April 28, 2012


Improved Lighting Reading Series
presents

poetry readings by

Tom Andes
Traci Brimhall
Corrie Williamson
Chris Wong

plus music by
The Rhubarbs

Saturday, April 28, 7pm
LalaLand
@ The Art Experience
641 MLK Blvd.
Fayetteville, Arkansas
$1-5 suggested donation

Improved Lighting Reading Series hosts monthly readings, mostly poetry and mostly Saturdays, with occasional musical acts, at Nightbird Books. Free admission.  Curated by Roger Barrett, Kaveh Bassiri, and Matthew Henriksen.

Visit us at improvedlighting.blogspot.com.
Contact improvedlighting@gmail.com.

Author Bios and Links
Tom Andespoetry, fiction, and criticism have appeared or will be forthcoming in News from the Republic of Letters, Santa Clara Review, Mantis, Bateau, Everyday Genius3:AM Magazine, elimae, Pif, and the Rumpus, among other publications. A hand-sewn chapbook, Life Before the Storm and Other Stories, appeared in a limited run from Cannibal Books in 2010. His story “The Hit,” which first appeared in Xavier Review, will appear in Best American Mystery Stories 2012. He lives in Oakland, California.

Traci Brimhall is the author of Our Lady of the Ruins (forthcoming from W.W. Norton), selected by Carolyn Forché for the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award and finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year Award. Her poems have appeared in New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review, FIELD, Indiana Review and Southern Review. She is a former Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, a current Emerging Writer Fellow at The Writer’s Center, and the 2012 Summer Poet in Residence at the University of Mississippi. She has also received scholarships and fellowships to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Disquiet International Literary Program.  She holds degrees from Florida State University and Sarah Lawrence College. Currently, she teaches creative writing at Western Michigan University where she is a doctoral candidate and a King/​Chávez/​Parks Fellow. She also serves as Editor at Large for Loaded Bicycle.

A native of Virginia, Corrie Williamson is completing her third year in the MFA Program at the University of Arkansas, where she has taught and served as director of the Writers in the Schools Program. She received the 2011 Walton Fellowship in Poetry, and recently her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Fourteen Hills, The Southeast Review, cream city review32 Poems, and elsewhere.

Chris Wong is the author of “Songs for Margaret Cravens.” His work has appeared in a number of journals, including Art Amiss, Caffeine Destiny and the Shadyside Review. He currently lives in Fayetteville, AR where he teaches English at the University of Arkansas.

The Rhubarbs is the musical project of Sam King, Katy Henriksen, and C. Violet Eaton. They cover Richard Pryor-approved songs on guitar, banjo, and voice.

April 22, 2012

Improved Lighting Reading Series ANNEX 
presents poetry readings by 

Anne Boyer
Cody-Rose Clevidence
CAConrad
Magdalena Zurawski

Sunday, April 22, 4 pm
La La Land
@ The Art Experience
641 MLK Blvd.
Fayetteville, Arkansas
$1-5 suggested donation

Improved Lighting ANNEX hosts irregular poetry readings in unpredictable locations in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Our regular reading series occurs monthly on Saturdays at Nightbird Books.  Contact improvedlighting@gmail.com.

Author Bios and Links 
Anne Boyer is the author of The Romance of Happy Workers (Coffeehouse Press, 2008) and the forthcoming novel, Joan (Bloof Books). She lives in Kansas and teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Read Anne Boyer’s My Common Heart from Spooky Girlfriend Press.

Cody-Rose Clevidence is the author of Everything That is Beautiful is Edible (Flowers & Cream Press, 2012) and lives in the Arkansas Ozarks.

Read two poems by Cody-Rose Clevidence in Diagram.

CA Conrad is the author of A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon (Wave Books, 2012), The Book of Frank (Wave Books, 2010), Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006), and a collaboration with Frank Sherlock, The City Real & Imagined (Factory School Press, 2010). He lives in Philadelphia and writes with his friends at PhillySound, and he is a co-foudner of PACE: Poet-Activist Community Extension.

Visit CAConrad's author page at Wave Books.

Magdalena Zurawski was born in Newark, NJ in 1972 to Polish immigrants. Her first novel, The Bruise (Fiction Collective 2, 2008), won the Lambda Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Read an excerpt from The Bruise by Magdelena Zurawsi from Fiction Collective 2.

March 10, 2012


Improved Lighting Reading Series
presents
poetry readings by
Martin Bemberg
Geoffrey Brock
Wayne Miller
Sara Nicholson
plus music by
Brian Kupillas
Saturday, March 10, 7pm
Nightbird Books
205 West Dickson Street
Fayetteville, Arkansas
FREE!


Improved Lighting Reading Series hosts monthly readings, mostly poetry and mostly Saturdays, with occasional musical acts, at Nightbird Books. Free admission. Authors books available for purchase through the bookstore. Curated by Roger Barrett, Kaveh Bassiri, and Matthew Henriksen. Visit us at improvedlighting.blogspot.com. Contact improvedlighting@gmail.com.

Author Bios and Links
Martin Bemberg is the editor of PlumBum Verse singer/songwriter of Memphis Pencils.



Geoffrey Brock is the author of Weighing Light, the editor of The FSG Book of 20th-Century Italian Poetry, and the translator of several books from Italian, including Cesare Pavese's Disaffections. He teaches in the MFA program at the University of Arkansas.



Brian Kupillas plays music in of Swimming, Where's Lawrence, and The Wandering.


Wayne Miller is the author of three poetry collections: The City, Our City (Milkweed, 2011), The Book of Props (2009), and Only the Senses Sleep (New Issues, 2006). He also translated Moikom Zeqo’s I Don't Believe in Ghosts (BOA, 2007) and co-edited both New European Poets (Graywolf, 2008). The recipient of 6 Poetry Society of America Awards, the Bess Hokin Prize and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, Wayne lives in Kansas City and teaches as the University of Central Missouri, where he edits Pleiades and Pleiades Press.


Sara Nicholson is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD student at the University of Arkansas.  Her poems can be found in The Quarterly Review, transition, ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTALLION, The Jargon Society, Bitch Tits, and Ouch!: A Journal of Light Verse.