April 18th, 2014 § § permalink
It’s official! Literary Firsts is in its fifth year! To help celebrate, we had a wealth of talent in the room on Monday night. Obehi Janice wowed us with three essays, Steven LaFond was a man on fire with short fiction, Ravi Shankar brought the room to a serene calm with his poems, and Lillian Medville stirred everything back up with her confessional tale. It was a thrilling event that made me so happy to be a part of this community and to have a hand in this series.
Obehi Janice reads her essays.
Steven LaFond reads his fiction.
Ravi Shankar reads some of his poems.
Lillian Medville regales the crowd with her confessional tale.
Photos courtesy of Randolph Pfaff (except the one of Lillian, which I may or may not have taken).
Videos can be viewed here.
Thanks a million to everyone who made it. Thanks to everyone who read. I can’t wait for July.
April 14th, 2014 § § permalink
Four readers! Four years!
Obehi Janice! Steven LaFond! Lillian Medville! Ravi Shankar!
Tonight at Middlesex Lounge at 7pm, Boston!
See you there!
March 14th, 2014 § § permalink
Ravi Shankar is a finely struck chord.
Ravi Shankar founded Drunken Boat, and has published or edited seven books and chapbooks of poetry. His next, a collection of ekphrastic and collaborative poems, entitled What Else Could It Be, will be out next spring. Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he edited W.W. Norton’s Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond. He has won a Pushcart Prize, been featured in The New York Times, appeared as a commentator on the BBC, the PBS Newshour, and NPR, received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and has performed his work around the world. He is currently Chairman of the Connecticut Young Writers Trust, on the faculty of the first international MFA Program at City University of Hong Kong and an Associate Professor of English at Central Connecticut State University.
Ravi is the poet for the April 14 reading.
March 14th, 2014 § § permalink
Join us on Monday, April 14 at Middlesex Lounge to celebrate the series’s fourth birthday!
Our readers will be Obehi Janice (as essayist), Steven LaFond (as fiction writer), Ravi Shankar (as poet), and Lillian Medville (as confessional reader)!
Can’t wait to see you there!