing in landfills and poet’s bathrooms.  She is reading from her book-in-progress featuring misadventures in a far-from-wholesome Oklahoma town. 

POETRY
Christina Olson - Before I Came Home Naked (Spire Press, forthcoming)
Christina Olson’s work has recently appeared in Brevity, The Best Creative Nonfiction Volume 3, Gulf Coast, and Black Warrior Review. She is currently a visiting professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan and lives online at www.thedrevlow-olsonshow.com.

Elizabeth Rees - Now That We’re Here (Spire Press, 2008)
Elizabeth Rees has published over 250 poems in such journals as: Agni, Kenyon Review, Partisan Review, River Styx, Northwest Review, Mid-American Review, and New England Review. She was a 1990 recipient of a Washington D.C. Commission for the Arts grant in Poetry and received a fellowship in poetry from the Montgomery County Council for the Arts (MD) in 1997.  Her poems have appeared on buses in northern Virginia and were engraved on benches in downtown Bethesda, Maryland. Her poem “Dig” won first prize in SWINK’s 2005 national contest and the poem “People of the Word,” won second prize in the Ann Stanford contest.  Elizabeth has taught creative writing and literature full-time at universities including the U.S. Naval Academy, Johns Hopkins University’s graduate program in Washington, D.C., Howard University, Macalester College, Boston University and Boston College.

Matthew Hittinger - Pear Slip (Spire Press, 2007)
Matthew Hittinger was born in Bethlehem, PA (not far from the grave of H.D.) and earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan where he won a Hopwood Award for Poetry and The Helen S. and John Wagner Prize. A finalist for the 2005 National Poetry Series and semifinalist for the 2006 Walt Whitman Award, his work has appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Michigan Quarterly Review, Fine Madness, DIAGRAM, Memorious, Meridian, DMQ Review, and elsewhere, including Best New Poets 2005. He lives and works in New York City.

JoAnn Balingit - Your Heart and How It Works (Spire Press, 2009)
JoAnn Balingit’s work has appeared in Harpur Palate, Salt Hill Journal, Smartish Pace and elsewhere, including the anthologies DIAGRAM.2 and Best New Poets 2007. She serves as Delaware’s poet laureate, appointed in 2008. She teaches poetry in schools and community organizations throughout the state.