Pen and Brush Presents…

3.2Pen and Brush Presents… is a new reading series curated by Kate Angus for Pen and Brush. The series seeks to support editorial curation as well as exciting new writing by established and emerging writers. Each month, “Pen and Brush Presents…” will feature readings by three writers, each one selected by editors at a press, journal, or organization with a strong female editorial presence.

Join us for the first reading of the series, featuring the work of:

Shelly Oria, representing Farrar, Straus and Giroux and editor Emily Bell. Shelly Oria was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Israel. Her short story collection, New York 1, Tel Aviv 0, came out from FSG and Random House Canada in 2014 and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and shortlisted for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, among other honors. Shelly’s fiction has appeared in The Paris ReviewMcSweeney’sfivechapters, and Electric Lit’s Recommended Reading, and won the Indiana Review Fiction Prize, a Sozopol Fiction Seminars Fellowship in Bulgaria, and the LMCC Workspace Grant among other awards. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, curates the series Sweet! Actors Reading Writers in the East Village, has a private practice as a creativity coach, and teaches fiction at Pratt Institute, where she also co-directs the Writers’ Forum.

Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, representing African Voices magazine. Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie is the author of Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation (Grand Concourse Press) and Karma’s Footsteps (Flipped Eye Publishing). She is the Poetry Editor of the literary magazine African Voices. Her work focuses on women, race, ancestry, violence and the healing power of art and has been published in North American ReviewWSQ: Women’s Studies QuarterlyBlack Renaissance NoireVIDACrab Orchard ReviewBOMBParis/Atlantic, and Listen Up! (One World Ballantine). She was also featured on The Missouri Review Soundbooth as a runner-up in their 2014 audio poetry contest. Tallie’s work has been the subject of a short film “I Leave My Colors Everywhere.” She is the recipient of a 2010 Queens Council on the Arts grant for her research on herbalists of the African Diaspora. She has taught literature and composition at York College and Medgar Evers College in New York City. Her work “Strut,” a collaboration with her husband, photographer Dominique Sindayiganza, deals with body-image, self-acceptance, and the role of capitalism in women’s issues about their appearances.

Deborah Landau, representing the Academy of American Poets. Deborah Landau is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently The Uses of the Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) and The Last Usable Hour, a Lannan Literary Selection published by Copper Canyon in 2011. Her first book, Orchidelirium, was selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the Robert Dana Anhinga Prize for Poetry. Her work has been published in The Paris Review, Tin HousePoetryThe New YorkerBoston ReviewThe Kenyon ReviewThe Wall Street JournalThe New York Times, and featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. Her poems have been widely anthologized in places such as The Best American Poetry, Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation (Viking 2015), Not for Mothers Only, (Fence Books), The Best American Erotic Poems, and Women’s Work: Modern Poets Writing in English. She was educated at Stanford, Columbia, and Brown, where she was a Jacob K. Javits Fellow and received a Ph.D. in English and American Literature. For many years she co-directed the KGB Bar Monday Night Poetry Series and co-hosted the video interview program Open Book on Slate.com. She teaches in and directs the Creative Writing Program at New York University, and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, sons, and daughter.

Kate Angus is a founding editor of Augury Books. Her work has appeared in The AtlanticThe AwlBest New Poets 2010 and Best New Poets 2014. Her poetry collection, So Late to the Party, is forthcoming from Negative Capability Press.

The event is free and open to the public; RSVPs to [email protected] are encouraged but not required.











When: Wed., Mar. 2, 2016 at 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

3.2Pen and Brush Presents… is a new reading series curated by Kate Angus for Pen and Brush. The series seeks to support editorial curation as well as exciting new writing by established and emerging writers. Each month, “Pen and Brush Presents…” will feature readings by three writers, each one selected by editors at a press, journal, or organization with a strong female editorial presence.

Join us for the first reading of the series, featuring the work of:

Shelly Oria, representing Farrar, Straus and Giroux and editor Emily Bell. Shelly Oria was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Israel. Her short story collection, New York 1, Tel Aviv 0, came out from FSG and Random House Canada in 2014 and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and shortlisted for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, among other honors. Shelly’s fiction has appeared in The Paris ReviewMcSweeney’sfivechapters, and Electric Lit’s Recommended Reading, and won the Indiana Review Fiction Prize, a Sozopol Fiction Seminars Fellowship in Bulgaria, and the LMCC Workspace Grant among other awards. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, curates the series Sweet! Actors Reading Writers in the East Village, has a private practice as a creativity coach, and teaches fiction at Pratt Institute, where she also co-directs the Writers’ Forum.

Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, representing African Voices magazine. Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie is the author of Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation (Grand Concourse Press) and Karma’s Footsteps (Flipped Eye Publishing). She is the Poetry Editor of the literary magazine African Voices. Her work focuses on women, race, ancestry, violence and the healing power of art and has been published in North American ReviewWSQ: Women’s Studies QuarterlyBlack Renaissance NoireVIDACrab Orchard ReviewBOMBParis/Atlantic, and Listen Up! (One World Ballantine). She was also featured on The Missouri Review Soundbooth as a runner-up in their 2014 audio poetry contest. Tallie’s work has been the subject of a short film “I Leave My Colors Everywhere.” She is the recipient of a 2010 Queens Council on the Arts grant for her research on herbalists of the African Diaspora. She has taught literature and composition at York College and Medgar Evers College in New York City. Her work “Strut,” a collaboration with her husband, photographer Dominique Sindayiganza, deals with body-image, self-acceptance, and the role of capitalism in women’s issues about their appearances.

Deborah Landau, representing the Academy of American Poets. Deborah Landau is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently The Uses of the Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) and The Last Usable Hour, a Lannan Literary Selection published by Copper Canyon in 2011. Her first book, Orchidelirium, was selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the Robert Dana Anhinga Prize for Poetry. Her work has been published in The Paris Review, Tin HousePoetryThe New YorkerBoston ReviewThe Kenyon ReviewThe Wall Street JournalThe New York Times, and featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. Her poems have been widely anthologized in places such as The Best American Poetry, Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation (Viking 2015), Not for Mothers Only, (Fence Books), The Best American Erotic Poems, and Women’s Work: Modern Poets Writing in English. She was educated at Stanford, Columbia, and Brown, where she was a Jacob K. Javits Fellow and received a Ph.D. in English and American Literature. For many years she co-directed the KGB Bar Monday Night Poetry Series and co-hosted the video interview program Open Book on Slate.com. She teaches in and directs the Creative Writing Program at New York University, and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, sons, and daughter.

Kate Angus is a founding editor of Augury Books. Her work has appeared in The AtlanticThe AwlBest New Poets 2010 and Best New Poets 2014. Her poetry collection, So Late to the Party, is forthcoming from Negative Capability Press.

The event is free and open to the public; RSVPs to [email protected] are encouraged but not required.

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