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We have two reading series!
The House Party Reading Series
a salon-style reading
Hosted in Hillsborough and 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.
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. And stick around for Golden Age, which generally features one of the readers inspiring improv comedy. Free to the public.
Join the mailing list to receive an invitation: https://bullcitypress.com/reading-series/join-the-mailing-list/
Upcoming Readings
March 25 at 8:00 pm: Michael Parker & Crystal Simone Smith with Blaine Purcell
Mettlesome Theater in Golden Belt, 800 Taylor Street, Suite 9-156, Durham
Michael Parker is the author of eight novels – Hello Down There, Towns Without Rivers, Virginia Lovers, If You Want Me To Stay, The Watery Part of the World, All I Have In This World, Prairie Fever, and most recently, I Am the Light of This World – and three collections of stories, The Geographical Cure, Don’t Make Me Stop Now, and Everything, Then and Since. (Photo by Matt Valentine)
Blaine Purcell is a mixed, gender-fluid poet studying at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Their writing focuses on family and community, sex, and the intersection of their identities. They have previously been published in Beaver Magazine.
Crystal Simone Smith is a poet, indie-publisher, and educator. She is the author of Dark Testament (Henry Holt, 2023). She also authored three poetry chapbooks and 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.
May 27 at 8:00 pm: Sumita Chakraborty & TBD
Mettlesome Theater in Golden Belt, 800 Taylor Street, Suite 9-156, Durham
Sumita Chakraborty is a poet, essayist, and scholar. She is the author of the poetry collection Arrow (Alice James Books (U.S.)/Carcanet Press (U.K.), 2020), which has received coverage in the New York Times, NPR, and the Guardian. She is currently writing a scholarly book, Grave Dangers: Poetics and the Ethics of Death in the Anthropocene, which is under advance contract with the University of Minnesota Press. She is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC.
June 24 at 8:00 pm: Michael McFee & TBD
Mettlesome Theater in Golden Belt, 800 Taylor Street, Suite 9-156, Durham
A native of Asheville, Michael McFee has taught in the Creative Writing Program at UNC-Chapel Hill since 1990. He is the author of twelve books of poetry—including six published by Carnegie Mellon University Press: A Long Time to Be Gone, We Were Once Here, That Was Oasis, Shinemaster, Earthly, and Colander—and two collections of essays, Appointed Rounds: Essays (Mercer University Press) and The Napkin Manuscripts: Selected Essays and an Interview (University of Tennessee Press). He has received the James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South, from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award from the Western North Carolina Historical Association.