Ben Fama is the author of Fantasy (UDP 2015). His writing has appeared in The Believer, Denver Quarterly, Boston Review, Jubilat, Lit, Joyland and The Brooklyn Rail, among others. In 2016 he was a participating artist in MoMA ps1’s GreaterNY. He is the co-founder of Wonder, and lives in New York City.
Uljana Wolf is a poet and translator based in Brooklyn and Berlin. She published four books of poetry in German and translated numorous writers from English snd Polish into German, among them Yoko Ono, John Ashbery, Erin Moure, Cole Swensen, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Christian Hawkey, and Eugene Ostashevsky. Her most recent German publication is “Wandernde Errands,” an essay on the translingual poetics of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (Wunderhorn 2016). English translations of her work appeared in several chapbooks, among them “i mean i dislike that fate that i was made to where”, translated by Sophie Seita (Wonder Press, Brooklyn 2015). Forthcoming is “Subsisters. Selected poems,” edited and translated by Sophie Seita (Belladonna*, summer 2017). Uljana Wolf teaches German language and literary translation at New York University, the Pratt Institute, Humboldt University Berlin and the Institute für Sprachkunst, Vienna.
Eugene Ostashevsky is a poet and translator. This reading celebrates the release of The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi, his novel in poems about communication challenges affecting pirate-parrot relationships, from NYRB Poets. He is also the author of The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza, published by UDP. Born in Russia, brought up in the US, and currently residing in Berlin while working in Paris, he writes about how languages do not match each other or themselves. He often puns.
Tom Comitta is the author of ◯ (Ugly Ducking Presse), SENT (Invisible Venue), First Thought Worst Thought: Collected Books 2011-2014 (Gauss PDF) and Airport Novella (forthcoming from Troll Thread). From 2011-12 he co-conducted SF Guerilla Opera, a roving sound poetry troupe that gave voice to texts at numerous locations around the Bay Area including the Civic Center BART and the Berkeley Art Museum. This summer his collaboration with the choreographer duo Fire Drill, Bill: The Musikill, will appear in Minneapolis’s Momentum dance festival. He lives in Los Angeles.
Kaveh Akbar is the founding editor of Divedapper. His poems appear recently or soon in The New Yorker, Poetry, APR, Tin House, PBS NewsHour, and elsewhere. He is the author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James 2017) and the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry). The recipient of a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and currently lives and teaches in Florida.
Trisha Low is the author of The Compleat Purge (Kenning Editions, 2013). She lives in Oakland where she is currently working on a book-length essay entitled SOCIALIST REALISM.
Kit Schluter is translator of Marcel Schwob’s The Book of Monelle and The King in the Golden Mask, Jaime Saenz’s The Cold, Michel Surya’s Dead End, Amandine André’s Circle of Dogs (in collaboration with Jocelyn Spaar), and several forthcomings. His writing can be found in BOMB, Boston Review, Folder, Hyperallergic, and the chapbook Inclusivity Blueprint from Diez. Kit is currently on fellowship with the National Endowment for the Arts for further translation of Marcel Schwob, and coedits & designs for O’clock Press.
Sasha Smith is a Poetry Project 2016-2017 Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow. She is currently studying literature at NYU’s School of Professional Studies. She is a native Bronx resident and cofounder of the Bronx Blaqlist, a community arts organization. Her poetry can be found in Poet’s Country No. 1 as of January 2017. Prior to publication in NYU’s Literary Journal Dovetail, her work has been published by CUNY’s Literary and Arts Journal Thesis. She is currently working on a project about gentrification in the Bronx, and the voices of Mount Everest. She ‘blogs’ at http://stesseract.com.
Tommy “Teebs” Pico is a poet from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation. He authored the books IRL, Nature Poem, and Junk, & myriad keen Tweets including “Love in the time of climate change.” He is co-curator of the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA) with Morgan Parker, and co-host of the podcast Food 4 Thot. His Myers-Briggs is IDGAF. @heyteebs
Jackie Wang is s a student of the dream state, black studies scholar, prison abolitionist, poet, filmmaker, performer, trauma monster, and PhD candidate at Harvard University in African and African American Studies. She is the author of Carceral Capitalism (Semiotexte / MIT Press), a number of punk zines including On Being Hard Femme, and a collection of dream poems titled Tiny Spelunker of the Oneiro-Womb (Capricious). In her most recent work she has been researching the bail bonds industry and the history of risk assessment in criminal justice. Find her @LoneberryWang and Loneberry.tumblr.com.
Lee Ann Brown is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Other Archer which was published in the “To/Jusqua” series of the University Press of Rouen and Le Havre in 2015. In 1987 she moved to New York City to work at The Poetry Project where she was the Monday Night coordinator from 1989-1991, and she has been a happy member of the community ever since. She is the founding editor of Tender Buttons Press, which is dedicated to publishing experimental women’s poetry and recently celebrated its 25th Anniversary with the publication of Tender Omnibus, co-edited with Katy Bohinc. Brown now teaches poetry at St. John’s University and likes to sing.
erica kaufman is the author of POST CLASSIC (Roof Books, 2019), INSTANT CLASSIC (Roof Books, 2013) and censory impulse (Factory School, 2009). she is also the co-editor of NO GENDER: Reflections on the Life and Work of kari edwards (Venn Diagram, 2009), and of Adrienne Rich: Teaching at CUNY, 1968-1974 (Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, 2014). prose and critical work can be found in: The Color of Vowels: New York School Collaborations (ed. Mark Silverberg, Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), The Supposium: Thought Experiments and Poethical Play in Difficult Times (ed. Joan Retallack, Litmus Press, 2018), Approaches to Teaching the Works of Gertrude Stein (eds. L’ Esdale and D. Mix, MLA, 2018), and Reading Experimental Writing (ed. G. Colby, Edinburgh University Press). recent poems can be found in A Perfect Vacuum and P-Queue. kaufman is the Director of the Bard College Institute for Writing & Thinking and Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities.