Inside the Castle Feature

6pm Sunday, March 17th

Decade (920 Delaware St, Lawrence, KS)

Our March reading features the local small press Inside the Castle. Mike Kleine, JoAnna Novak, and Lawrence's own Candice Wuehle will read from their new books, all of which will be available for sale. This special St Gertrude's Day reading will also feature a themed open mic in honor of St Gertrude: https://junkee.com/today-is-also-st-gertrudes-day-celebrate-the-patron-saint-of-cats/53228 So bring your best St Gertrude poem to share! Please note: We're trying out a new later time and a new accessible location, so be sure to double check the details.

A little about Inside the Castle: "Our books are unique from one another but share a vision, that literature is not representational but incantatory, that books are objects that exist much like other objects in your life and home, only they have additional dimensions, not dimensions separate or distant from the ones you occupy, but involuted dimensions that only become apparent when you reach out to them." http://www.insidethecastle.org/

And our featured readers:

Mike Kleine is the author of Lonely Men Club and other texts. He grew up in West Africa and graduated from Grinnell College with a BA in French Literature. He currently lives in the Midwest.

JoAnna Novak is the author of the novel I Must Have You and the book-length poem Noirmania. Her writing has appeared in publications including The Paris Review, The New York Times, the Washington Post, BOMB, Slate, and Guernica. She is a founding editor of Tammy, a literary journal and chapbook press.

Candice Wuehle is the author of the full-length collection BOUND (Inside the Castle Press, August 2018) and the chapbooks VIBE CHECK (Garden-door Press, 2017), EARTH*AIR*FIRE*WATER*ÆTHER (Grey Books Press, 2015) and curse words: a guide in 19 steps for aspiring transmographs, (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). Poems from her collection in progress, DEATH INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, appear in Best American Experimental Writing 2020, Black Warrior Review, The Bennington Review, and The New Delta Review. She is originally from Iowa City, Iowa and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Candice currently resides in Lawrence, Kansas where she is a Chancellor’s Fellow at The University of Kansas.

Jacob Saenz, David Welch, and Omaris Z. Zamora

Jacob Saenz, David Welch, and Omaris Z. Zamora

5pm Sunday, February 17th

eighth street taproom

Jacob Saenz is the author of Throwing the Crown, winner of the 2018 APR/Honickman First Book Prize, selected by Gregory Pardlo. His work has appeared in PANK, Poetry, Tammy, and other journals. A CantoMundo fellow, he's been the recipient of a Letras Latinas Residency and a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship. He serves as an associate editor for RHINO.

David Welch is the author of the collection Everyone Who Is Dead as well as a chapbook, It Is Such a Good Thing to Be In Love with You, and has poems recently published or forthcoming in journals including AGNI, Boston Review, and Pleiades. The recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Welch teaches at DePaul University where he is Assistant Director of Literary Programs and Outreach. Visit him virtually at www.davidwelch.me

Omaris Z. Zamora is an AfroLatina spoken-word poet from Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood. As a teen she competed in Louder Than Bomb's Youth Slam Poetry Festival. She

has published her work in the Dominican diaspora digital magazine, La Galería​, as well as local Chicago youth magazines sponsored through BUILD, Inc.--a youth development agency. Zamora is in the process of developing her first poetry chap book about what it means to be AfroLatinx/Dominican, the praxis of Black Feminisms, intimacy, and forgiveness. Her poetry is a means of healing and hoping to find understanding for the things she doesn't understand. Zamora is an Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latinx Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Kansas.

Charlotte Seley, Brad Vogler, and Brett Salsbury

5pm, Sunday Nov 4th

Charlotte Seley is a writer and poet from the Hudson Valley region of New York, currently residing in Kansas City. Her first collection of poetry, The World is My Rival, is out now from Spuyten Duyvil Publishing. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College where she served as Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor of Redivider and read poetry for Ploughshares.

Brad Vogler is the author of my radius, a small stone (Spuyten Duyvil), i know that this ritual (Lute & Cleat), and three chapbooks: errand : a version of (Meekling Press), Amid the Waves Which (Beard of Bees), and Fascicle 30 (Little Red Leaves Textile Series). His work has found a home in many places including: 1110, Cutbank, Free Verse, Small Po[r]tions, Versal and Volt. He works with Delete Press, Posit, and is the editor/web designer of Opon.

Brett Salsbury is a Kansan poet beginning his PhD studies at KU this Fall. His creative work has most recently appeared in Causeway Lit, The Poet's Billow, and Posit. In 2017, he served as a writer-in-residence with Sundress Academy for the Arts. He is also a contributing editor for Helen: A Literary Magazine in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he recently lived for five years while completing his MFA at UNLV and working at a museum of retired casino signs.

Emily Leibowitz, Kristi Maxwell, and Ruth Williams

5pm Sunday October 7th

Emily Liebowitz grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is the Author of National Park (Gramma, 2018) and the chapbook In Any Map (Songcave, 2015). She lives in Brooklyn where she co-edits LVNG Magazine and serves on the board of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP).

Kristi Maxwell is the author of six books of poetry, including Bright and Hurtless (Ahsahta Press, Oct. 2018). Her most recent work appears in Bennington Review, Black Warrior Review, and Boston Review. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of Louisville.

Ruth Williams is the author of Flatlands (2018) and Conveyance (2012). Her poetry has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, jubilat, Pleiades and Third Coast, among others. Ruth holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University and a Ph.D. in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati. Currently, she is an assistant professor of English at William Jewell College and an editor for Bear Review.

Stempleman, Huckins, Johnson, and Clark

We're back from summer vacation! Join us in the basement for poetry + community + cold drinks. This month we're featuring KC poet and Taproom favorite Jordan Stempleman, as well three poets from Nebraska's merrily merrily merrily press, Amanda Huckins, Bernadette Johnson, and press editor/publisher Paul Hanson Clark. As usual we'll kick things off with our community open mic, so bring a poem to share.

Jordan Stempleman is the author of nine collections of poetry including the forthcoming Cover Songs Cover Songs Cover Songs Off Days (Magic Helicopter Press, 2019), Wallop (Magic Helicopter Press, 2015), and No, Not Today (Magic Helicopter Press, 2011). He co-edits The Continental Review, is the faculty advisor for the literary magazine Sprung Formal, curates A Common Sense Reading Series, and is an assistant professor in the School of Liberal Arts at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Amanda Huckins is holding contradictory convictions, one in each hand. Besides that, she writes, prints, learns, organizes, teaches very young children, and eats fruit off of trees with her love in Omaha, Nebraska. Her poetry booklet "Trying To End The War" is out on merrily merrily merrily merrily (2018).

Bernadette Johnson is a poet and artist from Lincoln, Nebraska.

Paul Hanson Clark is a poet living in NEBRASKA. He just wrapped his MFA at Regis University and has begun work on his newest creative project... merrily merrily merrily merrily + has been spending a lot of time lately making mixtapes.