Wordsmiths - This Is How You Are a Citizen: Bloof Books Reading

Reception beforehand in Hicks Art Gallery: 7:00-7:30 pm

Event to be held in Music & Media Building: 7:30-9:00 pm

Three poets publishing with the New Jersey based independent press, Bloof Books, read from their work, followed by a book signing and Q&A on the intersections of feminism, literary arts, and small-press publishing. Featuring Pattie McCarthy, Nikki Wallschlaeger & Shanna Compton.

This reading is being held in conjunction with "And this is how you are a citizen": an exhibition currently on display in the Hicks Art Center Gallery.

Pattie McCarthy is the author of six books, most recently Quiet Book from Apogee Press. Her previous books include Nulls (2014, Horse Less Press), Marybones (Apogee, 2012), Table Alphabetical of Hard Words (Apogee, 2010), Verso (2004), and Bk of H(r)s (Apogee, 2001). She has also written several chapbooks, most recently scenes from the lives of my parents (Bloof, 2013) and x y z && (Ahsahta, 2015). A former Pew Fellow in the Arts, she teaches at Temple University.

Nikki Wallschlaeger’s work has been featured in The Nation, Georgia Review, Brick, POETRY, American Poetry Review, Witness, and others. She is the author of the full-length collections Houses (Horseless Press, 2015) and Crawlspace (Bloof, 2017), as well as the graphic chapbook I Hate Telling You How I Really Feel from Bloof Books (2016).

Shanna Compton is the author of Creature Sounds Fade (Black Lawrence, 2020), Brink (Bloof, 2013), For Girls & Other Poems (Bloof, 2008), Down Spooky (Winnow, 2005), and is currently at work on a book-length speculative poem, The Hazard Cycle. New poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in the Nation, the American Poetry Review, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, jubilat, Bennington Review, and elsewhere. She works as a freelance book designer and editor in Lambertville, NJ.