The NANO Reading Series at Kaboom Books, Fall 2009

The NANO Readings Series is made possible by Kaboom Books. If you are in the Houston area, please stop by one of their two locations conveniently located in the downtown and Heights neighborhoods.

September 8th 2009, 7:30pm
Readers: Hayan Charara & Sarah A. Strickley

Hayan Charara is the author of two poetry collections, The Alchemist’s Diary and The Sadness of Others, and a recent recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He’s the editor of Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry. Born in Detroit, he lived for many years in New York City and moved to Texas in 2003.

Sarah A. Strickley is the recipient of an Ohio Arts Grant, the Glenn Schaeffer Award for Fiction and the Swink Magazine Editors’ Award for Emerging Writers. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote fellow, and a graduate of the Program in Creative Writing at Ohio University. Her work has appeared in the Harvard Review, Oxford American magazine, Southeast Review, Swink Magazine, Seneca, and elsewhere.

October 13th 2009, 7:30pm
Readers: Gene Morgan & Ryan Call

Gene Morgan runs bearparade.com and htmlgiant.com. He designs websites, writes poems, and lives with his wife and two children in Montrose.

Ryan Call got a MFA from George Mason University. He and his sister Christy Call created Pocket Finger (Publishing Genius). Other stories of his appear in Barrelhouse, Hobart, Avery, Caketrain, No Colony, Sonora Review, Lamination Colony, New York Tyrant, Mid-American Review,and ml press. He is the Associate Editor of NOÖ Journal.

November 10th 2009, 7:30pm
Readers: Sasha West & Andrew Brininstool

Sasha West holds graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins and the University of Houston. Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, The Canary, American Letters & Commentary, Margie, Born, Pebble Lake Review, American Poet, Third Coast, Low Rent, Callaloo, Forklift, OH, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart prize, and her manuscript, {Forge}, was a semifinalist for the Walt Whitman award and a finalist for the Cleveland State University Poetry Prize. She currently serves as board president for Gulf Coast and teaches creative writing at Rice University.

Most recently, Andrew Brininstool’s work has appeared in New South, Quick Fiction, and the anthology Best New American Voices 2010. His stories have also received the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award from Mid-American Review, the Editors’ Prize from /nor, and runner-up notation from Playboy’s college fiction contest. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas, behind an abandoned funeral home (not joking) and is currently at work on a novel: a fairy tale about professional bass fishing.

December 8th 2009, 7:30pm
Readers: Amanda Auchter & Andrew Kozma

Amanda Auchter is the founding editor of Pebble Lake Review. A finalist for the 2007 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, she has received awards and honors from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, BOMB Magazine, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry appears in the American Poetry Review, Court Green, Crab Orchard Review, Iowa Review, Pleiades, Poetry Daily, and others. Her manuscript, Glossolalia, has been a finalist for the Beatrice Hawley Book Award, the Prairie Schooner Book Award, the Benjamin Saltman Book Award, and semi-finalist for the Walt Whitman Award. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and teach creative writing and composition at Lone Star College-CyFair.

Andrew Kozma received his M.F.A. from the University of Florida and his Ph.D. in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. His poems have appeared in AGNI Online, Zoland Poetry, Smartish Pace, and Subtropics, and his non-fiction has appeared in The Iowa Review. His first book of poems, City of Regret (2007), won the Zone 3 First Book Award, and he has also been the recipient of a Houston Arts Alliance Fellowship and a Walter E. Dakin fellowship to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.