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We have two reading series!
The House Party Reading Series
a salon-style reading
Hosted at a private residence in Durham, NC, the House Party Reading Series is a chance for writers and readers to hear some of the most exciting voices in contemporary letters… and then have a party. Head chef Ashley Nissler prepares the spread and the Bull City Press gang brings authors from all over the country to read new work.
Join the mailing list to receive an invitation: https://bullcitypress.com/reading-series/join-the-mailing-list/
Bull City Press Presents
Located at Mettlesome Theater (in Golden Belt, 800 Taylor Street, Suite 9-156, Durham, NC, 27701), Bull City Press’s downtown reading series brings you poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from established and emerging writers. It’s paired with Golden Age, a comedy show that features one of our readers inspiring improv comedy. Free to the public if you arrive on time, $8 if you arrive when Golden Age begins.
Upcoming Readings
February 22 at 7:00 pm (book signing at 6:45): Emilie Menzel with Boatemaa Adoawaa Han Mee Agyeman-Mensah, Bailey Gregory, & Golden Age Comedy
Emilie Menzel is the author of the The Girl Who Became a Rabbit (Hub City Press, 2024), which won the 2023 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize and was named a Debutiful Best Poetry Book of 2024. Her poetry hybridities examine reclaimed narratives of embodiment, gentle hauntings, and fables of the body and feature in such journals as the Bennington Review, Copper Nickel, and The Offing. She holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and serves as the librarian for The Seventh Wave community and as a collections librarian at Duke University. Raised on barefoot Georgia summers, she now lives in Durham, North Carolina and online at emiliemenzel.com. photo by Sean T. Bailey
Boatemaa Adoawaa Han Mee Agyeman-Mensah is a GhanaianKoreanAmerican poet from Ham Lake, Minnesota. Her writing has appeared in Cellar Door, COUNTERCLOCK Journal, and the Carolina Quarterly, and has been recognized by the Adroit Journal. Currently, she serves as co-director of COUNTERCLOCK x PATCHWORK, an interdisciplinary poetry-film collaborative fellowship. Boatemaa studies English and Philosophy at the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill.
Bailey Gregory (she/her) is a fourth-year student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studying English & Comparative Literature. She is from Edneyville, North Carolina, a small apple-farming town nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She is currently completing a senior honors thesis in Creative Nonfiction Writing, blending personal narrative and research into an experimental collection on the life of an artist.
March 22 at 7:00 pm (book signing at 6:45): Bridget Bell & Lesley Wheeler with Golden Age Comedy
Bridget Bell’s debut poetry collection—All That We Ask of You Is to Always Be Happy (CavanKerry, 2025)—explores maternal mental health. She is the recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Artist Support Grant, and teaches composition and literature at Durham Technical Community College. Additionally, she pours pints at Ponysaurus Brewery and proofreads for Four Way Books. Originally from Toledo, Ohio, she is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence’s MFA program in creative writing.
Lesley Wheeler, Poetry Editor of Shenandoah, is the author of six poetry collections, including Mycocosmic (Tupelo Press, March 2025) and The State She’s In. Her other books include the hybrid memoir Poetry’s Possible Worlds and the novel Unbecoming. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poets & Writers, Pleiades, Poetry, Ecotone, and Massachusetts Review. photo by Anne Valerie
April 26 at 7:00 pm (book signing at 6:45): Mackenzie Kozak & Erin Miller with Golden Age Comedy
Mackenzie Kozak is the author of no swaddle (University of Iowa Press, 2025), selected by Brenda Shaughnessy for the Iowa Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Boston Review, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Missouri Review, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. Mackenzie serves as an associate editor at Orison Books and works as a grief therapist in Asheville, North Carolina.
Erin L. Miller is a queer poet working in tech. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at Bowling Green State University. Her poetry and reviews have appeared in Best New Poets, The Pinch, Whiskey Island, Bluestem, Black Warrior Review, and others. Her first chapbook, Inner Species, will be released in April by Unicorn Press. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.
Golden Age is an all-star cast of improvisers. Each night, they welcome one special guest to share art and insights. Their experiences inspired their work, now they inspire hilarious conversation and comedy.
May 24 at 7:00 pm (book signing at 6:45): A. Kendra Greene & Joanna Pearson with Golden Age Comedy
A. Kendra Greene is the author and illustrator of The Museum of Whales You Will Never See and No Less Strange or Wonderful. At eighteen, she interned at Chile’s national zoo because there was no more sensible place to send a philosophy major. She became an essayist during a Fulbright in South Korea while she was supposed to be making photographs. She has an MFA in nonfiction and a graduate certificate in book arts from the University of Iowa, where she was both a Jacob K. Javits fellow and costumer to a giant ground sloth. Briefly a high school math and science teacher, she has since taught creative writing, with a bent for text and image and object, at the University of Iceland, UNC Chapel Hill, and UT Dallas.
Joanna Pearson’s debut novel, Bright and Tender Dark (Bloomsbury, 2024), was an Indie Next Pick and an Amazon Editors’ Pick. She’s also the author of two short story collections, Now You Know It All (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021), chosen by Edward P. Jones for the 2021 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, and Every Human Love (Acre Books, 2019). Her fiction has recently appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery and Suspense, The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, and other places. She lives in Carrboro, NC. photo by Danelle Beede
Golden Age is an all-star cast of improvisers. Each night, they welcome one special guest to share art and insights. Their experiences inspired their work, now they inspire hilarious conversation and comedy.
June 28 at 7:00 pm (book signing at 6:45): Kayla E. with Golden Age Comedy
Kayla E. (she/her) is an award-winning Texas-born artist of Mexican American descent. She works as creative director at Fantagraphics and is a recipient of a 2023-2024 Princeton Hodder Fellowship. She is the co-founder and former President of Nat. Brut Inc., a non-profit that produces an art and literary magazine, of which she was the Editor-in-Chief for nine years. She earned her B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University, where she served as the Art Director for the Harvard Lampoon. Precious Rubbish, her graphic novel debut, is a work of trauma recollection told in the style of post-war children’s comics. Kayla lives in North Carolina with her wife and two dogs. You can find her at kaylaework.com and on Instagram @precious.rubbish.