Awst, Future Tense, & SEMO Press Present

Join us for a three-press reading to close out your AWP weekend. Featuring:

Tara Atkinson
Ron A. Austin
Karissa Chen
Susanna Childress
Jenny Yang Cropp
Dylan Loring
Dennis Norris II
Alicia Jo Rabins
Elissa Washuta

AWST

Dennis Norris II is the author of the chapbook Awst Collection—Dennis Norris II, named a best book of 2018 by Powell’s. A recipient of fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Tin House, VCCA, and Kimbilio Fiction, their stories have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and named a finalist for the Best Small Fictions Prize. They currently serve as Assistant Fiction Editor at The Rumpus and co-host of the critically acclaimed podcast Food 4 Thot. Based in Brooklyn, they are hard at work on their debut novel. You can learn more at www.dennisnorrisii.com.

Susanna Childress is the author of two books of poetry and a forthcoming book of essays, Extremely Yours. Her poetry, short fiction, and CNF can be found or is forthcoming from The Rumpus, Oakland Review, Ocean State Review, Relief, Best American Poetry, and Image. She lives in Holland, Michigan.

Alicia Jo Rabins is a writer, musician, ritualist and Torah teacher. She is the author of poetry books Divinity School (2015 APR/Honickman First Book Prize) and Fruit Geode (finalist for the 2018 Jewish Book Award), and has released three albums with Girls in Trouble, her indie-folk song cycle about Biblical women. Rabins lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and their two small children. www.aliciajo.com

Karissa Chen’s essays and fiction have appeared in Catapult, Longreads, PEN America, Gulf Coast and Guernica, among others. A Fulbright Fellow and NJ Council on the Arts Artist Fellow, she has also been awarded residencies at Millay Colony, where she was the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellow, Kimmel Harding Nelson, Ragdale Foundation, VCCA, and Willapa Bay AiR. She is a proud Kundiman Fellow and VONA/Voices Fellow and serves as the Editor-in-Chief at Hyphen, Fiction Editor at The Rumpus and Contributing Editor at Catapult. She is currently working on a novel.

FUTURE TENSE

Elissa Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a writer of personal essays and memoir. She is the author of two books, Starvation Mode and My Body Is a Book of Rules, named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. With Theresa Warburton, she is co-editor of the anthology Exquisite Vessel: Shapes of Native Nonfiction, forthcoming from University of Washington Press. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, 4Culture, Potlatch Fund, and Hugo House. Elissa is an assistant professor of English at the Ohio State University.

Tara Atkinson is the author of two books: Bedtime Stories (alice blue books) and Boyfriends (Future Tense Books). Her work has appeared in Hobart, City Arts Magazine, Fanzine, HTMLGIANT, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She co-founded the independent literature festival, APRIL, and served as Managing Director from 2011 to 2016. She holds a BA in English from The University of Iowa and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington.

SEMO Press

Ron A. Austin holds an MFA from the University of Missouri–St. Louis and is a 2016 Regional Arts Commission Fellow. “Avery Colt Is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar,” his first collection of linked stories, won the 2017 Nilsen Prize. Austin’s short stories have been placed or are forthcoming in Pleiades, Story Quarterly, Ninth Letter, Black Warrior Review and other journals. As co-director of the River Styx Reading Series he works to share local and national literary talent. He, his partner Jennie, and son Elijah live in St. Louis with a whippet named Carmen.

Jenny Yang Cropp’s first full-length collection of poems, String Theory, was released by Mongrel Empire Press in September 2015. She is also the author of one chapbook, Hanging the Moon (RockSaw Press, 2010). Her poems have also appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ecotone, Boxcar Poetry Review, Poetry Southeast, Superstition Review, Eclipse, Literary Mama, Festival Writer, Jelly Bucket, The Fiddleback, and other journals.

Dylan Loring is a poet from Des Moines, Iowa. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Minnesota State University, Mankato and teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Barron County. Some of his recent poems have appeared in Ninth Letter, Split Lip Magazine, Bridge Eight, Third Point Press, and the Minnesota review. He’s currently working on his first book-length collection of poems.