Sunday, December 17, 2006
Doors open at 7:00 - Reading begins at 7:15pm
The Good Luck Bar, 1514 Hillhurst Ave., Los Angeles (east Hollywood/Silver Lake: corner of Hollywood & Hillhurst)
RSVP at rhapsodomancyla@yahoo.com
$3 suggested donation at door; a portion of the proceeds will benefit a nonprofit organization.
There will be a cash bar.

Chris Abani's prose includes the novels The Virgin of Flames (Penguin, 2007), GraceLand (FSG, 2004/Picador 2005), Masters of the Board (Delta, 1985) and the novellas, Becoming Abigail (Akashic, 2006) and Song For Night (Akashic, 2007). His poetry collections are Hands Washing Water (Copper Canyon, 2006), Dog Woman (Red Hen, 2004), Daphne's Lot (Red Hen, 2003), and Kalakuta Republic (Saqi, 2001). He is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Riverside and the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award & the PEN Hemingway Book Prize.

Brad Kessler is the author of Birds in Fall (Scribner 2006) and Lick Creek (Scribner 2001), as well as several award-winning children’s books. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Nation, The Kenyon Review, The New York Times Magazine and Bomb. He is a recipient of a 2006 National Endowment for the Arts Grant. He lives in Vermont with his wife, the photographer Dona Ann McAdams.

Sholeh Wolpé is a poet, literary translator and writer. She is the author of The Scar Saloon (Red Hen Press), has a CD by the same title (Refuge Studios), and her translations of selected poems of Forugh Farrokhzad, arguably the most significant female Iranian poet of the twentieth century, is forthcoming in 2007 from the University of Arkansas Press. Her poems, translations, essays and reviews have appeared in scores of literary journals, periodicals and anthologies worldwide. Sholeh was born in Iran but spent most of her teen years in the Caribbean and Europe, ending up in the U.S. where she pursued Masters degrees in Radio-TV-Film (Northwestern University) and Public Health (Johns Hopkins University). She is the recipient of several awards for her poetry and is the director and host of Poetry at the Loft… and more, a successful cultural arts venue in Redlands, California. She lives in Los Angeles, California. For more information please visit: www.sholehwolpe.com

Jim Natal’s first full-length collection, In the Bee Trees was a finalist for the 2000 Pen Center Award in poetry. A second collection, Talking Back to the Rocks, was published by Archer Books in 2003. His poetry recently has been published, is forthcoming, or has been reviewed in Runes, Pool, Reed, Bellingham Review, Paterson Literary Review, Poetry International, and The Los Angeles Review. His work also appears in the new anthologies Mischief, Caprice and Other Poetic Strategies, Open Windows, Blue Arc, and Chance of a Ghost, and his poem, “Unleavened,” was selected as a winner of the 2005 postcard poetry contest sponsored by Writers at Work and the City of Los Angeles. Natal curates and co-hosts the long-running Poem.X monthly poetry series in Santa Monica and teaches the annual Plein Air Poetry Workshop in Joshua Tree National Park. With his wife, graphic designer and book artist Tania Baban, he founded Conflux Press in 2004, specializing in custom publishing and handmade books. He worked for 25 years as a creative executive for the NFL and received an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles in 2005. He teaches creative writing privately and at New Roads School in Santa Monica.
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