Cheryl’s Gone reading Series - July 17
Reb Livingston, Kyle Dargan, Adam Robinson, Stripmall Ballads
8PM - Big Bear Cafe
1st & R Streets NW
Washington, DC
Reb Livingston is the author of Your Ten Favorite Words (Coconut Books), Pterodactyls Soar Again (Whole Coconut Chapbook Series), co-author of Wanton Textiles (No Tell Books) and co-editor of The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel anthology series. She’s also the editor of No Tell Motel and publisher of No Tell Books.
Kyle G. Dargan a member of the creative writing MFA faculty at American University in Washington, D.C. and founding editor of Post No Ills magazine. His debut collection of poems, The Listening, won the 2003 Cave Canem Prize, and his poems and non-fiction have appeared in publications such as Denver Quarterly, The Newark Star-Ledger, Ploughshares, and Shenandoah. Dargan is originally from Newark, New Jersey, and attended the University of Virginia where he studied under Rita Dove, Lisa R uss Spaar, and Charles Wright. He is a graduate of Indiana University’s MFA in Creative Writing program, where he was a Yusef Komunyakaa Fellow and Poetry Editor at Indiana Review. He was most recently the Managing Editor of Callaloo. Dargan has received fellowships to attend the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, as well as a scholarship to attend The Fine Arts Work Center. His second collection of poems, Bouquet of Hungers, was recently released by the University of Georgia press.
Adam Robinson has lived in a bunch of different cities, but that probably doesn’t matter. His childhood was not notable except for all of the God stuff that he grew up with. He went to a Christian college, but only because his brother, his Irish twin, did. The Christian college was awesome for Adam (though it must be noted that this word often accompanies descriptions of religious experiences) and it was there that he learned that life is really terrible unless everybody forgives each other. Adam continues to be a Christian in spite of the fact that Martin Luther consummated his marriage to Katherine von Bora in front of his friends (or, possibly, because of this fact; it isn’t clear). Said another way, Adam is a dark and sad Christian like St. Paul. Now Adam works as a technology buyer for an asset management company, but that doesn’t really describe him. It isn’t who he is. He is a guitar pla yer for Sweatpants and the publisher of Publishing Genius and a writer of poems and stories and songs, but he cannot be fully understood in these terms either. It is better to think of Adam in terms of the time he jumped out of a speeding boat (that he was driving) and crashed it. The boat didn’t sink and Adam didn’t drown. The boat got stuck in some seaweed and Adam swam back to shore. Adam made a similar jump when he left behind his life in Milwaukee and ran away to Baltimore with Stephanie Barber, who is awesome (like Christianity, but in a different way). The experience was panicked and great. It should also be noted that the farthest Adam has walked at one time is 28 miles and the farthest he has ridden a bicycle is 34 miles. He could go farther, though. He will go farther. In fact, there he goes now. [WRITTEN BY MICHAEL KIMBALL FOR THE SERIES “Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (On a Postcard).”]
Stripmall Ballads mixes beat poetry, stream of consciousness story telling, with the spirit of a fire&brimstone preacher to create a world of song that boarders on the edges of folk.
