American Creative Writers on Class

February 3, 2012 Brooklyn Eagle Staff
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Writers To Read Works on Economic, Social Class

DUMBO — On Monday, Feb. 27 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the powerHouse Arena, 37 Main St., DUMBO, editor Shelly Reed will present her book American Creative Writers on Class, a collection of writing on economic status. The event will feature readings from contributors Michele Carlo, Caitlin Foyle, Monica A. Hand, Sonya Huber, Emmy Hunter, Leslie Jamison and Rebecca Keith.

A portion the book’s proceeds benefit the Robin Hood Foundation.

At a time when economic inequality is on all of our minds, this collection focuses on intimate moments, personal relationships, and common daily experiences at the intersection of people of different economic status.
Edited by longtime anti-poverty advocate Shelly Reed, American Creative Writers on Class gives us some peaceful thoughts to help calm the ideological war in our minds.

Nonfiction and poetry contributors include Oliver de la Paz, Rebecca Keith, Matthea Harvey, Colleen McKee, Carolyne Wright, Emmy Hunter, Dorianne Laux, Monica A. Hand, Michele Carlo, Leslie Jamison, Caitlin Doyle, Christina Olson, Laura McCullough, Theresa Rodopoulos and Sonya Huber.

Michele Carlo is a writer/performer who has lived in four of the five boroughs of NYC and remembers when a slice of pizza cost 50 cents. She has been published in Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood’s Lost & Found: Stories From New York, Chicken Soup for the Latino Soul and SMITH Magazine, and has told her stories everywhere a person can tell stories in New York City.

Monica A. Hand is a poet and book artist who is investigating a nomadic lifestyle as a strategy for economic, political, spiritual and artistic survival. Her manuscript, “Me and Nina,” received a 2010 Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books, and her poems have appeared in numerous publications including Naugatuck River Review, The Sow’s Ear, Drunken Boat and Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade.

Sonya Huber is the author of Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir and Opa Nobody, a hybrid work about her German socialist grandfather and her own labor activism. She has also written The Backwards Research Guide for Writers: Using Your Life for Reflection, Connection, and Inspiration and is working on a big unwieldy project about social class.  

Emmy Hunter’s poetry has been published in many literary journals, including Fence, American Poetry Review, Witness and languageandculture.net. A chapbook of her poetry and prose titled No View of the Boat was published by Linear Arts Press. She has been a semi-finalist for the Walt Whitman Award and the Center for Book Arts Chapbook Prize.

Leslie Jamison is the author of a novel, The Gin Closet, as well as stories and essays that have appeared in places like A Public Space, The Believer, The L Magazine, Bellevue Review, Salt Hill and Tin House. She’s worked as a baker, an innkeeper, a juice barista and a medical actor.

Rebecca Keith’s poems and other writing have appeared in Best New Poets (2009), The Laurel Review, The Rumpus, The Awl, BOMBlog, Dossier, Storyscape, The Millions and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, was a semi-finalist for the 2010 Boston Review poetry contest and has received honors from the Atlantic Monthly and BOMB magazine.

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