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September 2014

Friday, September 5th

Justin Rogers and open mic at FIRE. 8 pm.  $5 admission
How to find FIRE: Head South on Portage Rd from downtown. We are located across from the Washington Square branch of the Kalamazoo Public Library. (The library is on your right, Fire will be on your left off of Portage Rd.)

Justin Rogers is a Detroit based poet, visual artist, and educator.  Finding poetry through the non-profit organization InsideOut Literary Arts Project, he begain his writing career with local publications in InsideOut anthologies, Detroit news papers, and college journals.  After traveling to San Francisco to compete at Brave New Voices, Rogers embarked on his first regional tour, featuring in places like Columbus, OH, Dayton, OH, Chicago, IL and more.  Rogers' most recent accomplishments include literary and visual art publications in Wayne State University's Wayne Literary Review, Red Beard Press' Uncommon Core, and First Literary Review.  Rogers currently attends Wayne State University as an Art and English Education major, is President of Student Org WayneSLAM (Wayne Student Literary Arts Movement), works as a writer in residence for InsideOut Literary Arts.

Friday, September 19th

Stuart Dybek at WMU's Little Theatre. First event of the 2014 Gwen Frostic Reading Series.

Sunday, September 28th

"Poetry in nineteen languages: A symphony for the senses," featuring WMU faculty, Portage District Library, 2 to 4 p.m., reception to follow. Free.

January 2014

FROSTIC READING SERIES: Mary Szybist

@ Little Theater, WMU

Thursday, January 16, 8:00PM

Mary Szybist's first collection of poetry, Granted, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and her second, Incarnadine, won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2013.  She's the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Library of Congress, the MacDowell Colony, and the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center.  She is an associate professor of English at Lewis & Clark College and a faculty member at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.

POETS in PRINT: Roger Reeves & Emilia Phillips

@ Kalamazoo Book Arts Center

326 W Kalamazoo Ave #103A

Saturday, January 18, 7:00PM

Emilia Phillips is the author of Signaletics (University of Akron Press, 2013) and two chapbooks including Bestiary of Gall (Sundress Publications, 2013). Her poetry appears inAGNI, Green Mountains Review, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, The Journal, The Kenyon Review, Narrative, Third Coast, and elsewhere. She’s the recipient of the 2012 Poetry Prize from The Journal; 2nd Place in Narrative’s 2012 30 Below Contest; and fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, U.S. Poets in Mexico, Vermont Studio Center, and Virginia Commonwealth University where she received her MFA in 2012. She serves as the prose editor for 32 Poems and teaches creative writing at Gettysburg College as the 2013–2014 Emerging Writer Lecturer. She’s currently completing her second manuscript, Heaven and Men and Devils.

Roger Reeves‘s poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Tin House, among others. Kim Addonizio selected “Kletic of Walt Whitman” for the Best New Poets 2009 anthology. He was awarded a 2013 NEA Fellowship, Ruth Lilly Fellowship by the Poetry Foundation in 2008, two Bread Loaf Scholarships, an Alberta H. Walker Scholarship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and two Cave Canem Fellowships. He earned his PhD the University of Texas-Austin and is currently an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His first book, King Me, was published by  Copper Canyon Press in the fall of 2013.

“The Other Michigan”: An Exploration, through Verse, dof the Various Degrees of Regional Identity

Tuesday, January 21st at the Kalamazoo Public Library @ 7:00PM

Featuring: Bruce Lack, Judith Rypma, Andrea England, Richard Katrovas, Arnold Johnston

Five Michigan-based poets will read samples of their work and participate in a panel on how living in Michigan has influenced that work.  Books will be available for sale by Dean Hauck of the Michigan News Agency, and writers will be available for signing. The reading will take place from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, January 21 in the Van Deusen Room, Kalamazoo Public Library, Central Branch, 315 S. Rose St, Kalamazoo, MI 49007. Admission is free and refreshments will be provided. 

Richard Katrovas is the author or fourteen books of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, most recently Scorpio Rising: Selected Poems (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2011). His Raising Girls in Bohemia: Meditations of an American Father will be published this coming fall (Three Rooms Press:  New York). Katrovas taught for twenty year at the University of New Orleans, and since 2002 at WMU. His poems, stories and essays have appeared in many leading literary journals and anthologies, and he has received numerous grants and awards. He is the founding director of the Prague Summer Program.

Arnold Johnston’s books include two poetry collections—What the Earth Taught Us andSonnets: Signs and Portents—and The Witching Voice: A Novel from the Life of Robert Burns.  His translations of Jacques Brel’s songs have appeared in numerous musical revues nationwide, and are also featured on his CD, Jacques Brel: I’m Here!  Johnston and his wife Deborah Ann Percy have collaborated on over fifty plays, many of which have won production, awards, and publication across the United States.  He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the American Literary Translators Association.  He was chairman of the English Department (1997-2007) and taught creative writing for many years at Western Michigan University. 

Judith Rypma, Master Faculty Specialist in children’s literature and creative writing, has taught for more than twenty years in WMU’s Department of English. After a career as a travel journalist, Rypma earned an M.F.A. in creative writing at WMU. Her poetry and short stories appear frequently in literary journals, and she has published five books of poetry, including Looking for the Amber Room, Sewing Lessons, Rapunzel’s Hair (an All Nations Chapbook Contest winner), and Holy Rocks and Mineral Treasures.  She has frequently traveled to Russia and the former Soviet republics and is committed to continuing to foster relationships between the two countries through the Kalamazoo-Pushkin Partnership.  

Andrea England, whose poetry collection Inventory of a Field appeared recently from Finishing Line Press, holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University and a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from Western Michigan University, where she currently teaches in the Department of English. She has been the recipient of a Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and a Gwen Frostic Poetry Prize, among others. Her work has most recently appeared in RHINO,Harpur Palate, Passages North, Cutthroat Magazine, and The Atticus Review.

Bruce Lack, born and raised in Mid-Michigan, served honorably in the United States Marine Corps from 2003-2007. He deployed twice, spending twenty-one months in Fallujah, Iraq. Returning to his home state in 2007, he was thrilled to find his fiancée and a talent for relating his experiences in war to civilians. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Western Michigan University in 2011, and he is currently a Cornwell Fellow in theUniversity of Michigan's MFA Program in Poetry. His poetry won second place in the 2010 Winning Writers War Poetry Contest, and has also appeared in the Rufous City Review. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife and cats.

WMU's Frostic Reading Series: Nelly Reifler

Thursday, January 30, 8:00PM

Bernhard Ctr 208-210

February 2014

Frostic Reading Series: Rachel Kushner

Friday, February 14, 8:00PM

@ WMU's Little Theater

“Artifactory” Poetry Reading 

Sunday, February 23, 2014 from 1:30PM - 3:00PM

@ Kalamazoo Valley Museum 
230 N. Rose St., Kalamazoo, MI

March 2014

POETS in PRINT: Brian Russell & Tarfia Faizullah

@ Kalamazoo Book Arts Center

326 W Kalamazoo Ave #103A

Saturday, March 8, 7:00PM

FRIENDS OF POETRY: "Fairytales, Legends, and Myths" 

@ Portage District Library, 300 Library Lane, Portage, MI

Tuesday, March 18, 7:00PM

Performers that evening are Kathleen McGookey, Hedy Habra, Lynn Pattison, Julie Stotz-Ghosh, Janet Ruth Heller, and Judith Rypma.

The authors will be available to autograph their books, and Kazoo Books will sell the writers’ works. The sponsor of this event is Friends of Poetry. This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

FROSTIC READING SERIES: ALUMNI READING

Featuring: Cullen Bailey Burns, Lisa Lenzo, & Mitch Vermeersch

Friday, March 21, 8:00PM

@Bernhard Center 208-210

FROSTIC READING SERIES: NEW ISSUES AUTHORS

Featuring: Katie Peterson & Kirsten Scott

Thursday, March 27, 8:00PM

@Bernhard Center 208-209

April 2014

FROSTIC READING SERIES: Arlene Hutton

Thursday, April 3, 8:00PM

@ Bernhard Center 208-210

KALAMAZOO POETRY FESTIVAL

April 4th & 5th

POETS in PRINT: Dan Albergotti & Joanne Diaz

@ Kalamazoo Book Arts Center

326 W Kalamazoo Ave #103A

Saturday, April 12, 7:00PM