BIG TENT

BIG TENT:
Stories & Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, May 23, 7 PM @ The Raven

Featuring: Nathan Clay Barbarick and Julia Trechak

Nathan Clay Barbarick lives and makes things in Kansas City, Missouri. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in your Google search.

Julia Trechak is graduating with a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Kansas. Her poetry appears usually around noon. 

BIG TENT:
Stories & Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, June 27, 7 PM @ The Raven

Featuring: Steve Bunch (poet)

PAST BIG TENT EVENTS

BIG TENT:
Stories & Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, April 25, 7 PM @ The Raven

Featuring: Dana Guthrie Martin, Alex Haslett and Shawn Patterson

Dana Guthrie Martin and her husband share their Kansas City area home with their Chihuahua, Cricket “Miss B” Hayden, and their robot, Feldman. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals, including Barrow Street, Boxcar Poetry Review, Failbetter, Fence, Knockout Literary Magazine and Vinyl Poetry. Her chapbooks include Tomorrow I Will Love You at the Movies, coauthored with Jay Snodgrass (Hyacinth Girl Press, forthcoming), In the Space Where I Was (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2012), Toward What Is Awful (YesYes Books, 2012) and The Spare Room (Blood Pudding Press, 2009). She is the editor of Cascadia Review, an online poetry journal dedicated to showcasing the work of poets in the Cascadia bioregion.

Shawn J. Patterson is an undergraduate at the University of Kansas, where he serves as a poetry editor for the student journal, Siren.  Before arriving at KU, Shawn studied massage therapy, culinary arts, and music performance and theory, and has worked in construction/demolition, warehouse/production, food service, and elementary and special education.  Shawn was born to the rural Kansas landscape which has influenced all his days.  He lives in Lawrence.

BIG TENT:
Stories & Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, March 28, 7 PM @ The Raven

Featuring: DaMaris Hill (poet), Judy Roitman (poet) and Sarah Smarsh (non-fiction)

DaMaris B. Hill is visiting Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Edwardsville, Illinois, Jan. 2013 to May 2013 She received a PhD in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Kansas. Her story "On the Other Side of Heaven - 1957" won the 2003 Hurston/Wright Award for Short Fiction. Some of her writing has been published with the Reverie, Sleet, Bermuda Anthology of Poetry, African American National Biography Project, Warpland, Mourning Katrina: A Poetic Response to Tragedy, Women in Judaism and The Sable Quill.

Judith Roitman lives in Lawrence, Kansas where she teaches (not English) at the University of Kansas. Her poetry has appeared in several chapbooks and a number of journals, including First Intensity, Eleven Eleven, Bird Dog, Black Spring, and, the online journals, Locus Point, Otoliths, and Horse Less Press (forthcoming). Her book No Face: Selected and New appeared in 2008 (First Intensity Press), her most recent chapbook Slackline appeared in 2012 (Hank's Loose Gravel Press), and Ku: A Thumb Book is forthcoming from Airfoil Chapbooks.

Sarah Smarsh is the author of two books on Kansas history and editor of an essay collection inspired by the Waiting Room Project, a national creative collaboration on women's health. She has written for the Huffington Post, the Pitch and others. Sarah holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, as well as degrees in journalism and English from the University of Kansas. She has taught journalism and creative nonfiction at Columbia University, Ottawa University and the Lawrence Arts Center and most recently served as associate professor of English at Washburn University. 

BIG TENT:
Stories & Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, February 28, 7 PM @ The Raven

Featuring: Stuart A. Day, Patrick Gabbard and Katie Klaras

Stuart A. Day is Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at KU. He was born and raised in Santa Fe and before moving to Lawrence enjoyed several years living in Flagstaff, Tucson, Ithaca and Chapel Hill. Stuart is the Editor of the "Latin American Theatre Review," Managing Editor of LATR Books, and collaborates with Mexican and other Latin American theater magazines and festivals on a regular basis.

Patrick Gabbard was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest.  In 2005 he received a Bachelor Of Arts in History from the University Of Utah.  In 2011 he received an MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University, with an emphasis in Poetry.  He is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University Of Kansas.  His poetry has appeared in Neon Literary Magazine, Black Fox Literary Magazine, and OVS Literary Magazine. 

Katie Klaras is a senior at University of Kansas currently working on her poetry thesis. She is from central Texas. She constantly fills sketchbooks with drawings that she hopes will entertain whoever stumbles upon them in the near or distant future. Katie credits her mom for her exhausting interest in words.

BIG TENT:
Stories & Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, January 24, 7 PM @ The Raven

Featuring: Lara Mann and Cote Smith

Lara Mann is a native of Kansas, an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, and a University of Kansas alumnus.  She is of English, Irish, Choctaw, French, German, Scottish, Spanish, Cherokee, Welsh, and Mohawk heritage, descending from Chief Thomas LeFlore as well as Boston martyr Mary Dyer.  Mann finished her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in the spring of 2009, from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She enjoys dancing, knitting, and Italian Renaissance art.  Mann is very proud of her mixed-blood Native and Kansas abolitionist heritage and is intent on preserving her family’s oral history for future generations. She has been published in numerous literary journals and is anticipating the release of her chapbook 'My Ceremony For Taking' in 'Effigies II' from Salt Publishing, UK, edited by Allison Hedge Coke in 2013. In 2014, Mann is anticipating the release of 'Indigenous Game Theory,' co-authored with LeAnne Howe, about the indigenous origins of baseball. She teaches at Haskell Indian Nations University.

Cote Smith lives in Lawrence. He teaches there and in Kansas City. He has two dogs and two cats and one wife. His fiction has appeared in One Story, Third Coast, Five Chapters, and elsewhere.

BIG TENT:
Stories & Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, December 6, 7 PM @ The Raven

Featuring: Richard Robbins, Hannah Roark and Lucas Wetzel

Richard Robbins grew up in Southern California and Montana. He studied with Richard Hugo and Madeline DeFrees at the University of Montana, where he earned his MFA. He has published five books of poems, most recently Radioactive City and Other Americas. He has received awards from The Loft, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Society of America. He directs the creative writing program and Good Thunder Reading Series at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Lucas Wetzel is a writer and editor from Kansas City. He graduated from the University of Kansas in 2004 with degrees in German, English and Journalism. He has also studied at the Universities of Bonn and Hamburg in Germany, and worked as a teacher and translator in Berlin and Leipzig. In April 2012, he and his wife, Jennifer, founded the literary website Kawsmouth.com, which publishes the work of regional writers and artists each month. Recently, his writing was featured in "The Frontier," a group exhibit at the Paragraph Gallery celebrating the 15th Anniversary of the Charlotte Street Foundation. He works as an editor at Universal Uclick, a newspaper syndicate in Kansas City. This is his first reading.

BIG TENT:
Stories & Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, October 25, 7 PM @ The Raven

Featuring: Hadara Bar-Nadav and Kij Johnson

Hadara Bar-Nadav is the author of A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight (Margie/Intuit House, 2007), awarded the Margie Book Prize; The Frame Called Ruin (forthcoming from New Issues, 2012), Runner Up for the Green Rose Prize; and Lullaby (with Exit Sign), awarded the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize (forthcoming from Saturnalia Books, 2013). Her chapbook, Show Me Yours (Laurel Review/Green Tower Press, 2010), was
awarded the 2009 Midwest Poets Series Award. She has also been awarded
fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for
the Creative Arts. Hadara is currently Associate Professor of English
at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where she directs the
Creative Writing Program.

Kij Johnson's stories have won the Sturgeon and World Fantasy awards. She has taught writing; worked at Tor, Dark Horse, and Microsoft; worked as a radio announcer; run bookstores; and waitressed in a strip bar.Since her first sale in 1987, Johnson has sold dozens of short stories to markets including Amazing Stories, Analog, Asimov's, Duelist Magazine, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Realms of Fantasy. She won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short story of 1994 for her novelette in Asimov's, "Fox Magic." In 2001, she won the International Association for the Fantastic in the Art's Crawford Award for best new fantasy novelist of the year. Her short story "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" was on the final ballot for the 2007 Nebula Award and the World Fantasy Award, and it was a nominee for the Sturgeon and Hugo awards. In 2009, she won the World Fantasy for "26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss," which was also a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula. She won the 2010 Nebula for "Spar," the 2011 Nebula for "Ponies" (also a finalist for the Hugo and World Fantasy), and the 2012 Nebula for "The Man Who Bridged The Mist" (currently a finalist for the Hugo, as well). For more information, visit kijjohnson.com.

BIG TENT:
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Thursday, September 27, 7 PM @ The Raven

Featuring: Cheraé Clark (prose), Jennifer M. Colatosti (prose) and Donald Levering (poetry)

Cheraé Clark is a recent graduate from the University of Kansas where she studied English and French. She's spending her newfound freedom writing and reading all the things she didn't have time to while in school.  Her stories have been published in KU literary magazines Comma, Splice and Kiosk and she's presented her stories on masculine-of-center queers at KU’s Undergraduate Research Symposium. She was also a 2012 Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow.

Jennifer M. Colatosti writes fiction and creative nonfiction. She earned an MA in English and Creative Writing from Ohio University in 2008 and is currently a PhD student in the University of Kansas's writing program. She is the current managing editor for Beecher's Magazine. Her work has appeared in The MacGuffin and Connotation Press. 

In 2012, former NEA Fellow Donald Levering was a prizewinner for both the Hackney Literary Awards and the Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition.  Previously, he was a Duende Series Reader and featured in the Academy of American Poets online Forum.  His ten poetry books include The Number of Names, Sweeping the Skylight, Whose Body, The Kingdom of Ignorance, The Fast of Thoth, Horsetail, Mister Ubiquity, Outcroppings from Navajoland, Carpool, and The Jack of Spring. Forthcoming in the fall of 2012 is Algonquins Planted Salmon.  An environmental and human rights activist, he lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. For more information, visit: donaldlevering.com

BIG TENT:
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Thursday, July 26, 7 PM @ The Raven

Featuring: Brendan Allen, Crystal Boson and Phillip Garland

Brendan Allen is a senior at the University of Kansas, where he studies creative writing and a little bit of psychology. He recently took part in Naropa University's Summer Writing Program through the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and he also serves as a Student Director for the KU Undergraduate Reading Series. This fall he plans to continue working on his poetry thesis while happily shrugging every time somebody asks him where he's headed next. He wouldn't want to answer any other way.

Phillip Garland was born and raised in East Tennessee and educated at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. He currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas and is an MFA Candidate at the University of Kansas,  His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Pith Magazine, Volume One Brooklyn, Red Lightbulbs, Map Literary, and Parcel. 

BIG TENT:
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Thursday, June 28, 7 PM @ The Raven

Featuring: Kate Lorenz (fiction), Denise Low (poetry) and Jonathan Mayhew (poetry)

Kate Lorenz is the editor of Parcel. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in the Denver Quarterly, Everyday Genius,The Collagist, and Beecher's, and her chapbook, Stardust, was published by Blue Hour Press. She received her MFA from the University of Alabama and currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas.

BIG TENT:
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Thursday, May 31, 7 PM @ The Raven

Featuring: Joshua Falleaf, (poetry) and Judd Nielsen (fiction)

Born in Claremore, Oklahoma, Joshua Falleaf grew up in Caney, Kansas, just on the state line separating Oklahoma and Kansas. After completing his BA in English at Washburn University, Joshua Falleaf continued his education at McNeese State University, culminating in an MA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing-Poetry. He continues to work on a series of poems focused on the Viennese Expressionist Egon Schiele. He currently teaches poetry and fiction writing at Haskell Indian Nations University.

Judd Nielsen was born in Utah and has lived Lawrence for the past several years. He received a B.S. in Political Science from the University of Utah, where he wrote for the student newspaper and a satirical news website.  He was told by a political strategist that if writing was his desired profession, he might as well buy lotto tickets instead of pay for a degree. Judd buys two Mega Millions tickets a month.

BIG TENT:
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Thursday, April 26, 7 PM @ The Raven

Featuring: Charles Alexander, Melody Charles and Jonathan Stalling

Charles Alexander is the founder and director of Chax Press, in Tucson, where he has lived all but three of the past 27 years. His books include Hopeful Buildings (Chax 1990), Arc of Light / Dark Matter (Segue 1992), Near or Random Acts (Singing Horse 2004), and Certain Slants (Junction 2007), and the recently published Pushing Water (Cuneiform 2011). He is recipient of the distinguished Arizona Arts Award, and is a former director of Minnesota Center for Book Arts, of Black Mesa Press, and of the Tucson Poetry Festival. He is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Arizona, and frequently teaches in the Summer Writing Program of Naropa University. Book arts works by Alexander are included in collections at the Getty Museum Library, the State University of New York at Buffalo Poetry Collection, the New York Public Library, the University of Wisconsin Special Collections Library, the University of Arizona Special Collections Library, the Stanford University Library, the Beinecke Library at Yale University, and at other major collections nationally and internationally. In the summer of 2007 he was a participant in the TAMAAS poetry translation seminar in Paris, France. He is currently at work on a book about the pleasures of poetry.

Melody Charles transplanted from Colorado to Oklahoma in 2004 with the help of a scholarship from The University of Tulsa. In 2008, she edited Volume 7 of Stylus: TU’s Student Journal of Art and Writing and graduated with a degree in English and Spanish. Since then, Charles has worked off and on in, and written lots of poetry about, Tulsa. Her poem “job machine” appeared in Vol. 3, Issue 5 of This Land and will be included in the new media company’s forthcoming anthology of poems. She self-published her first chapbook, yee haw, this March.

Jonathan Stalling is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at the University of Oklahoma specializing in American and Transpacific Poetry and Poetics. Stalling is the author of Poetics of Emptiness (Fordham, 2010) and a co-editor of The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, A Critical Edition (Fordham, 2008). He is the author of two books of poetry, Grotto Heaven (Chax, 2010) and Yíngēlìshī(Counterpath, 2011). A translator, Stalling has published translations of works by Shi Zhi, Bei Dao, Mang Ke, and Li Yu. His first book-length translation Winter Sun: Poetry of Shi Zhi is now available through the University of Oklahoma Press. His opera, Yíngēlìshī debuted on the campus of Yunnan University in 2010, which can be watched at his webpage: jonathanstalling.com. Stalling is the co-founder and editor of Chinese Literature Today magazine (CLT) , and the editor of the CLT Book Series (at the University of Oklahoma Press), the founder and Director of the Mark Allen Everett Poetry Reading Series at OU, and the Deputy Director of the Center for the Study of China’s Literature Abroad at Beijing Normal University.

BIG TENT:
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Thursday, March 29, 7 PM @ The Raven

Featuring: Kara Bollinger (non-fiction prose), Mick Cottin (fiction) and William Sheldon (poetry)

Kara M. Bollinger is a graduate student at the University of Kansas, where she is almost finished with her Master's in Rhetoric and Composition. When she's not writing, she serves as the assistant nonfiction editor of Beecher's Magazine, bikes around town, and gardens somewhat religiously. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Sleet Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, The Medulla Review, and Prick of the Spindle.

Mick Cotton has lived in Lawrence since 1992 and is finishing up degrees in both English and Art History at the University of Kansas. He once drank a cup of buttery topping for five dollars, and his twelfth great grandfather fell off the Mayflower.  Mick currently lives in a bungalow with his two adorable dogs and his extremely attractive fiancé.  Though currently unpublished in anything that matters, Mick writes daily.

William Sheldon lives with his family in Hutchinson, Kansas, where he teaches and writes. His first collection of poems, Retrieving Old Bones (Woodley Press), was named one of the Kansas City Star’s Noteworthy Books of 2002. A chapbook is Into Distant Grass (Oil Hill Press). He has an MFA from Wichita State University.

BIG TENT:
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Thursday, February 23, 7 PM @ The Raven

Featuring: Thom Browne (playright), William J. Harris (poetry) and Brett Salsbury (poetry)

Thom Browne was born and raised in the city of Topeka and is currently a junior at the University of Kansas studying English Literature and Theatre Performance. Thom’s interest spread far and wide; be it performing, playwriting, directing, or educating, Thom believes all aspects of performance deserve equal attention.  He has even begun to dabble in technical theatre at the Lied Center of Kansas where he works as a part time stage hand.  When not consumed by a performance related interest, Thom can most likely be found in his kitchen cultivating his love of food.  An aspiring chef, he is constantly working through new recipes (particularly priding himself on his chicken and dumplings).  Don’t miss your next chance to see Thom on stage in The University Theatre’s production of The Foreigner by Larry Shue, which runs March 30 through April 4 in the William Inge Memorial Theatre.

William J. Harris is well known for his seminal work, The Poetry and Poetics of Amiri Baraka: The Jazz Aesthetic (1985). He has been publishing his own poetry since the 1970s, including the books Hey Fella Would You Mind Holding This Piano a Moment and In My Own Dark Way. Most recently he has published and read internationally, with two recent books: Domandi Personali/Personal Questions (published by Italian publisher Leconte Editore) and Crooners, a bilingual edition with translations into Italian by Nicola Manupelli. His awards and fellowships include the College of the Liberal Arts Outstanding Teacher Award (Penn State), and the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship (Harvard University). He is the editor or co-editor of The LeRoi
Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader (1991, 2000), Call and Response: The
Riverside Anthology of African American Literary Tradition (1997) and
a double issue of The African American Review on Amiri Baraka (Summer/Fall 2003).

BIG TENT: January 27, 2012
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Julianne Buchsbaum (poetry), Benjamin Cartwright (poetry) and Mary Stone Dockery (fiction)

Julianne Buchsbaum earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD in Literature from the University of Missouri. Buchsbaum is the author of Slowly, Slowly, Horses (2001, Ausable Press) and A Little Night Comes (2005, Del Sol Press). Her poems have appeared in a number of journals, including Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, Verse, Denver Quarterly and Harvard Review. Her third book of poems, The Apothecary’s Heir, won a National Poetry Series award and will be published in 2012 by Penguin Books. She lives and works in Lawrence, Kan.

Benjamin Cartwright’s prose poetry has appeared in Sentence, DMQ Review, and is forthcoming in Midwestern Gothic.  His flash fiction has appeared in Pure Francis.  Ben’s prose poetry chapbook Entrance Mediums was a finalist for the 2011 Firewheel Chapbook Award.  Aside from chasing stubborn pet goats who refuse to be contained in pens, in the country north of Topeka, Ben can often be found editing sound recordings of poetry by Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Fred Moten, Bruce Covey, Ken Irby, and others, for the PennSound archive.  Ben’s own poetry archive project, Kansas Blotter Audio, can be found at kansasblotter.blogspot.com. 

Mary Stone Dockery's poetry and prose is forthcoming in Gargoyle, South Dakota Review, Connotation Press, Weave Magazine, and has appeared in many other fine journals, including mot recently Midwestern Gothic, Foundling Review, and Blood Lotus. She is the author of two chapbooks, Aching Buttons (Dancing Girl Press) and Blink Finch (Kattywompus Press), both forthcoming in 2012. She is the recipient of the 2011 Langston Hughes Award in Poetry, a Pushcart nominee, and her chapbook Becoming an Island was a finalist in the Mary Ballard Poetry Chapbook Prize. She is the co-editing founder of Stone Highway Review and she co-edits the Blue Island Review with Katie Longofono, in addition to reading for Gemini Magazine. She lives in Lawrence, Kan.

BIG TENT: December 1, 2011
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Marcia Cebulska (drama), Allison Lopez (fiction) and Elizabeth Schultz (poetry)

Marcia Cebulska has written 19 plays which have been produced at theatres across the country.

Marcia has received three Master Artist Fellowships from the Indiana Arts Commission, a Kentucky Foundation for Women grant and the 2001 Kansas Arts Commission Fellowship in Playwriting.

Ms. Cebulska has been artist-in-residence at The University of Georgia, Marion College, the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts and the William Inge Center for the Arts. She is a member of The Dramatists Guild and Chicago Dramatists.

Having lived in Chicago, New York, Miami, Berkeley, Seattle, Santa Cruz, Pasadena, Copenhagen, Mexico City, Lima, Bloomington, Indiana, Athens and a Greek island, Marcia Cebulska now resides in Topeka, Kansas with her husband, historian Thomas Prasch.

Elizabeth Schultz received a B.A. in European History (Wellesley 1958), and M.A.(1962) and Ph.D. (1967) in English from the University of Michigan. She taught at the University of Kansas 1967-2001. Schultz is the author of Unpainted to the Last: Moby-Dick and Twentieth Century American Art (University Press of Kansas 1995); a memoir, Shoreline: Seasons at the Lake (Michigan St. U. Press 2001); Conversations: Art Into Poetry at the Spencer Museum of Art (2006); Her Voice, poems (Woodley Press 2008); The White-Skin Deer: Hoopa Stories (Mammoth 2009), fiction; and essays in The Nature of Kansas Lands (University Press of Kansas 2009).

BIG TENT: October 27, 2011
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Jonathan Mayhew, Jonathan Stalling and Cheryl Pallan

Jonathan Mayhew is a poet and literary critic. His most recent book is, “Apocryphal Lorca: Translation, Parody, Kitsch.” He has taught in the Spanish and Portuguese Department at the University of Kansas since 1996.

Jonathan Stalling is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at the University of Oklahoma specializing in American and Transpacific Poetry and Poetics. Stalling is the author of Poetics of Emptiness (Fordham, 2010) and a co-editor of The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, A Critical Edition (Fordham, 2008). He is the author of two books of poetry, Grotto Heaven (Chax, 2010) and Yingelishi (Counterpath, 2011). A translator, Stalling has published translations of works by Shi Zhi and Bei Dao, and Li Yu and is the translator of a collection of poetry entitled, Winter Sun: The Poetry of Shi Zhi 1966-2007 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2011). His opera, Yingelishi debuted on the campus of Yunnan University in 2010 which cantent be watched at his website: jonathanstalling.com

Cheryl Pallant is a writer and dancer with three poetry books, three chapbooks, and a book on dance. Her highly acclaimed books include the poetry collection Morphs, collaboratively written with Grant Jenkins, UncommonGrammar Cloth, Into Stillness, and Contact Improvisation. Pallant lives in Richmond, Va., has taught at University of Tulsa, University of Richmond and Keimyung University in S. Korea and leads her workshop, Writing From the Body, around the U.S. and in Europe.

BIG TENT: September 22, 2011
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Becky Mandelbaum, Eric McHenry and Craig Fisher

Becky Mandelbaum is a junior from Wichita majoring in English and Creative Writing. She has won several English department awards and is currently working on a collection of creative writing pieces based off of her experiences in three national parks this summer. In her free time she likes to rock climb and Google pictures of puppies.

Eric McHenry is the author of Mommy Daddy Evan Sage (Waywiser, 2011), a collection of children's poems with woodcuts by Nicholas Garland, and Potscrubber Lullabies (Waywiser, 2006), which received the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His poems have appeared in The New Republic, Harvard Review, Cincinnati Review, Common Knowledge, Orion, The Guardian (U.K.), Poetry Daily and Poetry Northwest, from whom he received the 2010 Theodore Roethke Prize. He is a contributing editor of Columbia Magazine and has written about poetry for The New York Times Book Review, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe and Slate. He lives in Topeka with his wife and two children and teaches creative writing at Washburn University.

BIG TENT: August 25, 2011
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Jennifer Lawler, Iris Moulton and Lauren Schimming

Iris Ann Moulton was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she studied English Literature and Anthropology at the University of Utah. She now lives in Lawrence, Kansas, where she is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing and works as the Co-Editor for Beecher’s. She has most recently been published in Fugue, Everyday Genius, elimae, and will be the American Short Fiction featured writer for the month of September. For more information, visit his website: irismoulton.com

Lauren Schimming is a senior at KU majoring in Creative Writing and Graphic Design (which leads her to fall in love with too many books solely based on their covers.) She has won several English Departmental Awards and will begin her creative writing honors thesis with Megan Kaminski this semester. Her poetry has appeared in Comma Splice and she works on the design staff for Kiosk Magazine. After graduation, Lauren intends to seek employment as a graphic designer, but will also continue writing.

BIG TENT: July 28, 2011
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Amanda Hemmingsen, Lavina Roberts and Allison Rose Lopez

Amanda Hemmingsen is about to start her final year as an undergrad at KU. She’s excited to be taking whatever English classes she fancies. Next year she hopes to be gearing up for grad school. In her spare time she likes to watch Star Trek, cook curries and crochet afghans. She’s loved poetry ever since 3rd grade when she wrote her first limerick.

Allison Rose Lopez, director/founder of the Omaha Young Writers Project, reads from In My Shoes: Teen Reflections on Hope & the Future.What happens when adults ask teenagers what is going on in their lives and then really listen to the answers? Once the teens trust that the adults are sincere and accepting, this book is what can happen. Written by two classes of seniors at Omaha South High Magnet School with the support of 29 volunteer writing mentors, this collection of personal essays reveals some of the issues American teens face every day but often keep to themselves. These insightful students share experiences of survival, the reasons for their dreams and their secret hopes for their lives. This book was produced by The Omaha Young Writers Project using the philosophies of the Freedom Writers and 826 Valencia as inspiration and guidance. Includes a foreword by Erin Gruwell, teacher of the Freedom Writers, an afterword from the classroom teacher’s perspective and an epilogue by Gallup Senior Scientist in Residence Shane J. Lopez on how we can all spread hope to kids and our communities.

BIG TENT: June 23, 2011
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Louise Krug, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg and Gregg Primo Ventello

Louise Krug is a Ph.D. candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Kansas. Her short stories have been published in elimae, Juked, Everyday Genius, and elsewhere. Her memoir, I Wish I Could Say I Got Back To Normal, will be published in April 2012 by Black Balloon Publishing.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg is the 2009-2011 Poet Laureate of Kansas, and a long-time transformative language artist. Caryn’s books include four collections of poetry (Landed a forthcoming, Animals in the House, Reading the Body and Lot’s Wife); a forthcoming memoir on cancer, community and ecology, The Sky Begins At Your Feet; an award-winning writing guide, Write Where You Are; an anthology on Transformative Language Arts, The Power of Words; and anthologies she edited by people living with serious illness, and ow-income women of color. Her poetry and prose has been published in dozens of literary journals, magazines and anthologies.

Caryn received her Ph.D. and MA from the University of Kansas (poetry, women’s studies, mythology), and she is certified in grassroots organizing from the Midwest Academy, and poetry therapy from the National Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy. She is the recipient of Kansas Arts Fellowship in Poetry, the Rocky Mountain National Park artist-in-residency, the City of Lawrence Phoenix Award, and other honors.

Caryn lives in the country, just south of Lawrence, Kansas with her husband, bioregional writer Ken Lassman, and their children. In addition to writing, she practices yoga and cello.

Gregg Primo Ventello was born and lived most of his life in New Jersey. Before moving to Kansas, he worked as an auditor for an accounting firm in Philadelphia that became the largest partnership failure in American history. He also worked in D.C. for National Geographic Traveler as an editorial assistant, and in Asahikawa, Japan as an English teacher. For the last twelve years, he has been teaching African American Literature, Composition, and a course called Men & Masculinities at Kansas City Kansas Community College.

BIG TENT: May 19, 2011
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Hadara Bar-Nadav, Kathryn Kysar and Emylisa Warrick

Hadara Bar-Nadav's book of poetry A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight (Margie/Intuit House, 2007) won the Margie Book Prize. Her chapbook Show Me Yours (Laurel Review/Green Tower Press, 2010) won the Midwest Poets Series Award. Recent publications appear in American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and other journals. She is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Kathryn Kysar is the author of two books of poetry, Dark Lake and Pretend the World, and she edited the acclaimed Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers. She has received fellowships from Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts, the Minnesota State Arts Board, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. Kysar serves on the board of directors for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs and teaches at Anoka-Ramsey Community College and the Loft Literary Center. For more information, visit her website: kysar.com.

Emylisa Warrick is a senior at KU majoring in English with a concentration in creative writing. She has won several English Departmental Awards and her poem Epilogue was published in the University of South Carolina's undergraduate literary review The Lettered Olive. She is also Editor-in-Chief of KIOSK, KU's undergraduate art and literature magazine. Her future plans include taking French classes, applying for jobs, and applying for Teaching English Programs abroad.

BIG TENT: April 28, 2011
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Kim Condon (playwright), Kate Lorenz (fiction) and William Trowbridge (poetry)

Kim Condon was raised in Lawrence, Kansas and received her undergraduate degree in English/Creative Writing from the University of Kansas. Kim’s poetry has appeared in Dystopia Magazine, and her short story, I Knew Toby Bergen, won an Editor’s Prize for short fiction in the ScissorTale Review. She was also a finalist in the 43rd annual Region V Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in their 10-minute play competition. She is currently attending the University of Kansas School of Law and is an Associate Features Editor for the Kansas Law Free Press.

Kate Lorenz is the editor of Parcel. Her work has been published in the Denver Quarterly and Everyday Genius, and by Blue Hour Press and Small Fires Press.

William Trowbridge's poetry collections are Ship of Fool, The Complete Book of Kong, Flickers, O Paradise, and Enter Dark Stranger. His poems have also appeared in over 30 anthologies and textbooks and in such periodicals as The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Georgia Review, Poetry, Boulevard, Green Mountains Reviewand New Letters. He lives in the Kansas City area and teaches in the University of Nebraska low-residency MFA in writing program.

BIG TENT: March 31, 2011
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Robert Baumann, Jim McCrary and Justin Runge

Robert J. Baumann is a midwesterner. His fiction can be found at Everyday Genius and in Hobart.

Jim McCrary continues to live in Lawrence and publish his poetry. Most recent editions include All That (a collection of chapbooks) from ManyPenny Press, Moscow, Idaho; M ental Text a diy produced chapbook; poems in House Organ (print mag); Otoliths (online mag from New Zealand). His poetry reviews appear in Galatea Review (online). Pending are a new edition from Theenk Press in Buffalo, NY and work in the Danforth Quarterly of Lawrence. Back in the day McCrary co-produced the Poetry Slam at the Flamingo Club and received a Phoenix Award from the City of Lawrence for his ‘work in the literary community’. It was the day.

Justin Runge currently lives in Lawrence, where he works as a graphic designer and edits Blue Hour Press. His own poetry can be found at DIAGRAM, Linebreak, SOFTBLOW, and elsewhere.

BIG TENT: January 27, 2011
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Kenneth Irby (poetry), Natalie McAllister (fiction) and Daniel Rolf (prose)

Kenneth Irby was born in Bowie, Texas, in 1936, and grew up in Fort Scott, Kan.. He was educated at the University of Kansas, Harvard University, and the University of California, Berkeley. He has lived, worked, served in the U. S. Army, and taught in New Mexico, Nevada, the North Pacific, Massachusetts, Northern California, New York, Colorado, and Copenhagen. He currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas, and teaches in the Department of English at the University of Kansas. Some recent books include In Denmark (in the second issue of No: a journal of the arts, 2003); Studies (First Intensity Press, 2001); and Ridge to Ridge (OtherWind Press, 2001). His The Intent On: Collected Poems 1962-2006 was published by North Atlantic Books late in 2009. He received (shared with Eileen Myles) the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America in 2010.

Natalie McAllister completed her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Kansas in 2010. A fiction writer at heart, McAllister has recently had her writing appear in both KC Magazine and KC Business. McAllister is currently in the process of completing her first novel, which follows a family at odds with itself after a father tries to make a profit by exploiting the family’s dubious history. McAllister seeks the details that make reading a visual activity, and believes that in writing, location can be a strong as character. When she is not writing, McAllister serves as the new Creative Director for Echo Ink Review, a literary journal in the Kansas City area.

Daniel Rolf was born and knows how he will die. For much of his childhood he believed he would be a spray-plane pilot. He is not a pilot of any type. He knows he will die in a plane crash. To make a living and pay for his life insurance policy he curates an architecture collection near a window with an expansive view of the sky. He writes and draws with the tiniest tipped pens possible, mostly outside. His work can be found in Everyday Genius, Fence, Two Letters and elsewhere. A short film he made with artist Jeff Calvert was selected for the 2010 Optic Nerve Film Festival at the Miami Museum of Contemporary Art. Daniel Rolf does not want to die in a plane crash, or ever, but he can already smell the fire.

BIG TENT: October 28, 2010
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Aliki Barnstone (poetry), Angela Glover (memoir) and Jeff Koterba (memoir)

Aliki Barnstone is a poet, translator, critic, and editor. Her books of poems are Dear God, Dear Dr. Heartbreak (Sheep Meadow, 2009), Blue Earth (Iris, 2004), Wild With It (Sheep Meadow, 2002), a National Books Critics Circle Notable Book, Madly in Love (Carnegie-Mellon, 1997), Windows in Providence (Curbstone, 1981), and The Real Tin Flower (which was introduced by Anne Sexton and was published by Macmillan in 1968, when she was twelve years old). A new collection, Bright Body, will be released by White Pine Press in the spring of 2011. Other books are The Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy: A New Translation (W.W. Norton, 2006) and Changing Rapture: Emily Dickinson’s Poetic Development (University Press of New England, 2007). She has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize twice. She edited A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now (Schocken, 1980; second edition, 1992), The Calvinist Roots of the Modern Era (University Press of New England, 1997), The Shambhala Anthology of Women’s Spiritual Poetry (Shambhala, 1999; 2003), and she introduced and wrote the readers’ notes for H.D.’s Trilogy (New Directions, 1998). Her poems and translations have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, New Letters, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, TriQuarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She has recorded a collaborative CD with musician Frank Haney. She has a book forthcoming: Pique, a book of poems (the Sheep Meadow Press). Barnstone spent the fall of 2006 in Greece as a Senior Fulbright Scholar. Her Fulbright project is a book of poems in the voice of an imaginary poet, Eva Victoria Perera, a Sephardic Jew from Thessaloniki, who survives the Holocaust.

Angela L. Glover, a KU 2008 PhD graduate, is a Visiting Asst. Professor of English at Simpson College, where she teaches writing and literature classes and coordinates the creative writing reading series. Her writing has appeared in The Mochilla Review, The Sequel, and Eureka Studies Teaching Short Fiction. Her memoir, All Skate, Now Reverse, is about growing up in the Midwest. The fourteen essays focus on the ordinary and attempt to illuminate it with connections and meanings that are morally complicated and intentionally meant to tap into the readers’ own memories. As a collective work, it seeks to convey a greater truth about how family and place inform identity: think Sedaris and Lamott after the third round at a vodka tasting, The manuscript is currently under consideration at Mid List Press. Glover has been selected by the Willa Cather Foundation to be their writer in residence this coming June where she’ll lead a series of prairie workshops while living in the Harling house, made famous in My Antonia.

Angela recently performed in The Vagina Monologues and is thankful to be a writer who occasionally reads to audiences rather than a performer who talks nightly about her vagina. Presently, she’s working on a collection of essays about growing up in the suburbs during the 70s. She wishes Simpson College was in Lawrence, Kansas instead of Indianola, Iowa where they do have good pie, but they don’t have the Raven bookstore. And she REALLY wishes that she’d written the screenplay for Stupid Shit My Dad Says so she could afford rounds of drinks after the reading, but since that isn’t the case she hopes you’ll join her across the street at the Eldrige for half-priced martinis.

Jeffrey Koterba is a writer, cartoonist, and musician. His memoir, INKLINGS, was published with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2009 and has just been released in paperback. Inklings was named a Chicago Tribune Favorite Nonfiction book of 2009. Entertainment Weekly called Inklings a powerful and moving portrait of an artist.

His editorial cartoons are distributed by King Features Syndicate to 400 newspapers nationwide, and have appeared in such publications as the New York Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, USA Today, and on CNN. Koterba has been a finalist for Editorial Cartoonist of the Year from the National Cartoonists Society and has placed second in the National Headliner Awards.

He is lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter for the Prairie Cats, a swing and jump-blues band he formed in 1998. Prairie Cats have performed at the South by Southwest Music Festival, the Derby Lounge in Hollywood, and Windows on the World.

BIG TENT: September 23, 2010
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Chloe Cooper Jones (fiction), Pricsilla Howe (storytelling) and Gary Lechliter (poetry)

Chloe Cooper Jones teaches writing and literature classes at The University of Kansas and The Kansas City Art Institute. Her writing has appeared in Spring Formal and The Black Warrior Review and is forthcoming from West Branch. Chloe wishes that Harold Brodkey was alive and was editing a literary journal. Chloe would actively seek publication in Harold Brodkey’s literary journal.

Priscilla Howe has been a full-time storyteller since 1993, and though she's known primarily as a performer for children, she has a full repertoire of stories she has written for grownups and older kids. She usually begins her adult stories with the disclaimer, all my stories start with a seed of truth. Priscilla tours the country and abroad telling stories and giving workshops to date she has performed in the US, Brazil, Germany, Bulgaria, Mexico and Belgium. She's also looking for the best restaurant pie on earth. For more information, visit her website: priscillahowe.com

Gary Lechliter, born in Coffeyville, grew up in rural southeastern Kansas, where he sets many of his poems. He is an active reader, writer, editor, and supporter of literary arts in the Lawrence-Topeka area. He was the founder and editor of the literary magazine I-70, which featured authors who live along this interstate highway. His educational background is in psychology, and human quandaries appear in his verse. He also explores the varied dimensions of human imagination, collected in his new book Foggy Bottoms: Poems about Myths and Legends. Known laws of reality are not enough for this poet, so he turns to confabulous tales.

BIG TENT: July 22, 2010
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Joe Harrington (poetry), Mary Klayder (prose) and Mary Wharff (fiction)

Joseph Harrington is the author of Things Come On: An Amneoir (forthcoming 2011 from the poetry series of Wesleyan University Press) and Poetry and the Public (Wesleyan 2002). His chapbook earth day suite is forthcoming from Beard of Bees Press in Chicago. His creative work also has appeared recently in Hotel Amerika, Otoliths, Fact-Simile, With+Stand, Cricket Online Review, and P-Queue, amongst others. He teaches at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

Mary Klayder is a poet and essayist and author of “Painted Ponies”, a memoir. She has also won many awards for teaching, including six Mortar Board Outstanding Educator Awards, and the Hope Award, the Del Shankel Outstanding Educator Award, Emily Taylor Outstanding Woman Educator of 2009 and Woman of Distinction 2009-2010.

Mary Wharff loves short stories — writing them, reading them, trying to get her friends to read them and buy them. While daydreaming of the return of a viable market for short stories, she also helps to coordinate Big Tent at The Raven and edits fiction (short!) for Coal City Review. She’s also a judge (particularly of short fiction) for the Langston Hughes Writing Awards. Her work has been published in Room of One’s Own (Canada), Connecticut Review, Mohila Review and others, and she’s currently studying with the Dangerous Writer’s Workshop and novelist Tom Spanbauer (Portland, Ore.). She and her husband, Andy Bloomer, have an adopted four-legged family, gardens instead of grass and shelves of novels she thinks she’ll read once she gets over her thing with short stories.

BIG TENT: June 24, 2010
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Emily Laut (playwright), Feloniz Lovato-Winston (playwright), Denise Low (poet) and Judith Roitman (poet)

Emily Laut is a freelance science journalist and grant writer for the American Academy of Family Physicians. She writes creatively in her spare time and started writing plays in 2005 after taking Paul Lima's intro to playwrighting course at the University of Kansas. She also likes to swing dance, practice American Sign Language and walk on stilts.

Feloniz Lovato-Winston is a recent KU graduate who has had the good fortune to work with playwriting professor Paul Lima for three semesters.Emilia Lover is one of the first plays she wrote for Paul. She currently works for KU's Audio-Reader Network and hopes to write many more plays in the future.

Denise Low, Kansas poet laureate 2007-2009, received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Kansas and her M.F.A. in poetry from Wichita State University. She has been visiting writer-in-residence at the University of Richmond and the University of Kansas. Her book Words of a Prairie Alchemist is a 2007 Notable Book of Kansas, and Thailand Journal: Poems was a Kansas City Star Notable book. She has published essays, reviews, academic articles, and poetry widely. She is vice president of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs national board. She comments on literature regularly on her blog: deniselow.blogspot.com. A book of critical essays about contemporary Great Plains writers, Natural Theologies, is forthcoming from Backwater Press, and she is the editor of Kansas Poems of William Stafford, 2nd ed. (Woodley Press).

Judith Roitman’s work has appeared in a number of journals, including First Intensity, Skanky Possum, FO A RM, Black Spring, Locus Point, and Bird Dog. Her book No Face: Selected and New Poems was published in 2008 by First Intensity Press. Her chapbooks include Slippage from Potes and Poets Press.

BIG TENT: May 27, 2010
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

2010 Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award Winners
Featuring: Amy Haake (fiction), Amy Stuber (fiction) and Jeff Tigchelaar (poetry)

Amy Haake is a writer, graphic designer, wife and mother. She lives and works in Lawrence, Kansas, where she received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Journalism from the University of Kansas. In 2007, she started Amy Haake Creative, providing writing and graphic design services for Carlson Hotels, AmericInn, Target, Commerce Bank and other fine companies. She has tried to do other things over the years, like yoga and her own taxes, but has failed miserably. Writing is where she belongs and so she has started to take it seriously.

Amy Stuber's short fiction has been published in numerous national literary journals, including Ploughshares, The Antioch Review, and Other Voices. She received a PhD in English and has taught writing and literature at universities in Kansas and Rhode Island. After serving as Director of Writing Programs for a D.C.-based education company, she returned to Kansas where she lives with her husband and two children.

Jeff Tigchelaar is a former newspaper editor and current stay-at-home dad in Lawrence, Kansas. He was awarded a fellowship in poetry from the Ohio Arts Council, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Margie, Natural Bridge, Redactions: Poetry & Poetics, Harpur Palate and Quarter After Eight.

BIG TENT: April 22, 2010
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Nate Barbarick (fiction), Grant Jenkins (poetry) and Cheryl Pallant (poetry)

Nathan Clay Barbarick (pictured right) is a name I use in literary situations because it takes up the right amount of space. I study and teach writing at the university of the 2008 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Champions. Am also seeking summer 2010 employment. Not that I am desperate to work; I am only desperate to stay living. The human contains only so much fluid that can be sold, and if you wear a disguise or use a fake ID they will notice you anyways and turn you away. At the Raven I will read small pieces of (non)fiction, that is, fictions that shouldn’t be nor should have ever been, but somehow are.

Grant Matthew Jenkins, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Writing Program, teaches contemporary literature and creative writing at the University of Tulsa. He has published two books of poetry, Joy of God and Other Series (Blackbird, 2003) and the most recent in collaboration with Cheryl Pallant, Morphs (Cracked Slab 2009). His poems appear in Birddog, Cannibal, Sugar Mule, Syntax, Action Yes, and Big Bridge. Other creative projects include work with digital flash poetry, image, and sound and can be found online at Turbulence.org and YouTube

Cheryl Pallant is a writer and dancer with three poetry books, three chapbooks, and a book on dance. Her highly acclaimed books include Uncommon Grammar Cloth, Into Stillness, and Contact Improvisation. Her recently released work is the poetry collection Morphs, collaboratively written with Tulsan Grant Jenkins. Although Pallant calls Richmond, VA home, this year she holds the Lubell Visiting Assistant Professorship and teaches creative writing in the English Department at the University of Tulsa. For more information, visit her website: cherylpallant.com

BIG TENT: March 25, 2010
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Kelly Barth (prose) and Tasha Haas (fiction)

Kelly Barth lives on very little money in a very small house with her partner Lisa Grossman in Lawrence, Kansas. She was a fiction fellow in the University of Montana’s creative writing program and has received fellowships from the Missouri Arts Council and the Kansas Arts Commission. Her work has been published in anthologies and literary journals, most recently The Literary Bird Journal. She is currently at work on a memoir.

Tasha Haas teaches creative writing, literature, and composition at Kansas City Kansas Community College, and taught fiction writing at the University of Kansas for eight years. She received an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Bowling Green State University in 1998. In 2004, she was awarded the Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award in Fiction from the Lawrence Arts Center. In 2006 and 2009 she earned writing residencies in Costa Rica at the Julia and David White Artists’ Colony and Pachamama Retreat Center. Her stories and prose poems have recently appeared in Web Conjunctions, Coal City Review, Stickman Review, South Dakota Review and other literary journals. She is also an artist and musician and is currently at work on her second CD.

BIG TENT: February 25, 2010
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Brian Blevins (playwriting), Dennis Etzel (poetry), Stephen Lewis (poetry) and Nick Medved (playwriting)

Brian Blevins will be presenting “Horse Trading”, read by Jim Carothers and Jake Smith. Brian was born November 16, 1960 in Wichita Kansas, where he began writing at an early age and participated as a singer, songwriter in Wichita, and even tried his hand at acting once. However the opportunity to pursue it seriously never manifested itself. Brian visited Lawrence in 2003 as part of a business expansion project, where he met Kathy and fell in love. He moved here shortly afterward. Returning to college in 2007, Brian discovered writing again while taking a playwriting course instructed by Paul Lim. Brian says, “The future is uncertain, yet I do not intend to let my love for writing escape me again.”

Dennis Etzel Jr. is a recording artist with 30 years of music behind him. Dennis is a guitarist. Dennis is the top finisher for the Buckeyes in 10th place. Dennis is also very involved in planting trees and sustainable forestry. Dennis is a male first name derived from the Greco-Roman name Dionysius meaning “servant of Dionysus”. Dennis is now among the rest of these freedom hating liberal kooks. Dennis is the only one talking about shutting down the nuclear war machine. In 2006, Dennis was being pursued by the Attorney General in Washington. Dennis is a jungle menace. We need drastic solutions, like the ones Dennis is pushing. Dennis is leading positively by example, e.g. his vegan lifestyle. Dennis has engaged in interfaith dialogue with Catholics at the Vatican. Dennis has also written and produced three best-selling comedy videos on values. Dennis has played guitar on over 100 soul music gold albums. Dennis has experience handling cases from all parts of Alaska. Dennis has worked with the vanguard of New York’s dance studios. Dennis has the courage to say what many are wondering. Dennis will be in Sierra Madre, CA, Sunday the 21st, 9am. Dennis will be appearing on Comedy Central’s ‘The Colbert Report’ this Tuesday. How do I know Dennis will be able to photograph my child? By taking the time to get to know you and your taste, Dennis will be able to. Dennis will be leading out the Halloween fun ride tonight at Willowdale. Dennis will be adding a second class at Yoga Within on Tuesday evenings. Dennis will be given a sedative to relax.

Stephen Lewis graduated from KU in 2008 and edits the online magazine Robot Melon. He likes to eat and to read at the same time even though it is often difficult.

Nick Medved will be presenting “The Gazelle”, read by Amy Devitt and Caleb Hall. Nicholas Medved is an award-winning playwright. His play “The Gazelle” won the regional ten-minute playwriting award at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in 2008, and another play, “The Late-Nite Horrorshow,” won an award for excellence in playwriting in 2009. He is a KU graduate.

BIG TENT: January 28, 2010
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Judy Bauer (fiction), Dixie Lubin (poetry) and David Ohle (fiction)

Judy Bauer won the 2009 Langston Hughes Award and has been published twice in Coal City Review. She’s an MFA grad of University of Kansas and is currently writing a mystery novel tentatively titled The Hesitation of Olivia Austin. She lives in Lawrence with her husband, Gene, their cats and hundreds of photos of their two grown kids.

Dixie Lubin is a long-time Lawrence resident. She has been reading and writing poetry for more than thirty years. Her publications include poems in The Carbon Chronicle-Harvest of Arts Poets 1992-1996, Kaw, Kaw, Kaw, as the Poets Fly from Lawrence, Kansas (a CD), and Slightly Tilting Toward the Void/Rabid Doggerel, poems by Dixie and Fred Lubin. Dixie has facilitated community writing and creativity workshops. She was a member of Medusa women’s writing group, and has been published in several local ‘zines. She is a two-time winner of Poetry.com’s daily poetry contest. Dixie has been an alternative grade school teacher. She is an outsider artist, and a founding mother of the Bizarre Bazaar.

David Ohle's novel, Motorman, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1972 and re-released by 3rd Bed Press in 2004 with an Introduction by Ben Marcus. Its sequel, The Age of Sinatra, was published by Soft Skull in 2004, followed in 2008 by The Pisstown Chaos. In 2009, two novellas, Boons and The Camp were published by Calamari Press under one cover. He has edited two non-fiction books, Cows are Freaky When They Look at You: An Oral History of the Kaw Valley Hemp Pickers (Watermark Press, 1991) and Cursed From Birth: the Short, Unhappy Life of William S. Burroughs, Jr. (Soft Skull, 2006). His short fiction has appeared in Harpers, Esquire, theParis Review, TriQuarterly, the Missouri Review, the Pushcart Prize and elsewhere. He has taught fiction writing at the University of Texas in Austin, the University of Missouri in Columbia and currently both fiction and screenwriting at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

BIG TENT: October 22, 2009
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Adam Desnoyer (prose), Krista Gammper (prose) and Jennie James (poetry)

Adam Desnoyers’ work has appeared in The Idaho Review, Fence, Lit, Black Warrior Review, and the O. Henry Prize Stories and has also received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention.

Kristin Gammper is a fifth year senior at the University of Kansas studying English with an emphasis in creative writing. Women’s, gender, and sexuality studies captivate a lot of her interest as well even though it’s not part of her “official” degree. If she’s not reading a book or telling inappropriate stories about her family, Kristin is probably outside (possibly doing either of those things anyway).

BIG TENT: September 24, 2009
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Cyrus Console (poetry), Mark Cunningham (prose) and Nancy Hubbell (poetry)

Cyrus Console is from Topeka, Kan. He holds degrees in poetry and biology from Bard College and the University of Kansas, and is completing a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Kansas. Recent poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, Critical Quarterly, and Lana Turner, among other places. Recent readings include the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church and the Holloway Series at University of California, Berkeley. His first book, "Brief Under Water", was published last year by Burning Deck press. He teaches at the University of Kansas and the Kansas City Art Institute.

Mark Cunningham has three chapbooks Second Story and nightlightnight (with photographs by Mel Nichols), both from Right Hand Pointing, and 10 specimens from Gold Wake Press and three books, Body Language from Tarpaulin Sky Press, 80 Beetles from Otoliths, and 71 Leaves, an ebook from BlazeVox.

Nancy Hubble has a degree in Education and French from the University of South Florida in Tampa. She has taught in public schools, alternative one room multi-grade schools, in Gifted Education classes and at KU. She completed Master's work in English as a Second Language and Anthropology, and has worked on archaeological digs, in ornithology labs and as a drug counselor. For the last 11 years, she has sold art, books and antiques on eBay. She loves writing, listening to poetry and playing with paints and clay. She has had poetry published in the Journal World, a variety of small zines and Imagination and Place publication: The Wakarusa Wetlands in Word & Image. She has a CD and chapbook Dharma Dog.

BIG TENT: August 27, 2009
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Diane Glancy (poetry), Katie Oberthaler (prose)
and Karen Ohnesorge (poetry)

“Writing is a conversation,” observes Diane Glancy, a Cherokee/English/German writer from Kansas City. Her poetry, scripts, essays, and fiction have earned her numerous literary prize including an American Book Award, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Native American Prose Award and a Sundance Screenwriting Fellowship. “My students and I come together to take risks and reach new frontiers.” For Glancy, writing has also been a journey. As artist in residence for the State Arts Council of Oklahoma she traveled the state for a decade, teaching the skills of writing, oral communication and critical thinking. Her growing reputation as a writer opened the door to a fellowship at the prestigious University of Iowa Writers Workshop.

Glancy was a professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she taught Native American Literature and Creative Writing. Glancy also taught in the Bread Loaf School of English M.A. program on the campus of the Native American Preparatory School in Rowe, New Mexico, in 1999. She was the 1998 Edlestein-Keller Minnesota Writer of Distinction, University of Minnesota, where she taught Topics in Advanced Poetry. Glancy also was the Native American Inroads Mentor at The Loft in Minneapolis where she taught Creative Nonfiction in 1997.

Katie Oberthaler is a senior at The University of Kansas studying creative writing. She works as a science journalist for The Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets and as a student assistant at the KU Natural History Museum. Her interests include non-fiction writing, geosophy, salsa dancing, racquetball, and using her automated bread maker to dazzle friends and avoid washing dishes. She spent last summer traveling and studying in India and is currently adapting the experience into a series of essays.

Karen Ohnesorge was born in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and she has lived mostly in Lawrence, Kan. since 1986. She currently serves as Dean of Instruction for Ottawa University, Ottawa, Kan.

BIG TENT: July 23, 2009
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Rebecca Evanhoe (prose), Jackie McClenny (prose) and Jillian Hishaw (poetry)

Rebecca Evanhoe is a native Kansan and former student at the University of Kansas, where she studied chemistry, journalism, and creative writing. Now she waitresses, cleans houses, and does freelance writing work. Rebecca's work has appeared in NOON annual, Chemical and Engineering News, Mote magazine, and the Spencer Art Museum's elevator.

From relationships to environmental issues, Jillian Hishaw is as diverse as her interests. She has been featured at the American Jazz Museum’s Blue Room and competed in the Regional University Spoken Word Finals in Houston, 2006. Her current focus has been developing Kansas City’s National Youth Spoken Word Team. As co-coach of the Youth team, Kansas City placed eighth in the Nation making it to the Semi-Finals in Washington DC, 2008. As an environmental attorney, professor, poet and advocate of various causes, Jillian’s diverse personality, heritage and wit are expressed uniquely in her poetry and on her first CD entitled "Life Lessons".

Jackie McClenny has lived in Lawrence since 1986. She received a B.A. in English from KU in 2007, and now teaches there while pursuing her MFA. Her current project is a book-length collection of essays entitled The House That Catfish Built.

BIG TENT: June 25, 2009
Stories & Poems in Three Acts

Featuring: Amy Haake (prose), Linda Rodriguez (poetry) and Peter Wright (poetry)

Amy Haake is a poet, author, freelance copywriter, wife and mother. She lives and works in Lawrence, Kansas, where she received a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from the University of Kansas. Currently, she is working on a memoir about autism, as well as a series of comical shorts about growing up in Kansas.

Linda Rodriguez is proud to be a Tia Chucha Press author in their 20th year of publishing with her book of poetry, Heart’s Migration. She also has published a cookbook, The “I Don’t Know How To Cook” Book: Mexican (Adams Media, 2008) and a chapbook of poetry, Skin Hunger (Potpourri Publications, 1994; Scapegoat Press, 2007). She is vice president of the Latino Writers Collective, a wonderful group of Midwestern writers who are like family. Linda is a long-time feminist, activist, and unashamed liberal and lives with her husband, dog, cat, and about three million books.

Focusing on the shadows that feed and motivate this symphony of existence Peter Wright has been writing poems for seventeen years. He lives with his partner thirty miles north of Lawrence. As this small stretch of land on a rise in the middle of nowhere is a new arrangement, he looks forward to the continued evolution of his work influenced by the giant whispering Kansas sky. He has self-published one chapbook of short poems called Spray.