Lisa Fishman lives in Orfordville and Madison, Wisconsin and directs the MFA and BA programs in poetry writing at Columbia College, Chicago. She is the author of four collections of poetry:Current (Parlor Press, 2011), The Happiness Experiment (Ahsahta Press, 2007); Dear, Read (Ahsahta, 2002); The Deep Heart’s Core Is a Suitcase (New Issues Press, 1996), with another,Flowercart, to be published later this spring by Ahsahta Press. at the same time as scattering, a chapbook, was recently published by Albion Books. In Orfordville, she lives on a farm and orchard she and her husband, Henry Morren, started in 1998; in Madison, they live with the poet Richard Meier near the Yahara River. She has a six-year-old son, James Fishman-Morren.

Richard Meier is the author of Terrain Vague, selected by Tomaž Šalamun for the Verse Prize in 2000 and published by Verse Press (now available from Wave Books) andShelley Gave Jane a Guitar, published by Wave Books in 2006. He is currently collaborating on slope.org’s “The Weather at Five O’Clock” with Brandon Shimoda, Jared Stanley, Lisa Fishman, Lucas Farrell, Rick Meier, Sandra Doller, Sara Mumolo. He lives in Chicago and Madison and is writer-in-residence at Carthage College in Kenosha, WI.

7pm

Off the Shelf Books, 315 W. Main St. in Merced

Wednesday, March 9th: Poet Lee Herrick (7pm, Off the Shelf Books)

March 10th: Poet Rebekah Edwards (8pm, Off the Shelf Books)

March 29th: Poets Lisa Fishman & Richard Meier (Off the Shelf Books)

April 11th: Poet Ruth Ellen Kocher (Off the Shelf Books)

All readings are Free and Open to the public.

Claire Becker is the author the book, Where We Think It Should Go, forthcoming from Octopus Books, and the chapbooks Untoward (Lame House Press), Get You (Duration Press), Young Adult (Boxwood Editions), We Know in 2010, We Survive (Mondo Bummer), and The Werld (Horse Less Press). Her poems have been published in Tarpaulin Sky, The Cultural Society, Typo, The Poetry Project, Cannibal, and elsewhere. With Lily Brown, she edits RealPoetik.She lives in Oakland and teaches high school at the California School for the Blind.

Lily Brown‘s first book, Rust or Go Missing, will be published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center in fall 2010. Her poems have appeared or will appear in Colorado Review, American Letters and Commentary, Fence, Pleiades, and Denver Quarterly, among other journals. Her chapbook, Being One, is forthcoming from Brave Men Press. She lives in Athens, where she is a Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia.

7pm

Off the Shelf books / 315 W. Main St / Downtown Merced

Tim Z. Hernandez is a writer and performer originally from Central California’s San Joaquin Valley. His performances have been featured at Los Angeles’ Getty Center Museum, the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts, Stanford University, and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. He is the recipient of several notable awards, including the American Book Award for his debut collection of poetry,Skin Tax, the Zora Neale Hurston Award, and the James Duval Phelan Award from the San Francisco Foundation.

Thursday, November 18th Poets Cynthia Arrieu-King, Claire Becker, and Lily Brown

Lily Brown’s first book, Rust or Go Missing, will be published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center in fall 2010.   Her poems have appeared or will appear in Colorado Review,American Letters and Commentary, Fence, Pleiades, and Denver Quarterly, among other journals. Her chapbook, Being One, is forthcoming from Brave Men Press.  She lives in Athens, whereshe is a Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia.

Cynthia Arrieu-King is an assi stant professor of creative writing at Stockton College. Her book People are Tiny in Paintings of China will be published by Octopus Books in fall 2010. Her poems and reviews will appear this year in Boston Review, Jacket, Witness, Harp and Altar,Forklift, Ohio, etc. She lives by a bunch of casinos and the sea.

Claire Becker is the author the book, Where We Think It Should Go, forthcoming from Octopus Books, and the chapbooks Untoward (Lame House Press), Get You (Duration Press),Young Adult (Boxwood Editions), We Know in 2010, We Survive (Mondo Bummer), and The Werld (Horse Less Press). Her poems have been published in Tarpaulin Sky, The CulturalSociety,   Typo, The Poetry Project, Cannibal, and elsewhere. With Lily Brown, she editsRealPoetik. She lives in Oakland and teaches high school at the California School for the Blind.

Thursday, December 2nd – Merritt Writing Program Faculty Reading – Readers TBA

Faculty in the Merritt Writing Program include a number of widely published writers. Come listen to the vibrant work that’s coming out of UC Merced.

Join our Faculty writers for the annual Faculty Reading.

We’ll see you again in September 2010!

Off-campus at The Black Box Theatre, 452 W. Main St. Merced 7:30 PM

This event is supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation. A McNair Event.

David Bradley received a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Pennsylvania and an M. A. in Area Studies from the Institute for United State Studies at the University of London. He is the author of two novels, South Street and The Chaneysville Incident. The latter won the 1982 PEN/Faulkner Award and an Academy Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He has published literary (as opposed to scholarly) essays on Jean Toomer, Richard Wright, Herman Melville, William Melvin Kelley and Alice Walker, and has published articles in Esquire, Redbook, The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and The Village Voice and other periodicals. He has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction, and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for creative non-fiction. He is currently at work on a non-fiction book, The Bondage Hypothesis: Meditations on Race and History and a novel-in-stories, Raystown.

7:30pm / The Black Box Theatre, Playhouse Merced, 452 W. Main Street, downtown Merced

Catherine Meng

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The recipient of National Endowment for the Arts and MacDowell Colony poetry fellowships, Brian Teare is the author of the award-winning debut The Room Where I Was Born and the chapbooks Pilgrim and Transcendental Grammar Crown. His second book, Sight Map, is out from University of California Press; his third, Pleasure, will be published in 2010 by Ahsahta Press. He lives and teaches in San Francisco, where he also makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books. Recent work online at Blackbird.

Off-campus at The Black Box Theatre, 452 W. Main St. Merced 7:30 PM

This event is supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation. A McNair Event.

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3.4 Poets Brian Teare & Catherine Meng (Black Box Theatre, 452 W. Main St. Merced) 7:30 PM

This event is supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.

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4.15 Novelist Andrew Altschul (Black Box Theatre, 452 W. Main St. Merced), 7:30 PM

Andrew Altschul is the author of Lady Lazarus (Harcourt, 2008) and the forthcoming novel Deus Ex Machina (Counterpoint Press, 2010). A former music journalist and rock DJ, he is the Books Editor for The Rumpus (therumpus.net) and director for the Center for Literary Arts at San Jose State University.

This event is supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.

4.08 Novelist David Bradley (Black Box Theatre, 452 W. Main St. Merced), 7:30 PM

Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her BA in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and her MFA at San Francisco State University. She is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish Press, 2005), which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. Her third book, entitled Diwata, is forthcoming from BOA Editions, Ltd. in 2010. Her chapbooks, Easter Sunday (2008), Cherry (2008), and West Oakland Sutra for the AK-47 Shooter at 3:00 AM and other Oakland poems (2008) are published by Ypolita Press, Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, and Deep Oakland Editions, respectively. She lives with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland.

Wednesday, April 8th 7pm
Kolligian Library 355 (The Green Room)
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, MERCED