Event Details
Tue, June 06, 2017
18:00 – 19:30
Pomario
VILLA LA PIETRA
Via Bolognese, 120
50139 Firenze - ITALIA
Internationally celebrated fiction writers and poets read from their works. Mark Bibbins, Maaza Mengiste, Alexander Chee and Catherine Barnett.
Featured Biographies
Mark Bibbins
POET
Mark Bibbins is the author of three books of poems: Sky Lounge (Graywolf Press), which received a 2004 Lambda Literary Award, The Dance of No Hard Feelings (Copper Canyon Press), and They Don’t Kill You Because They’re Hungry, They Kill You Because They’re Full (Copper Canyon), which was named one of the best poetry books of 2014 by Publishers Weekly magazine and a standout book by The Academy of American Poets. He has taught in the graduate writing programs of The New School, where he co-founded LIT magazine, and Columbia University, and at Purchase College and the 92nd Street Y. A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, Bibbins edits the poetry section of The Awl. His poems have appeared in such venues as The New Yorker, Poetry, The Paris Review, and four editions of The Best American Poetry. He lives in New York City.
Catherine Barnett
POET
Catherine Barnett is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, and a Pushcart. Her first book, Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced (Alice James Books, 2004), won the 2003 Beatrice Hawley Award, and she received the 2012 James Laughlin Award for her second book, The Game of Boxes (Graywolf Press, 2012). Barnett has taught at Barnard, the New School, and NYU, where she was honored with an Outstanding Service Award.
Alexander Chee
FICTION WRITER
Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh and, most recently, The Queen of the Night. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and an editor at large at VQR. His essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Tin House, Slate, Guernica, NPR and Out, among others. He is the winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. He has taught writing at Wesleyan University, Amherst College, the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Texas-Austin. He lives in New York City, where he curates the Dear Reader series at Ace Hotel New York.
Maaza Mengiste
FICTION WRITER
Maaza Mengiste is a novelist, essayist, and photographer. Her debut novel, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, was selected by the Guardian as one of the 10 best contemporary African books and named one of the best books of 2010 by Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe and other publications. Her fiction and nonfiction can be found in The New Yorker, Granta, the Guardian, The New York Times, BBC Radio, and Lettre International, among other places. She was the 2014 Puterbaugh Fellow and a Runner-up for the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Maaza’s fiction and nonfiction examines the individual lives at stake during migration, war, and exile, and considers the intersections of photography and violence. She was a writer on the social-activist documentary film, GIRL RISING, which features the voices of actors such as Meryl Streep, Liam Neeson, and Cate Blanchet, and is at work on another, Belgian-based, documentary. Her second novel, The Shadow King, is forthcoming.