*Vaudeville* by Allyssa Wolf & ***Down with the Ship*** by Ryan Murphy*

OTIS COLLEGE OF ART & DESIGN’S GRADUATE WRITING PROGRAM
SPRING 2006 READING SERIES AT THE OTIS GOLDSMITH CAMPUS
9045 Lincoln Boulevard, Los Angeles CA 90045
Galef 107: Exhibition Room

All Wednesday readings begin at 7:30 p.m. and are free of charge but seating
is limited.

February 1: Cristina Garcia
Cristina Garcia was born in Havana and grew up in New York City. Her first
novel, Dreaming in Cuban, was nominated for a National Book Award and,
along with her subsequent novels, The Aguero Sisters and Monkey Hunting,
has been widely translated. She is the editor of Cubanismo: The Vintage
Book of Cuban Literature and has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Hodder Fellow
at Princeton University, and the recipient of an NEA grant as well as a
Whiting Writers' Award. Cristina Garcia lives in Los Angeles.

February 8: Steve Evans and Jennifer Moxley
Poet Jennifer Moxley is the author of Imagination Verses, The Sense Record
and Other Poems, and Often Capital. Her translation of the French poet
Jacqueline Risset's 1976 book The Translation Begins was published by
Burning Deck in 1996.

Steve Evans teaches contemporary poetry, poetics, and critical theory at the
University of Maine, where he coordinates the New Writing Series and works
for the National Poetry Foundation. His articles and reviews have appeared
in numerous magazines and journals and he tends a website at
www.thirdfactory.net and serves as a contributing editor for The Poker.

Steve Evans will give a brief talk on directions in contemporary poetry and
Jennifer Moxley will read from her recent work.

February 15: Forrest Gander and CD Wright

Forrest Gander is the author of five books of poetry, including Torn Awake
and Science & Steepleflower, both from New Directions. Gander also writes
literary criticism (The Nation, Boston Book Review, The Providence Journal)
and has translated, most recently, No Shelter: The Selected Poems of Pura
López-Colomé and, with Kent Johnson, Immanent Visitor: Selected Poems of
Jaime Saenz. He has received two Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative North
American Poetry, fellowships from the NEA, and awards from The Fund for
Poetry and The Whiting Foundation.

CD Wright has published eleven collections of poetry, most recently Cooling
Time: An American Poetry Vigil from Copper Canyon. In December of 2003 she
published One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana, a collaboration with
photographer Deborah Luster, which was awarded the Dorothea Lange-Paul
Taylor Prize for a work-in-progress from the Center for Documentary Studies
at Duke University. Her 2002 selected and new poems Steal Away was on the
International shortlist for the Griffin Trust award for excellence in
poetry. Other titles include the book-length poem Deepstep Come Shining,
Tremble, and Just Whistle. String Light won the 1992 Poetry Center Book
Award given by San Francisco State University. Wright has composed and
published two state literary maps, one for her native state of Arkansas, and
one for her adopted state of Rhode Island. She has received fellowships from
the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Bunting Institute, the Witter
Bynner Prize for Poetry from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and
Letters, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and a Lannan Literary Award. In 1994 she
was named State Poet of Rhode Island, a five-year post. Wright is a 2004
recipient of a John D. and Catherine. T. MacArthur Fellowship and a newly
elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Forrest Gander and CD Wright both teach at Brown University and together
edit the literary press Lost Roads Publishers.

March 1: Otis Books Reading—Allyssa Wolf and Ryan Murphy
In Winter 2006, Otis Books/Seismicity Editions will publish two first books
of poetry, Down with the Ship by Ryan Murphy and Vaudeville by Allyssa Wolf.
Wolf is the editor of Gateway songbooks, a series of poetry chapbooks and
lives in San Francisco. Murphy is the recipient of a Chelsea Magazine Award
for Poetry, and his poems have appeared in The Denver Quarterly, The Paris
Review, and other publications. He lives in New York.

March 8: Ray DiPalma
Ray DiPalma is the author of more than thirty collections of poetry and
visual work. Most recently, three collections of his work were published in
French translation, Le Tombeau de Reverdy, Lettres, and Quatre Poèmes. His
work has been praised by such notable poets as Jackson MacLow and Robert
Creeley. About his 1995 collection, Motion of the Cypher, critic Marjorie
Perloff has written, "These chiseled lyric meditations recall Wallace
Stevens in their density, but they are written under the sign of Dada -
appropriate for the late twentieth century, that casts a cold eye on the
margins, the spaces between, where we live." Ray DiPalma lives in New York
and teaches at the School of Visual Arts.

March 29: Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum's first novel, Madeleine Is Sleeping, was a finalist
both for the National Book Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions
Fiction Award, and a winner of the Kafka Prize for fiction by an American
woman. Her short fiction has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Literary
Review, TriQuarterly, and The Best American Short Stories. A recipient of an
NEA fellowship and a Whiting Writers' Award Sarah Bynum lives in Los Angeles
and teaches at the University of California, San Diego.


April 12: Christopher Rice
Christopher Rice is the author of the New York Times bestselling novels, A
Density of Souls, The Snow Garden and Light Before Day, the first of which
was published when he was twenty-two. The Snow Garden received a Lambda
Literary Award. He served as the fiction editor of Genre magazine and is
currently a contributing columnist for The Advocate. Christopher Rice lives
in West Hollywood.

April 19: Amy Gerstler and David Groff
Amy Gerstler’s most recent book of poems is Ghost Girl, published by Penguin
in 2004. Her previous books of poetry include Medicine, Crown of Weeds,
Nerve Storm, and Bitter Angel, which received the 1991 National Book
Critics’ Circle Award. She has also received a California Book Award Silver
Medal in Poetry and a Durfee Foundation Artist award. Her work has appeared
in The New Yorker, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, several volumes of
Best American Poetry, and The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American
Poetry. Her art writing has appeared in Artforum and other magazines, and
in exhibition catalogs for The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Los
Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the LA County Museum of Art and
elsewhere. Amy Gerstler teaches in the Bennington Writing Seminars Program
and at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

David Groff’s book Theory of Devolution was selected by poet Mark Doty for
the 2001 National Poetry Series and published by the University of Illinois
Press. It was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and Publishing
Triangle Award. He is the co-author with the late Robin Hardy of The Crisis
of Desire: AIDS and the Fate of Gay Brotherhood. For twelve years an editor
at Crown Publishers, David Groff’s writing about publishing has appeared in
Publishers Weekly, The Writer, Poets and Writers, and other magazines. He
has taught at the University of Iowa, Rutgers University, NYU, and William
Paterson University, as well as for the National Association for Advancement
in the Arts. He is an independent editor and publishing consultant and
lives in New York.

Also by Ryan Murphy (Pound for Pound, 2005)

K