April Actual Kansas: Clancy Martin and Christie Hodgen @ Wonderfair

Who: Clancy Martin and Christie Hodgen
What: read fiction
Where: Wonder Fair* (lower level of Casbah Market, 803 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence, KS)
When: Friday, April 24, 2009, 7pm



Christie Hodgen is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She is the author of the novel Hello, I Must Be Going, and the short story collection A Jeweler's Eye for Flaw, which won the 2001 AWP Award for Short Fiction and was a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. She is a pushcart prize winner. Her fiction appears in Ploughshares Magazine, amongst other places.





Clancy Martin is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. His first novel, How to Sell, is set for release in May from Firar, Straus, & Giroux, and will be translated into five languages. His fiction also has appeared in journals such as NOON, 5_Trope, and Parakeet. He has authored, translated, edited several books on 'existential' philosophy. He lives somewhere near Kansas City with his wife, three daughters, and 4 toy poodles.

Here is a video of Clancy discussing the existence of god.





*Big thanks to Eric Dobbins at Wonder Fair for being willing to host this installment of An Actual Kansas on short notice. If you've never been to Wonderfair, we know you'll dig the digs.

See you there!

What would you say about CAConrad?

Nate Barbarick said, "I have never read any of his work or anything."

Karl Saffran says CA's bio is "pretty funny."

John Coletti says CA's "a pal."

Ron Silliman says CA’s the one poet who knows everyone.

Dustin Williamson said, "He's one of those poets that lulls you, then hits you with some real chops."

Jack Kimball says, "Another non-tragedian, C. A. Conrad."

I could not find anything that said or someone to say something about how his cum tastes.

Anne Boyer said, "You know how Allen Ginsberg lead a group of hippies to try to levitate the Pentagon in the '60s? I think CAConrad is the poet today most likely to do that, except they will try to levitate ___________." I was supposed to fill in the blank. If there is a very large pile of glitter somewhere, maybe CA could levitate that. And then drop it on the economy. Poems would be currency, but you couldn't but anything with them--you could just make people feel good. Making people feel good would be currency.

Tom Devaney says CA's survival is deviance, or he deviates to survive, or that he devives to surviate, or divides surrogates, or something. I had food poisoning when i read that one.

Jordan Davis says CA argues that the country at large mostly finds loving menacing.

Jess Mynes would say CA's one of the most enthusiastic supporters of other people's work and one of the most passionate champions of poetry in general.

Clay Banes said, "I would say I am for." Meaning, for CAConrad.

Frank Sherlock says check out Deviant Propulsion. You'll feel better about Conrad's poems, about yourself, and about the future of poetry.

CAConrad says, perhaps to us all, "One day my dear you will be a fairy princess."

Zurawski, Kunin, Conrad to hit "Kansas City" on Midwest Tour.

An Actual Kansas Reading Series, which actually happens in Lawrence, Kansas and not Kansas City, Missouri, will host three fabulous cross-_______ writers on

Friday, March 6, 2009 @ 7pm


in the


6 Gallery (716.5 Massachusetts Street, downtown Lawrence).

The three writers are:


Magdalena Zurawski is a Minor American writer living in Durham, North Carolina. Her novel, The Bruise, was published by FC2 in 2008. Visit her blog for links to things like interviews (like this one at X Poetics) and to keep up.








Aaron Kunin grew up in Minneapolis, was educated at Brown, John Hopkins and Duke, and is an Assistant Professor of 18th-Century English Literature at Pomona College in Claremont, California. His work has appeared in Boston Review, FENCE, The Germ, No: A Journal of the Arts, The Poetry Project Newsletter, The Poker, UbuWeb, and elsewhere. His poetry collection Folding Ruler Star and his novel The Mandarin were both published by FENCE Books.

CA Conrad's childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He escaped to Philadelphia the first chance he got where he lives and writes today with The PhillySound poets. Soft Skull Press published his book Deviant Propulsion in 2006. Jack Kimball's FAUX Press recently published his new series of poems (Soma)tic Midge (samples from this new work can be seen in listenlight and MiPOesias and Sawbuck and COCONUT#9). The Book of Frank is forthcoming in fall of 2008 from CHAX Press. A selection of The Book of Frank was translated into German by Berlin poet Holger, and a bilingual chapbook is now available from Carrie Hunter's YPOLITA Press. His book advanced ELVIS course will be coming out in spring of 2009. A collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled The City Real & Imagined: Philadelphia Poems, will be coming out in fall of 2009 from Factory School Press.

This Sunday! December 7! 7 O'clock!

Please come to our An Actual Kansas Poetry Reading and Christmas Cookie Eating Party on Sunday Night at 7 p.m. at the lovely Gallery 6. This Actual Kansas features two tireless poets who have found their ways near Kansas, and who we are excited to bring to you.

Matthew Henriksen edits Typo & Cannibal Books. Recent poems appear in The Cultural Society, Third Coast, Handsome Journal, and Poemeleon. He recently moved back to Fayetteville, Arkansas, from Brooklyn, but like many good poets, he is a native of Wisconsin and an avid baseball fan.

Jordan Stempleman is the author of Their Fields (Moria, 2005), What’s the Matter (Otoliths, 2007), Facings (Otoliths, 2007), The Travels (Otoliths, 2008), and String Parade (BlazeVOX, 2008). Individual poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Big Bell, Court Green, The Hat, Jacket, and New American Writing. He lives in Prairie Village, Kansas, teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute, and is the Associate Editor of The Continental Review.

Moria: http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html

Otoliths: http://stores.lulu.com/l_m_young

BlazeVOX: http://www.blazevox.org/catalog.htm

The Continental Review: http://www.thecontinentalreview.com/

Actual Kansas Pictures

Much thanks to Elaine Litzau for her impromptu intro of me at Mike, Karl, and Jim's reading, and for these pictures of said reading:

Mike Hauser, reading from Psychic Headset.

Jim "McCracken" McCrary.

K. Kenneth Saffran.

Farts.

"Buddies."

Friday Night Reading!

Friday / November 7, 2008 / 7pm

6 Gallery

(716.5 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence, KS)

Katy Lederer is the author of the poetry collection, Winter Sex (Verse Press, 2002) and the memoir Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers (Crown, 2003), which Publishers Weekly included on its list of the Best Nonfiction Books of the Year and Esquire Magazine named one of its eight Best Books of the Year. Her second poetry book, The Heaven-Sent Leaf was recently released by BOA Editions, and will be available at the reading.

Katy's poems and prose have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Harvard Review, GQ, and elsewhere. She has been anthologized in Body Electric (Norton), From Poe to the Present: Great American Prose Poems (Scribner), and State of the Union (Wave Books), among other compilations. She serves as a Poetry Editor of Fence Magazine.

Katy is keeping a blog about her current book tour.

Given An Actual Kansas' obsession with tha skrilla/tha cheddah/cash money, this blurb on Katy's new book is appropriate to include here:

. . . Lederer charts her speakers' interior landscapes according to the [New York C]ity's highly monetized geography, viewing life in the big city through the lens of expenditure— not just of money, but of all that money signifies. In poems that are both heartfelt and ruthlessly critical of our current financial milieu, in which the fates of individuals are packaged, priced out, and then bundled for sale on the open market, Lederer proves Robert Graves's famous observation wrong: though there may be no money in poetry, there is indeed poetry in money.

Katy works at "a hedge fund in midtown Manhattan."


Kazim Ali is is the author of two books of poetry, The Far Mosque (Alice James Books), winner of Alice James Books' New England/New York Award, and The Fortieth Day (BOA Editions 2008). He is also the author of the novel Quinn’s Passage (blazeVox books), named one of Chronogram magazine's Best Books of 2005.

He is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College and teaches in the low-residency MFA program of the University of Southern Maine. His work has been featured in many national journals such as Best American Poetry 2007, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Barrow Street, jubilat, and Massachusetts Review. He is one of the founding editors of Nightboat Books.

For excerpts and audio, to order books, and for other things Kazim Ali, visit his website.