KINGSTON, R.I. –October 13, 2011 – Authors of prize-winning fiction, nonfiction, and poetry will come together Oct. 27 to read from their work published in University of Rhode Island’s inaugural issue of The Ocean State Review. The event, which will include live music and free hors d’oeurves, will take place at Nick-A-Nees, 75 South St., Providence from 6 to 9 p.m. It is free and open to the public.
The readers, who have all participated as faculty in URI’s annual Ocean State Summer Writing Conference, include:
* Wayne Cresser, the co-founder, publisher and editor of Shaking like a Mountain (now Shaking Magazine: www.shakinglikeamountain.com) from 2007-2011. His fiction has been published online at Wandering Army and Long Story Short, in the print anthologies Motif V1: Writing by Ear (Motes Books) and Motif V2: Come What May (Motes Books). Later this year, his work will appear in Motif V3: Work (Motes Books). When he can manage, he blogs about things pop cultural at www.popkrazy.com.
* Darcie Dennigan, author of two poetry collections, Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse and The Novice and Madame X. She lives in Providence.
* Richard Hoffman, author of Half the House: a Memoir, and the poetry collections, Without Paradise, Gold Star Road, winner of the 2006 Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the 2008 Sheila Motton Award from the New England Poetry Club, and his latest, Emblem. A fiction writer as well, his Interference & Other Stories was published in 2009. His work has appeared in Agni, Ascent, Harvard Review, Hudson Review, The Literary Review, Poetry, Witness, and other magazines. He teaches at Emerson College and currently serves as Chair of PEN New England.
* Kevin McLellan, author of the chapbook Round Trip (Seven Kitchens, 2010), a collaborative series of poems with numerous women poets. He has recent or forthcoming poems in journals including: Barrow Street, Colorado Review, failbetter, Horse Less Review, Kenyon Review, Western Humanities Review, Witness, and numerous others. He lives in Cambridge, MA with a canary named Frankie, and sometimes teaches at the University of Rhode Island in Providence.
* Kate Schapira, author of TOWN (Factory School, Heretical Texts, 2010), The Bounty: Four Addresses (forthcoming from Noemi Press before year’s end), and two more books forthcoming in 2012 from Stockport Flats and Horseless Press, as well as chapbooks from Flying Guillotine, Horseless, Rope-A-Dope and Cy Gist Presses, and Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs. She lives in Providence, RI, where she co-curates the Publicly Complex Reading Series and teaches writing to college students and 4th grade scientists.
*Aaron Tillman, whose fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, The Carolina Quarterly, Opium Magazine, The Drum Literary Magazine and The Ocean State Review. He has also recorded two stories for broadcast on the Words & Music program at Tufts University. His essays have appeared in Studies in American Humor, The CEA Critic, and The Intersection of Fantasy and Native America (Mythopoeic 2009). Tillman is an Assistant Professor of English at Newbury College.
* Padma Venkatraman, author of two novels: Island’s End (Penguin, 2011) and Climbing the Stairs (Penguin, 2008), her award-winning debut novel, which was released to starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and VOYA; was a Booksense Notable; and was selected as Best Book of the Year by ALA, NYPL, and other organizations. She is a full-time writer and an adjunct professor at URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography.
Musicians Matt Decosta and Steve Carroll, both URI graduates, will perform before the event and during intermission. Work by Rhode Island artist and former RISD associate professor Michael Yefko will be on display.
Copies of The Ocean State Review will be on sale. For more information, contact David O’Connell at doconnell38@hotmail.com.