WTAW-NYC is pleased to announce that our first event will feature readings by Mary Lou Buschi, Anthony Cappo, David Groff, Maria Laurino, Mark Solomon, and Cliff Thompson. Please join us at the Bowery Poetry Club at 6 pm on Sunday, February 5. $8 in advance or $10 at the door. Purchase tickets in advance here.
Mary Lou Buschi’s collections of poetry include Awful Baby (2016), Tight Wire, chapbook (2016), Ukiyo-e, chapbook (2014), and The Spell of Coming (or Going), chapbook (2013). Laura Kasischke had this to say, “This poet is a poet grappling with real material—depths, passions, and intensities—and doing it with both craft and recklessness.” Mary Lou’s poems have appeared in many journals such as Indiana Review, The Laurel Review, Willow Springs, FIELD, among others. She has taught creative writing and literature in the SPS division of New York University. Currently, she is a special education teacher in the Bronx.
Anthony Cappo is the author of the chapbook, My Bedside Radio (Deadly Chaps Press, 2016). His poems have appeared in Prelude, Connotation Press—An Online Artifact, Stone Highway Review, Pine Hills Review, Yes Poetry, and other publications. Anthony received his MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. He is originally from South Jersey, but now lives in New York City. His work can be found at his website (click on his name).
David Groff’s book of poems, Clay, was chosen by Michael Waters as winner of the Louise Bogan Award for Artistic Merit and Excellence and was published in 2013 by Trio House Press. His previous collection, Theory of Devolution, was selected by Mark Doty for the National Poetry Series, was published in 2002 by the University of Illinois Press, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary and Publishing Triangle awards. With Jim Elledge he coedited Who’s Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners, from the University of Wisconsin Press; with Philip Clark he coedited Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS (Alyson); and with Richard Berman he coedited Whitman’s Men: Walt Whitman’s Calamus Poems Celebrated by Contemporary Photographers. David’s poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Chicago Review, Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Phat’itude, Poetry, and other magazines. He has received residencies and fellowships from The Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, The Hall Farm Center, Hidden River Arts Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Ragdale, the Santa Fe Art Institute, the Saltonstall Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Wildacres Retreat.
Maria Laurino is the author of The Italian Americans: A History, the companion book to a PBS documentary series, as well as the memoirs, Old World Daughter, New World Mother, a meditation on contemporary feminism, and the national bestseller, Were You Always an Italian?, an exploration of ethnic identity. She began her career as a staff writer for the Village Voice, and her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, and Salon.com. Her essays have been widely anthologized, including in the Norton Reader. Maria teaches creative nonfiction at New York University.
Mark Solomon was born in NYC in 1941 and has always lived there. He received his BA in English Literature from Columbia College in 1962 and worked toward an MA in 17th Century English Poetry at Columbia Graduate Faculties. His first published poems appeared in Broadway Boogie in 1973. In January 1993 he received an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College and since then has published in TriQuarterly, Hanging Loose, BOMB, The Marlboro Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Southern Poetry Review, and other periodicals and anthologies. My True Body, his first full-length collection was published in July 2016 by Havel Havulim NYC. His chapbook Her Whom I Summoned was published in 2015. Both are available through Havel DOT Havulim AT gmail DOT com.
Clifford Thompson received a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction in 2013 for Love for Sale and Other Essays, published by Autumn House Press, which has also published his memoir, Twin of Blackness (2015). His essays on books, film, jazz, and American identity have appeared in publications including The Village Voice, The Threepenny Review, The Iowa Review, Commonweal, Film Quarterly, Cineaste, Oxford American, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Black Issues Book Review. He is the author of a novel, Signifying Nothing. For over a dozen years he served as the editor of Current Biography, and he has held adjunct/visiting professorships at Columbia University, New York University, Queens College, and Sarah Lawrence College. He is at work on a book that is part memoir and part reflection on the work of Joan Didion. He lives in Brooklyn.
WTAW-New York City takes place first Sundays of the month at 6 pm at the Bowery Club. Michael Collins is the coordinator and host.
Why There Are Words, founded in the SF Bay Area in 2010, is a national neighborhood for writers & poets to share their words in premiere live venues. Readers represent a diverse range of working writers from emerging to well published, each sharing the common criterion of excellence. Thoughtful curation is a hallmark of WTAW Press, a 501(c)3 nonprofit independent publisher of exceptional books, with a commitment to publishing essential voices that may be otherwise overlooked, underlies the reading series.
