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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
September 28 at 6:30 pm (book signing to follow): Paul Jones & Amanda Shaw with John Hanley and Golden Age Comedy
Note start time for September: 6:30 pm with book signing to follow.
Back by popular demand, Paul Jones is a person of minor interest. His book, Something Wonderful, was published by Redhawk Press in 2021. In 2024, Jones’ poem “Geode” was plagiarized multiple times by the notorious serial offender, John Kucera. A manuscript of his poems crashed into the moon’s surface in 2019, but as of the Odyssey’s recent landing, that manuscript is now part of the Lunar Library. In 2021, Jones was inducted into the NC State Computer Science Hall of Fame. Recently, Jones has published poems in Hudson Review, Tar River Poetry, NC Literary Review, as well as in anthologies including Best American Erotic Poems (1800-Present). Find him online at http://smalljones.com.
Amanda Shaw is a poet, editor, and teacher who currently serves as book review editor at Lily Poetry Review. A graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, she has taught language and literature at all levels for over 25 years. Although she’s lived in many different cities, states, and countries, she currently divides her time between New England and Washington, DC. Shaw’s poems probe language’s capacities in the hope that art might move us to a deeper commitment to life in all its forms. Her debut collection, It Will Have Been So Beautiful (Lily Poetry Review Books) implores us to consider what “home” means, particularly in the midst of an ever-worsening climate emergency. www.amandashawpoet.com
John Hanley is a graduate of the North Carolina State University MFA program in Creative Writing, for which he wrote a short story collection entitled Cicada. His work has appeared in Entropy Magazine and North Carolina Literary Review. He is an avid lover of horror, with an affinity toward Southern Gothic, and recently founded an online horror magazine, NECKSNAP. He was born and raised in Louisiana, but now lives with his fiancée in Durham, North Carolina, along with their cats, Remy and Okra, and their dog, Jake.
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.
October 26 at 8:00 pm (doors at 7:00 pm): Friends of Writers Benefit featuring Sarah Audsley, Rita Banerjee, Megan Pinto, Carter Sickels, & Connie Voisine
Sarah Audsley is the author of Landlock X (Texas Review Press). A Korean American adoptee, a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and a member of The Starlings Collective, Audsley lives and works in northern Vermont. She is the Writing Program Director at Vermont Studio Center. (photo by Carolyn Kehler)
Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is the author of the poetry collections Echo in Four Beats, which was named one of Book Riot’s “Must-Read Poetic Voices of Split This Rock 2018,” and Cracklers at Night. She is also editor of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing, and author of the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps. She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard University and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington, and her work appears in Academy of American Poets, Poets & Writers, PANK, Nat. Brut., Hunger Mountain, Tupelo Quarterly, Isele Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, VIDA, Vermont Public Radio, and elsewhere. She serves as Editor-at-Large of the South Asian Avant-Garde and Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop, and she is the co-writer and co-director of Burning Down the Louvre, a forthcoming documentary film about race, intimacy, and tribalism in the United States and in France. She received a 2021-2022 Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council for her new memoir and manifesto on female cool, and one of the opening chapters of this new memoir, “Birth of Cool” was a Notable Essay in the 2020 Best American Essays, and another chapter from her new memoir, “The Female Gaze,” was a Notable Essay in the 2023 Best American Essays.
Megan Pinto’s debut collection, Saints of Little Faith, is forthcoming with Four Way Books in September 2024. The winner of the 2023 Halley Prize from the Massachusetts Quarterly Review, Megan’s poems can be found or are forthcoming in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, Ploughshares, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Megan has received scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, Storyknife, The Peace Studio and an Amy Award from Poets & Writers. She lives in Brooklyn and holds an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson. (photo by Beowulf Sheehan)
Connie Voisine is the author of The Bower, a book-length poem about her family’s time in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Her previous books, Calle Florista, and Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream are also published by University of Chicago Press. Rare High Meadow was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her first book, Cathedral of the North, won the Associated Writing Program’s Award in Poetry. Her chapbook, And God Created Women, was published by Bull City Press. She has poems published in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. Her work was featured at The Lab at Belmar, a museum show pairing prehistoric stone tools with poems. Educated at Yale University, University of California at Irvine, and University of Utah, Voisine teaches in the creative writing program at New Mexico State University and lives in New Mexico and Chicago. Voisine was a Fulbright Fellow in the School of English at Queen’s University in 2012.
November 23 at 7:30 pm (book signing at 7:15): JP Allen & Andy Young with Simran Singh Jain and Golden Age Comedy
JP Allen’s poems have appeared in The Normal School, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. He has received an MFA in poetry from Johns Hopkins, as well as scholarships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.
Andy Young’s second full-length collection, Museum of the Soon to Depart, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press in October. She is also the author of All Night It Is Morning (Diálogos Press, 2014) and four chapbooks. Young grew up in southern West Virginia and has lived most of her adult life in New Orleans, where she teaches at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Her work has recently appeared in Identity Theory, Drunken Boat, and Michigan Quarterly Review. A graduate of Warren Wilson’s Program for Writers, her work has been translated into several languages, featured in classical and electronic music, in flamenco and modern dance performances, and in jewelry, tattoos, and public buses. andyyoung.org
Simran Singh Jain is a poet, activist, and abortion doula currently based in Durham, North Carolina. She is the National Membership Coordinator at SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, and uses her dedication to social justice and liberation to inform her poetry. Simran’s work has been published by the Academy of American Poets’, West Trade Review, the South Asian Sexual and Mental Health Alliance, Pennsylvania Bards Southeast Poetry Review, Nine Mile Literary Magazine, BigCityLit, and more. Her poem, An Almost Love Letter to an Almost Stranger, is nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She was also the editor of a book of poetry translated from Hindi, originally written by her Dadiji (grandmother) Sunita Jain.