Lyrics and Dirges: A Monthly Reading Series
Lyrics & Dirges is a monthly reading series that features a mix of prominent, emerging and beginning writers. Its aim is to highlight various forms of writing in an effort to spotlight the diverse literary community that lives in the Bay Area. Curated and hosted by MK Chavez APRIL LINEUP:
Blas Falconer
Kazim Ali
Mg Roberts
Jeff Kingman
Scott Duncan
BIOS:
Blas Falconer is the author of The Foundling Wheel (Four Way Books 2012) and A Question of Gravity and Light (University of Arizona Press 2007). The recipient of an NEA Fellowship, the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange, and a Tennessee Individual Artist Grant, his poems have been featured by Poets and Writers, The Poetry Foundation, and Poetry Society of America. A coeditor of Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets (Southern Illinois University Press 2010) and The Other Latino: Writing Against a Singular Identity (University of Arizona Press 2011), he is a lecturer at the University of Southern California and teaches in the low-residency MFA at Murray State University.
Kazim Ali is a poet, essayist, fiction writer and translator. His books include several volumes of poetry, including Sky Ward (Wesleyan University Press, 2013), The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books' New England/New York Award, The Fortieth Day (BOA Editions, 2008), and the cross-genre text Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities (Wesleyan University Press, 2009). He has also published a translation of Water's Footfall by Sohrab Sepehri (Omnidawn Press, 2011). His novels include Quinn's Passage (blazeVox books), named one of "The Best Books of 2005" by Chronogram magazine and The Disappearance of Seth (Etruscan Press, 2009), and his books of essays include Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art and the Architecture of Silence (University of Michigan Press, 2010), Fasting for Ramadan (Tupelo Press, 2011). In addition to co-editing Jean Valentine: This-World Company (University of Michigan Press, 2012), he is a contributing editor for AWP Writers Chronicle and associate editor of the literary magazine FIELD and founding editor of the small press Nightboat Books. He is an associate professor of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at Oberlin College and teaches in the Masters of Fine Arts program of the University of Southern Maine.
Born in Subic Bay, Philippines, Mg Roberts teaches writing in the San Francisco Bay area. She is a Kundiman Fellow, Kelsey Sttreet Press member, and MFA graduate of New College of California, where strange tricks were added to her bag. Her work has appeared and or is forthcoming in Bombay Gin, Eleven Eleven, The New Delta Review, Web Conjunctions, and the anthology Kuwento for Lost Things. If she were not a poet she would be a snake handler, or maybe just a good speller.
Jeffrey Kingman lives by the Napa River in Vallejo, California. He is the winner of the 2012 Revolution House Flash Fiction Contest. His novel, Moto Girl, was a semifinalist in the 2009 Dana Awards. Two of his poems were published in Off Channel as finalists in the 2012 Midwest Writing Center contest. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in PANK, lo- ball, and Squaw Valley Review. Jeff has a Master’s degree in Music Composition and can be heard banging his drums in a large shed in his backyard.
Scott Duncan, frankly, is a lingerer and a lurker. He’s seen a president eat enchiladas, escaped being held hostage by nuns, fled Mills College with an MFA, and makes his lair in Oakland. Scott’s ancestors are Californio, Hispano, and Texian, so he’s half white guy and Mexican. His novel in progress is The Ramona Diary of Scott Russell Duncan, a fictional travel diary reclaiming the mythology of Chicano California, which has much to do with a 19th century book named Ramona. A chapter appears in the 2012 summer issue of Border Senses.