Moira Egan: Strange Botany & Hot Flash Sonnets

All the way from her home in Rome, Italy, Moira Egan returns to her Baltimore birthplace to read some of her sexy, award-winning poems. Egan has published four collections of poetry: Cleave (WWPH, 2004); La Seta della Cravatta/The Silk of the Tie (Edizioni l’Obliquo, 2009); Bar Napkin Sonnets (The Ledge, 2009); and Spin (Entasis Press, 2010).

She also co-edited Hot Sonnets: An Anthology with BrickHouse Books’ Clarinda Harriss, and her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies in the U.S. and abroad, including Best American Poetry 2008 and The Book of Forms. With her husband, Damiano Abeni, she has published award-winning books in translation by the likes of John Barth, Mark Strand, and John Ashbery. Egan will read from her forthcoming collection, Strange Botany/Botanica Arcana, as well as from the prize-winning sequence, Hot Flash Sonnets.

Location
Minás Gallery & Boutique
815 W. 36^th Street
Baltimore, MD 21211

Details
Sunday, March 3, 2013
4:00 p.m.
FREE

Poetry and Conversation, an event with Clarinda Harriss and Karen Garthe

Clarinda Harriss (top) and Karen Garthe (bottom)

Clarinda Harriss, Director of BrickHouse Books, and Karen Garthe will be reading from and discussing their work at the Enoch Pratt Free Library on March 5, 2013 from 6:30-8:30 p.m.

Clarinda Harriss has taught poetry, editing, and modern literature at Towson University, where she is a professor emerita and served as the Chair of English for ten years. Her poems and short fiction have been widely anthologized, and her most recent poetry collections are Air Travel, Mortmain, and Dirty Blue Voice.

Karen Garthe grew up in Baltimore, where she attended Towson High School. After she graduated in 1968, she embarked on a varied series of careers in New York City. In 2005 her first book, Frayed Escort, won the Colorado Prize, and The Banjo Clock was published in 2012 by the University of California Press.

You can find poems by Clarinda Harriss here and here, and poems by Karen Garthe here and here.

Location:

Central Library, Poe Room
400 Cathedral Street
Baltimore, MD 21201

Doritt Carroll reading

Doritt Carroll, author of In Caves, one of BrickHouse Books’ recent publications, will read from her work at The Writers’ Center on March 10 at 2 p.m.

Carroll is a D.C. attorney and poet, and her poems have appeared in journals such as Coal City Review, Poet Lore, Nimrod, Slipstream, Rattle, Plainsongs, Poetry Depth Quarterly, Maryland Poetry Review, Explorations, Negative Capability, Poet’s Canvas, Illuminations, The Baltimore Review, and Journal of Formal Poetry.

We’ve included the title poem from her next collection, Glottal Stop, here:

glottal stop

everything good
is in the things
that we don’t say

if we were sculptures
in a gallery
it would be the elegant
space between them
carved by their marble arms

the moment after the scritch
when the match
flickers but doesn’t yet
burst into flame

the tightening in the air
as the black hand
clicks to the minute
before
the minute
when the recess bell
is going to ring

if there were two birds
singing in two trees
it would be
the moment
when they both paused
not to take in air
but because it was
the right place
in both of their songs
to pause
the
glottal stop

 

Reading location:

4508 Walsh St.
Bethesda, MD 2015

Kirkus Review of Ride a Bright and Shining Pony

Kirkus Reviews has recently praised Elisabeth Stevens’ Ride a Bright and Shining Pony: “In Stevens’ (Sirens’ Songs, 2011, etc.) intelligent novel, the civil-rights March on Washington ignites one woman’s journey to heartbreak and self-awareness….Stevens’ tightly structured tale is filled with compelling observations….” Read the full review here!

Call for submissions!

Fermoy International Poetry Festival Poster

Fermoy International Poetry Festival is seeking submissions for this year’s International competition for entry into the Blue Max Review.

Bradly R. Strahan, one of the featured poets at the festival, had a book, This Art of Losing, published by BrickHouse Books, Inc. Strahan has been editor/publisher of Visions-International for over 30 years, and he has published five books of poetry and over 500 poems. You can get a copy of This Art of Losing from bradstrahan@yahoo.com.

The festival will run from August 1st to August 5th, and the three international winners will be flown to Ireland for the Fermoy International Poetry Festival to read their work.  Poet Noel King is this year’s competition judge.

• Entrants must be resident outside of the island of Ireland
• Entrants can submit only once
• Three poems per submission
• Submission costs €10.00 or US$13.50 for three poems
• Payments can be made via PayPal at www.fermoypoetryfestival.com or by bank draft, postal order, or money order
• Bank draft, postal order, and money order payments must be included with submissions

 

Mail your submission to:

Submissions
Fermoy International Poetry Festival
Festival Office
7 Store Lane
Fermoy
County Cork
Ireland

Deadline: March 31, 2013

Martin Luther King Day Weekend Reading at BookStore 1

The year is 1963. The day August 28th, the day of Martin Luther King’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Now, in the 50th anniversary year of that historic March, a former WASHINGTON POST staff writer recreates the dramatic moment. Merging fact and fiction, Elisabeth Stevens has written the fast-moving story of two young lovers whose lives and destinies are irrevocably and tragically intertwined with the March — and history.

January 20th at 2 p.m. Elisabeth Stevens will read from, discuss, and sign her book Ride a Bright and Shining Pony, published by BrickHouse Books, at Bookstore 1.

Location:

1359 Main St.
Sarasota, FL 34236
(941) 365-7900

Rare BrickHouse Book Spotted on eBay

Baari Shabazz, one of BrickHouse Book’s authors, just found a copy of the BrickHouse Book’s 1980s best seller, For Colored Guys Who Have Gone Beyond Suicide and Found No Rainbow, selling on eBay for $400. Another is selling for over $200.

Stay tuned for a 4th edition! Every copy of the first 3 editions has been sold–except those few now being sold as rare books. Note: if you see a copy of the first edition–which has a red plastic spiral binding–selling for less than three figures, let BhB know or snag it yourself!

BrickHouse Books’ 40th Birthday Party, hosted by Lorraine and Markell Whittlesey

Clarinda Harriss, BrickHouse Books, Inc. founder and director

Doritt Carroll reads from her BHB poetry book “In Caves”

Judge Elsbeth Bothe and Clarinda Harriss

Bruce Sager, whose poetry book “Famous” was the 2011 winner of the Clarinda Harriss Poetry Prize, and Clarinda Harriss

Michael Fallon reads from his BHB poetry book “The Great Before and After”

Lorraine Whittlesey, our wonderful host

Baari Shabazz, a member of the MHC Writers Club that put together the BHB “For Colored Guys who Have gone Beyond Suicide + Found No Rainbow;” Ilse Munro, The Little Patuxent Review online editor, who featured it in an “On Being Invisible” piece; and Tom McClain

All photos taken by Eva Quintos Tennant.

Di-Vine Reading at The Ivy Bookshop

Friday, October 5^th, The Ivy Bookshop in the Lake Falls Village shopping center is hosting a reading of editors and poets at 7 p.m. The lineup includes David Eberhardt, Clarinda Harriss (editor of BrickHouse Books, Inc.), Chris Mason (the Tinklers), Constantine Pantazonis, Stephen Reichert (editor Smartish Pace), Bruce Sager, and Laura Shovan (editor of Little Patuxent Review).

A special mystery celebrity (not Clint Eastwood) will also be there, and refreshments are free!

Find us at 6080 Falls Road at Lake, and call Dave at 410-235-7507 for more information.

Chapbook competition deadline extended

If you’d been considering sending your manuscript to BrickHouse Books’ Stonewall division’s annual chapbook competition, but worried you’d miss the deadline, fret no more! The deadline has officially been extended to May 15, 2012. Judging will take place from June­–August, and the winner will be announced in early fall. The prize is publication of the chapbook.

Manuscripts should be 20–30 pages of poetry or short fiction, and submissions must include a $20 reading/judging fee as well as an S.A.S.E. To expedite the process, we are urging writers to submit both electronic and paper manuscripts (this applies to new manuscripts in addition to those already submitted).

Stonewall is dedicated to publishing literature from an LBGT perspective. Recent winners of the chapbook competition include Jim Elledge, Into the Arms of the Universe; Janell Moon, Lesbian Speaker’s Bureau; Rane Arroyo, The Naked Thief; and Jeff Mann, Bliss.

Send manuscripts to:

Clarinda Harriss, Director
306 Suffolk Rd.
Baltimore, MD 21218
charriss@towson.edu