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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
June 14 at 7:00 pm (book signing at 6:45): Kayla E. & Crystal Simone Smith 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.
Crystal Simone Smith is the author of three poetry chapbooks, Routes Home (Finishing Line Press, 2013) Running Music (Longleaf Press, 2014), and Down To Earth (Longleaf Press, 2020). She co-authored, One Window’s Light, A Collection of Haiku, edited by Lenard D. Moore (2017), which won the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Award for Best Haiku Anthology. In 2019, she won the North Carolina Poetry Society Bloodroot Haiku Award. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Prairie Schooner, POETRY Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, Frogpond, and Modern Haiku. In 2020, she received a Duke University Humanities Unbounded Fellowship. She writes poetry about the human condition and social change.
July 12 at 7:00 pm (book signing at 6:45): JP Gritton & Dasia Moore with Golden Age Comedy
JP Gritton is the author of the novel Wyoming (Tin House, 2019). His stories and essays have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Greensboro Review, Missouri Review, New Ohio Review, Ploughshares, Southwest Review, and elsewhere. His translations of the work of Brazilian author Cidinha da Silva have appeared in such journals as Asymptote, Brooklyn Rail, and Literary Matters.  His awards include a Cynthia Woods Mitchell fellowship, the Meringoff prize in fiction, and the Donald Barthelme prize in fiction. He is an assistant professor of creative writing in the department of English at Duke University. photo by Katy Tartakoff
Dasia Moore is a poet whose work has appeared in journals including The Offing, Fence, and West Trade Review. In 2024, the Charleston Literary Festival named her as one of two inaugural Cato Fellows. In 2025, The Racial Imaginary Institute commissioned her to create an artist’s book, Francophile, which is currently part of an exhibition in Berlin. A queer child of the Black South, Dasia is interested in inherited language and memory. She lives, writes, and teaches in Durham.
October 11 at 7:00 pm (book signing at 6:45): Cate Lycurgus & Adam O’Fallon Price with Golden Age Comedy
Cate Lycurgus is the author of Seacliff (forthcoming from Bull City Press, 2025) and her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, ZYZZYVA, Kenyon Review, Orion, and elsewhere. Cate lives in San Jose, California, where she interviews for 32 Poems, co-curates the Headwaters Reading Series for Health and Wellbeing, and teaches writing.
Adam O’Fallon Price is the author of two novels, The Grand Tour (Doubleday, 2016) and The Hotel Neversink (Tin House Books, 2019). His short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, VICE, The Kenyon Review Online, Glimmer Train, Narrative, EPOCH, The Iowa Review, and many other places. His essay and criticism have appeared in The Paris Review Daily, Ploughshares, Electric Literature, and The Millions, where he is a staff writer.
November 8 at 7:00 pm (book signing at 6:45): Matthew Buckley Smith with Golden Age Comedy
Matthew Buckley Smith is the author of the poetry collections Midlife (Measure, 2024) and Dirge for an Imaginary World (Able Muse, 2012), and of the forthcoming chapbook The Soft Black Stars (Rattle, 2026). His poems have appeared in AGNI, The Nation, and Ploughshares, as well as in American Life in Poetry, Best American Poetry, and Poetry Daily. He is the poetry editor of Literary Matters, the prose editor of Tar River Poetry, and the host of the poetry podcast SLEERICKETS. He lives in Carrboro, NC.