When I first moved to Houston from northern California, the city surprised me in so many ways. It’s easier to be a vegetarian here than it was there, and y’all got great bourbon lists at your restaurants and bars! Especially at Poison Girl, host to one of the best reading series in town. This was my favorite surprise: Houston’s vital, thriving, and progressive literary scene.

But not everyone knows about the award-winning Poison Pen series, which runs the last Thursday of every month. This month’s reading takes place on Thursday, October 26^th, and will feature Roger Reeves, Onyinye Ihezukwu, and Zachary Caballero.

In an effort to introduce the larger Houston community to Poison Pen, I sent some questions to the series’ current organizers, all of whom are writers themselves, as well as past or present Inprint Fellows: Giuseppe Taurino, Analicia Sotelo, and Erika Jo Brown. These folks vet authors and schedule line-ups to bring new, exciting work to Houstonians.

CHARLOTTE WYATT: What makes Poison Pen unique from other readings in town?

ANALICIA SOTELO: What I like about Poison Pen is that even if people aren’t at Poison Girl that night for anything other than whiskey or a Tinder date, they can come upon literature read by contemporary authors in a setting with writers and non-writers alike.

CHARLOTTE: How do you decide which writers to feature in the series?

ERIKA JO BROWN: We decide through a secret algorithm, taking into account genre, book-having-ness, community leadership, and phases of the moon. 

CHARLOTTE: Fair enough. What made you decide to become involved with Poison Pen? What is your role in the series?

GIUSEPPE TAURINO: I was approached by Greg Oaks, one of the original founders, as he was contemplating “retirement.” I’ve known Greg since my graduate school days at UH, and saw the series come to life and grow under his and David MacLean’s, and Scott Repass’s, and Casey Fleming’s and Jameelah Lang’s and Mat Johnson’s (am I missing anyone?) guidance. As a regular attendee (I’ve also read three times), proud UH Creative Writing Program alum, and active Houston lit community member, I’ve also admired the series and its ability to bring diverse readers and community together.

ANALICIA: I think what drew me to Poison Pen initially was its founding team – they were down-to-earth, weren’t afraid to say whatever at the mic, and were crazy encouraging of the readers. There’s this misconception that literature is something left to the care of English classes, but it’s alive and well in this city. And it’s fun to hear read aloud.

ERIKA: I was tapped by Greg Oaks and Jameelah Lang. They mistook my natural effervescence for competence. I like to think I am the beauty of the operation. That’s certainly not Giuseppe. I’m always scouting for interesting performers from the local community, and also help hook up CWP-ers.

GIUSEPPE: Erika might be the beauty of the operation, [but] I consider myself the middle-aged eye candy. 

CHARLOTTE: You are all beautiful. … What do you like best about the venue at Poison Girl?

ANALICIA: It’s classic Montrose Poison Girl, with the naked ladies on the walls, pinball machines, and the Kool-aid man out back. I like that you have to read louder and try harder to be entertaining than you would in a quiet reading space. I like when people laugh at funny lines, because literature can be really funny. I like when people become still as soon as a once funny story becomes deep and real and tragic. The entire reason most of us got into this world is because we all laughed or cried or laugh-cried at something someone wrote once, right? Poison Girl is a great home for that reminder.

CHARLOTTE: Do you have a favorite reading or reader so far?

ERIKA: Hands-down, [it] has to be our most dysfunctional as well. We did a reading celebrating the original founders [and] Mat Johnson railed at the rain like King Lear in the storm. David MacLean flew down from Chicago and said he didn’t care if we all got electrocuted, he would read his fiction snippet. It was exhilarating. You kind of had to be there.

CHARLOTTE: What should folks know about the reading upcoming on the 26th?

GIUSEPPE: That the reading will be lit, as the kids say. We’re going to raise roofs, and wave hands, and try our best to keep our clothes on. 

In all seriousness, we’re featuring a renowned spoken word artist and educator, a 1st year PhD student at the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program — who comes to us, most recently, from the Stegner Program at Stanford — and, in my estimation, one of the best American poets writing today. I could go on and on about their individual accolades, but mostly, I’m excited to introduce our lit community to such an exciting range of voices. I think regulars of the series will leave this month’s reading feeling energized, nodding their heads, saying, “Damn, what a lineup,” while first timers will get a great sense of who we are as a series and what we work hard to bring to the table.

To learn more about the reading on October 26^th, and the featured readers, click here.

See you there!

The post Naked Ladies and the Kool-Aid Man: The Poison Pen Reading Series first appeared on An Open Book - The Inprint Blog.

I grew up in a working class immigrant family. My parents, along with most of my mother’s family, came to New York City from Italy in the early 1970s. None of them finished grade school. The moment I made it to October of my first semester at NYU, I’d gone further in school than anyone on either side of my family had ever gone. And when I actually earned my bachelor’s degree, I became proof that everything my parents endured over the course of their journey had been worth it. Even my father’s father, who was rarely impressed by anything, believed I’d taken the family to new heights. He was convinced my BA in Psychology made me a doctor—the first in the family—and went so far as to ask me to review and assess the medical reports detailing his heart and blood pressure conditions.

Rightfully or not, I’d earned a reputation for being an academic within my family, and book-smart amongst my friends. My being nervous about the ability to perform in a school setting was probably the last thing any of them would ever expect, but that’s precisely how I felt when I decided to leave Queens to pursue an MFA degree at UH. Coming from a background that didn’t value literature, having only taken a handful of lit courses as an undergrad and continuing ed student, and having exactly one completed short story to my name, I was convinced I’d be exposed at UH. From the day I was notified of my acceptance, to the day my then-girlfriend and I packed up my crappy car and started driving west, I kept thinking whoever decided to let me in had probably made a mistake.

It didn’t take long to realize, however, that I’d landed exactly where I needed to be. Yes, compared to many of the grad students I met, I was under-read and under-published. I lacked a basic vocabulary for how to talk about writing or what it meant to be a writer in the world. And Houston, with its oil money and megachurches and complete lack of pedestrians, was nothing like New York City. But even so, by the end of my first semester, I felt as if I’d found home.

It didn’t take long to realize, however, that I’d landed exactly where I needed to be. Yes, compared to many of the grad students I met, I was under-read and under-published. I lacked a basic vocabulary for how to talk about writing or what it meant to be a writer in the world. And Houston, with its oil money and megachurches and complete lack of pedestrians, was nothing like New York City. But even so, by the end of my first semester, I felt as if I’d found home. Between receptions, readings, workshops, and venturing out to explore what was—to me—a surprisingly dynamic city, I was engulfed by a sense of community. Instead of feeling exposed by my self-identified deficiencies, my teachers and peers made me feel as though my inexperience, and the earnestness and curiosity born from it, was a valuable contribution to the fabric of our community. And ultimately, being part of that community helped me realize that being a writer—perhaps more so than anything else—is not about arrival or knowing more than everyone else as much as it is about being a fully engaged participant. In the process. In the conversation. In the successes and frustrations of the community you’re a part of.

After completing my MFA degree, I traveled several paths that took me away from Houston and the UH writing community, only to find my way back to the city, and now, the Creative Writing Program itself, where I serve as Assistant Director. It’s a different role, and there are different faces walking through the halls, but it still feels like home. And though I don’t know every current student personally, much less most of the students and faculty that came and went before and after I completed my MFA, I feel a connection to all of them that stems from the knowledge we’ve navigated similar terrain—physically and emotionally. And I feel a sense of pride and vicarious accomplishment in their and my peers and our faculty’s successes, while continuing to pursue my own.

It’s with these thoughts in mind that I offer up a list of 15 notable books published by the UH CWP community in 2014, along with a little love heaped on each from someone outside the UH family—lest I come across as sentimental or biased.

Sean Bishop, The Night We’re Not Sleeping In

“Sean Bishop’s The Night We’re Not Sleeping In is a book equal to our dark and savage world. It rages, it defies, it rebels. It spits bile-brilliantly, refusing all the palliatives that religions, philosophies, and the various isms have proffered for centuries. Like Achilles, Bishop has a muscular capacity for anger. Like Milton’s Satan he will not be broken in spirit….The Night We’re Not Sleeping In is not a book that will comfort. Like all great art, it will disturb and provoke its readers. Bishop is intellectually and emotionally complex, a poet fully conscious of the shadow side—his and ours—which he articulates with fast-moving jabs of insight.”—Susan Mitchell

Erika Jo Brown, I’m Your Huckleberry

“In love poems that re-imagine a luxuriant tradition that goes back to The Song of Songs, Erika Jo Brown displays a captivating intelligence, a generous—and often fierce and ambivalent—sensibility, and a formidable verbal gift that calls to mind Berryman. Every line sparkles with life, wit, and humor. To the beloved (the reader) she offers what poets have always offered in their endeavor to express love: as much of the world as can fit into a poem—which is a lot!” —Geoffrey Nutter

Jericho Brown, The New Testament

“Jericho Brown’s The New Testament chronicles life and death, personal rituals and blasphemies, race and nation, the good and the bad, as well as illuminating scenarios of self-interrogation and near redemption. The lyrical clarity in this poignant collection approaches ascension. And here the sacred and profane embrace. Each poem celebrates free will. Naked feeling is never abstracted, and this poet knows how to see in the dark. The speaker says, ‘Every last word is contagious’; but also The New Testament is lit by signifying, an anthem of survival and jubilation.”—Yusef Komunyakaa

Sean Hill, Dangerous Goods

“Measuring the ‘distance between desires’ and the fear and possibilities of displacement, Sean Hill’s brilliant new book will make your heart skip ‘like those flat stones that kiss the skin / of the pond and fly off again.’ Where Hill’s first book was an evocation of his Georgia homeplace, Dangerous Goods travels widely and well, from nineteenth-century Liberia to present day Minnesota, from ‘Blacks on Boats’ to postcards written to nostalgia and regret. Channeling Richard Hugo and Jay Wright, Hill’s poignant, pointed poetry is a divining rod, knowing well that the dark is ‘an ocean for us all.’”—Kevin Young

Tony Hoagland, Twenty Poems That Could Save America and Other Essays

“Hoagland makes clear his affinity for subversion and irreverence in smart passages on idiom and diction that are packed with excerpts and explication of a wide range of poets, from Rainer Maria Rilke and Wallace Stevens to Lucie Brock-Broido and Marianne Moore. . . . A great read for poets and poetry lovers and a rejuvenating call to reimagine literary priorities.”—Booklist

Lacy Johnson, The Other Side: A Memoir

“Lacy M. Johnson’s powerfully moving and brilliantly structured memoir, The Other Side, asks, ‘How is it possible to reclaim the body after devastating violence?’ Her intense desire and demand for a life lived in the body is triumphant. Johnson’s strength to free not only her physical self, but also to move through years of incapacitating fear by writing this book, is breathtaking: ‘I lift the chain from my neck, over my head, let it rattle to the floor.’ “—Kelle Groom

Jason Koo, America’s Favorite Poem

“There is, it seems, an invisible question mark behind America’s Favorite Poem. What is it, who writes it? Jason Koo’s ruminations are capacious enough to consider a Jumbotroned Jay Z, the BQE and LeBron James’s elbow yet intimate enough to ask ‘whether I’ll ever feel like I have enough, whether I am enough.’ America’s Favorite Poem is full of irreverent swag and swagger, but it’s ultimately Koo’s exploration of what we consume and what consumes us that makes this book such a provocative and mesmerizing achievement.”—Terrance Hayes

David MacLean, The Answer to the Riddle is Me

“MacLean has written a memoir that combines the evocative power of William Styron’s Darkness Visible, the lyric subtlety of Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, and the narrative immediacy of a Hollywood action film. He reminds us how we are all always trying to find a version of ourselves that we can live with.”—The Los Angeles Times

David Thomas Martinez, Hustle

“Welcome to the world of David Tomas Martinez, where cars want to be stolen and the faucet is held like a gun, and homemade tattoos thicken with age. He breathes fresh air into American poetry by bringing it to the street—away from the Ivory Tower, away from the self-referential jokes and commentary. Martinez allows us to see Neruda’s love songs again, but this time they ‘whoop / a motherfucker’s ass.’ And he makes up his own vocabulary here, one in which the word ‘weekend’ comes from the word ‘weaken,’ long estranged from ‘wedded.’ Open this book on the poems like ‘Sabbath Fe Minus’ or ‘California Penal Code 266,’ or ‘Coveralls,’ and you will see right away a tone that is restless, metaphors that thrill you, and music that is so contagious it just won’t let you be. That is because David Tomas Martinez is a real poet.”—Ilya Kaminsky

Antonya Nelson, Funny Once

“Nelson’s run as one of the finest contemporary short story writers takes an exhilarating leap forward with her outrageously superb seventh collection. Her particular wizardry in the short form (Nelson is also the author of four novels) is found in her exceptional melding of pristine prose with a rampaging imagination and a comic’s perfect timing. Nelson is scandalously funny, her characters are royally screwed up and wildly inept, and their dire predicaments bust down the doors on the most painful of life’s cruel jokes, from betrayal to divorce, addiction, and old age. Nelson excels at multigenerational chaos, portraying with equal verve surprising children and ornery adults as well as neurotic dogs and places rife with hidden angst, namely Wichita, Telluride, and Houston . . . Each of Nelson’s magnetizing stories generates atomic vibrancy and achieves the psychic mass of a novel.”—Booklist

Frances Justine Post, Beast

“Post is a poet who begins her first book with the line ‘I put on my face.’ I put on my face feels like the opening line of an honest monologue. A dark stage with one light from that light a voice. I put on my face is a pleading, an opening for a listener. Here in lies the complexity and sophistication of BEAST. I put on my face means Post has a past. We have much to gain from Post because she has much to give. BEAST is a book to fight off mediocrity and middle of the road culture. These are poems that stick to your bones.”—Tova Gannana

Kevin Prufer, Churches

“Churches is a collection that dazzles with sound and macabre landscapes where anything is possible…Prufer is a poet that you can trust with your mind. He may bring you to the reaches of subjective reality but you always return somehow more whole and with a greater understanding of the human conditions of suffering, grief, love, and fear.”—Jennifer Fitzgerald

Ian Stansel, Everybody’s Irish

“These are stories of profound heart and deeply resonant humanity. I’m giddy to finally have all of Ian Stansel’s gorgeously crafted and emotionally affecting stories bound together in one volume that I can read and reread. Everybody’s Irish is my most-anticipated-book-of-the-year…and I’d wager that’s true for anyone who’s read even a single story by him.” —Thisbe Nissen

Peter Turchi, A Muse and a Maze

“While presenting different kinds of puzzles–from disappearing magic tricks to elaborate labyrinths–Turchi shows how writer and magician alike use self-presentation and withheld information to transport us to a ‘state of wonder’ and ‘invite us to think about something… worthy of extended consideration.’ [A Muse and a Maze] is consistently engaging, lively, and thought provoking. The interactive element is also a delight…Though Turchi’s volume seems most tailored to writers, readers and puzzle lovers should find much of value as well.”—Publishers Weekly

Tiphanie Yanique, Land of Love and Drowning

“Land Of Love And Drowning is a gorgeous incantation of a novel, a masterful fusion of place, language, and seductive storytelling that will hold you spellbound from its first pages to the last. Tiphanie Yanique takes on all of it—the bitter and the sweet, love and loss, betrayal and faith, as well as the distant machinations of state that push us about like so many minnows on ocean tides—and does so with a grace and wisdom that are nothing short of profound. This book is an absolute marvel.”—Ben Fountain

The post From the desk of Giuseppe Taurino: Notable books published by the UH Creative Writing Program community in 2014 first appeared on An Open Book - The Inprint Blog.

While many conferences involve cross-country travel and fees that can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars, the Boldface Conference—housed here in Houston—offers a dynamic experience at a fraction of the cost of many programs. The Boldface conference fee for the week is $125 for students and $200 for non-students; registration is open until May 9.  Click here to learn more.

Boldface was started in 2009 by the editors of Glass Mountain, the undergraduate literary journal at the University of Houston, to create a conference devoted exclusively to developing writers. Any person who has not studied creative writing at the graduate level is welcome to attend.  The goal of the conference is to give emerging writers an experience that is usually available only to professional writers: several days of intense focus on the craft of writing through workshops, readings, and craft talks.

A typical day at the conference runs from 9 am—5 pm. Writers gather for breakfast in the morning, then go to the first workshop session of the day. Before lunch, a series of Masterclasses led by the Boldface faculty (graduate students from University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program) on a variety of writing-related subjects are offered. After the mid-day lunch break, there are readings by the Visiting Writers, who are graduates of the UH Creative Writing Program (this year, Amber Dermont, David MacLean and Franke Varca will be with us).

In mid-afternoon, conferees go to their second workshop session, and the last event of the day is typically a craft talk by one of the Visiting Writers or Boldface Faculty. There are student readings at Houston venues on two evenings of the conference, and an after-party on Friday night. On Friday, workshops do not meet but instead conferees attend a number of panels on subjects ranging from publishing work to applying to graduate programs.

Boldface is truly unique among writers’ conferences because it is the only literary conference specifically for emerging writers. The conference is a fantastic stepping stone for writers who’ve never attended a literary conference but would like to, surrounded by other emerging writers in a more intimate environment. Boldface is open to writers of all ages—recent conferees have ranged in age from 20 to 80.

Past attendees have said, “Boldface placed me on the fast track to realize what I want to be and am now, a writer” and “…Not only did I receive specific, focused feedback on my own work, but I also learned techniques to implement in future writing, critiqued peers’ pieces in a constructive environment, received advice on MFA programs and publishing from professionals, and networked with students and writers from across the country.”

Boldface placed me on the fast track to realize what I want to be and am now, a writer” and “…Not only did I receive specific, focused feedback on my own work, but I also learned techniques to implement in future writing, critiqued peers’ pieces in a constructive environment, received advice on MFA programs and publishing from professionals, and networked with students and writers from across the country.

Before the conference begins, writers at Boldface submit a short story or poems to be workshopped during their daily classes, much as they would in a university creative writing class. The overall focus of the workshops is to take a look at work that’s been created prior to the conference and learn how to improve it. Some Boldfacers come to the conference to polish work they’ve already drafted and revised, but most writers generate new stories and poems to bring to the conference.  In the fall, Boldface conferees submit prose and poetry workshopped during the conference to the Robertson Prize. The prize, judged by Boldface faculty, carries cash prizes and publication for the winners.

Writers can attend in one of three genres: poetry, nonfiction, or fiction. In addition to the feedback from workshops and the new knowledge gleaned from master classes and readings, Boldface provides the chance to network with other emerging writers and build a peer community. As one Boldfacer commented, “I got to spend an entire week thinking about nothing but writing (a rare and priceless gift)…”

The post Boldface: A Writers’ Conference in the Bayou City first appeared on An Open Book - The Inprint Blog.