Vacant Storefront - Greg Kuzma

For more than 45 years the poetry of Greg Kuzma has been attracting the attention of poets and critics from around the world who have followed his writing career from its early work, centered in youthful exuberance and angst, through the dark times of his younger brother’s death, to the depth and profound wisdom that this poet’s engagement with the world has brought to his work.

Professor Emeritus at University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Greg Kuzma has published thousands of poems in literary magazines throughout the country, including several appearances of his work in The New Yorker, Hudson Review, Poetry Northwest, etc. He has published more than 30 books and chapbooks of poetry, including an early book, Good News, published by Viking Press, which was re-published by Carnegie-Mellon University Press in their “Contemporary Classics” series.

He lives in Crete, Nebraska, with his wife Barb. They are the parent of two, and the grandparents of one.

Vacant Storefront - Patty Seyburn

Patty Seyburn has been added to the readers line-up. Patty is known as a poet, but she'll be reading non-fiction for us at Vacant Storefront. 

Patty Seyburn's third book of poems, Hilarity, won the Green Rose Prize given by New Issues Poetry & Prose. She has published two books of poems: Mechanical Cluster (Ohio State University Press, 2002) and Diasporadic (Helicon Nine Editions, 1998) which won the 1997 Marianne Moore Poetry Prize and the American Library Association's Notable Book Award for 2000. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including The Paris Review, New England Review, Field, Slate, Crazyhorse, Cutbank, Quarterly West, Bellingham Review, Connecticut Review, Cimarron Review, Third Coast and Western Humanities Review. Seyburn grew up in Detroit, earned a BS and an MS in Journalism from Northwestern University, an MFA in Poetry from University of California, Irvine, and a Ph.D. in Poetry and Literature from the University of Houston. She is an Assistant Professor at California State University, Long Beach and co-editor of POOL: A Journal of Poetry, based in Los Angeles. She lives with her husband, Eric Little, and their two children, Sydney and Will.

SAVE THE DATE!

Vacant Storefront 2012

Music

Visual Art

Fiction

Poetry

Non-Fiction

Sunday, 27 May 

5 PM

We're adding more readers, so check back for updates and highlights from last year's Vacant Storefront.

MFA Graduate Reading

Did you miss it? Check out the MFA Graduate reading, listed by readers below:

Larry Duncan

Linda Delmont

Mallory Reeves

Nicole Street

Samantha Mehlinger

Rola Eldanaf

Eric Forrester

Kelley Gillaspy

Merica Teng

Luisa Peña

Anna Mavromati

Tamar Altebarmakian

Photos courtesy of Merica Teng!

5th MFA Reading @ Gamboa Theater

Kevin Chidgey

Rola Eldanaf

Sean McDougal

Linda Delmont

Photos courtesy of Merica Teng.

The One Day Poetry Festival

Ron Silliman

2 PM

Beach Auditorium

CSULB

Ron Silliman is internationally recognized as one of most significant and influential poets and commentators on contemporary poetry in the United States. He has written and edited more than a score and a half books, including The Alphabet, Tjanting, and The Age of Huts. His anthology, In the American Tree, remains the most interesting and vital collection of avant-garde poetry since Donald Allen’s New American Poetry. This reading will be his only Los Angeles area appearance in 2012. He has been the recipient of two NEA grant as well as the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation in 2010. His blog  RonSilliman.blogspot.com enters its second decade of daily operation as one of the “must visit” spots on the internet.

More Poets & Poetry

4 PM - 6 PM

TBA

Check back for further details

Sandra Gilbert

7 PM

Beach Auditorium

CSULB

Sandra M. Gilbert is one of America’s foremost poets and also a major voice in literary criticism. She has published eight collections of verse, which have garnered praise and prizes that include the American Book Award (for Kissing the Bread), the Patterson Prize (for Ghost Volcano), The John Ciardi Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry, the Premio Lerici Pea Award from the Liguri nel Mondo Association, and several awards from Poetry Magazine. Her most recent work, Aftermath, has been called by former poet laureate Billy Collins a “collection by a virtuoso with heart.” A prolific and highly influential literary critic, Gilbert’s works have become classics in English studies: she is the co-author, with Susan Gubar, of four major works of feminist literary theory, including the ground-breaking Madwoman in the Attic and the three-volume work No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century, and she has co-edited, also with Gubar, The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. A collection of thirty years of her literary critical essays entitled Rereading Women has just been published by Norton.

BEACH AUDITORIUM

University Student Union

California State University, Long Beach

1250 Bellflower Boulevard

Long Beach, CA 90840

FREE ADMISSION

Parking available in Lot 16

(Funded in part by the Associated Students, Incorporated, CSU Long Beach, the CSULB English Department, HipPoetics Creative Writing Club, and the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies.)

5th MFA Reading

4th MFA Reading @ Gamboa Theater

Hannah Huff

Anna Mavromati

Fabiola Guzman Mercado

Eric Forrester

Kelley Gillaspy

Photos courtesy of Jax Ntp

Did you miss Gary Soto?

Watch his reading at CSULB here

Photos courtesy of Kiki Shaver.