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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
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.
August 9 at 7:00 pm (book signing at 6:45): James Tadd Adcox with Eliza Benbow, Allison Kirkland, & Golden Age Comedy
James Tadd Adcox’s work has appeared in Granta, n + 1, and 3:AM Magazine, among other places. He is a founding editor of the literary magazine Always Crashing, a magazine of fiction, poetry, and nameless things around and in-between, and is the author most recently of Denmark: Variations, a collection of sixty sets of instructions for variations on the play Hamlet.
Eliza Benbow is a recent graduate of UNC Chapel Hill whose essays and articles have appeared in UNC Cellar Door, Our State Magazine, and INDY Week. Her most recent work — an essay collection about the Greensboro-based bookseller, poet, and publisher Alan Brilliant — was awarded the Marianne Gingher Award in Creative Nonfiction at UNC in 2025. Currently based in Greensboro, her writing traces creativity and memory throughout the South.
Allison Kirkland earned an MFA in creative nonfiction from The New School and currently lives, writes, and teaches in Durham, NC. Her essays have appeared in Brevity, Pithead Chapel, Under the Gum Tree and elsewhere. Find her on Substack at allisonkirkland.substack.com.
September 13 at 7:00 pm (book signing at 6:45): James Daniels & Stephanie Elizondo Griest with Golden Age Comedy
James Daniels is a Black Southern poet, pianist, peacebuilder, educator, hip-hop artist, and community arts organizer who crafts and curates artistic experiences that center creative peacebuilding to build a world with a more restorative view of ourselves and the communities around us. He has 10+ years of experience teaching writing and hip-hop education at universities, schools, and community organizations, as well as several publications with the Greensboro Review, SoftSavagePress, Stonecoast Review, Cherry Tree Literary, EcoTheo Review, and Windhover Magazine. When he is not working his day job as a professor of English and Creative Writing, he can be found engaging in community literary arts education, freelance piano-ing, gaming, reading, and spending time with friends and family. To keep up with his events and releases, visit sollxve.com or follow him on Instagram and Twitter @jamessolomon___
Stephanie Elizondo Griest is a globetrotting author from the Texas/Mexico borderlands. Her six books include Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana; Mexican Enough; All the Agents and Saints; and Art Above Everything: One Woman’s Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life. She has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, VQR, The Believer, BBC, Orion, and Oxford American. Her work has been supported by the Lannan Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, Princeton University, and the Institute for Arts and Humanities, and she has won a Margolis Award, an International Latino Book Award, a PEN Southwest Book Award, and two Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism prizes. Currently Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Elizondo Griest has performed in capacities ranging from a Moth storyteller to a literary ambassador for the U.S. State Department. Wanderlust has led her to 50 countries and 49 states. Her hardest journey was to Planet Cancer in 2017, but she’s officially in remission now. She recently endowed Testimonios Fronterizos, a research grant for student journalists from the borderlands enrolled at her alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism.
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.
October 25 at 8:00 pm (doors at 7:00): Xhenet Aliu, Timothy O’Keefe, Matt Poindexter, and more
Xhenet Aliu’s novel, Brass, was awarded the biennial Townsend Prize in 2020, the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year First Novel Prize, was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, and was long-listed for the 2018 Center for Fiction First Book Prize. Numerous media outlets, including Entertainment Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, Real Simple, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, named Brass a 2018 best book of the year. Previously, her debut story collection, Domesticated Wild Things, and Other Stories won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction. Aliu’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Glimmer Train, Hobart, LitHub, Buzzfeed, and elsewhere, and she has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and a fellowship from the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, among other awards. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
Timothy O’Keefe is the author of You Are the Phenomenology, winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry, and The Goodbye Town, winner of the FIELD Poetry Prize. His poems and lyric essays have appeared in Best American Essays, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. He serves as Senior Editor for Seneca Review and teaches writing and literature at High Point University.
Matt Poindexter is the author of the poetry chapbook Fatherland (Unicorn Press, 2025). He lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina.
November 8 at 7:00 pm (book signing at 6:45): Aran Donovan & Matthew Buckley Smith with Golden Age Comedy
Aran Donovan is a poet and translator living in Virginia where she teaches for WriterHouse and helps organize the Charlottesville Zine Fest. Her work has appeared in Juked, New Orleans Review, Rattle, The Common, and Best New Poets. Find her online at arandonovan.com and Instagram @aedono13.
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.