Literary Firsts

John Cotter is a shiny set of spurs.

John Cotter‘s first novel, Under the Small Lights, will appear on June 1st from Miami University Press. He is a founding editor of the online magazine Open Letters Monthly.

John is the fiction writer for the April 19 reading.

Shannon Derby is a tattooed number.

Shannon Derby received her MFA from Emerson College in 2007 and teaches writing and literature at Emerson College and Suffolk University. When she isn’t grading essays or making up Freudian alter egos for her dog, she works on fiction and research in literary theory and the literature produced during the era of WWI. She will be leaving Boston this summer to move to Dublin to pursue graduate studies at Trinity College.

Shannon is the essayist for the April 19 reading.

Gillian Devereux is a taut trapeze act.

Gillian Devereux received her MFA in Poetry from Old Dominion University and is currently a PhD candidate in the Media, Art, and Text program at Virginia Commonwealth University. She teaches Media Culture and English at Bay State College in Boston, Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in FOURSQUARE, Gargoyle, 32 Poems, Wicked Alice, and other journals.

Gillian is the poet for the April 19 reading.

Carissa Halston is your host.

Carissa Halston‘s novel, A Girl Named Charlie Lester, was called “emotionally generous” and “a lovely piece of female confessional” by Kirkus Reviews. She was honorably mentioned in the 2008 New York Book Festival and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Last September, she performed in the US and Canada for her one-woman storytelling tour, Portraiture.

Carissa is the confessional writer for the April 19 reading.