Please Note: The 2014 book fair will take place on Thursday, April 3 from 10AM – 8PM at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Click here for a full list of participating publishers.
Click here for workshop and panel participant bios.
Tuesday, April 1
Hands-on Workshops with Susan Mills and Karen Randall
10AM – 1PM & 2PM – 5PM, Center for Book Arts
To kick off the Chapbook Festival, the Center for Book Arts will host workshops on hand-bookbinding and letterpress printing for writers, taught by artists Susan Mills and Karen Randall. Workshops run 10AM-1PM and 2PM-5PM. You can take either or both, but you must RSVP in advance. Get your feet wet in printing and bookmaking! RSVP required: (212) 481-0295. $20 donation at the door covers materials.
Panel & Opening Reception for The Mimeo Revolution: From New American Poetry to New Sentence
6PM – 9PM, Poets House (Kray Hall)
Join Steve Clay, Meira Levinson, and Kyle Wuagh for a panel discussion and a reception to celebrate the opening of The Mimeo Revolution: From New American Poetry to New Sentence. Drawing from Poets House’s exceptional chapbook collection to reimagine the history and legacy of Donald Allen’s classic anthology The New American Poetry 1945–1960, this exhibition is curated by Meira Levinson & Kyle Wuagh. The exhibition runs from Tuesday, April 1 through Saturday, April 12. For more information, visit the site.
Wednesday, April 2
Rapid Fire: City Wide Fellows Reading
5PM, Elebash Recital Hall
The recipients of emerging writers fellowships at Cave Canem, the Poetry Project, and Poets House will share recent work in this hour-long introduction to these rising stars. Featuring:
Poets House: Mahogany Browne, Rosamond King, Elsbeth Pancrazi, Montana Ray, Xeňa Stanislavovna Semjonová
Cave Canem: Simone White, Rickey Laurentiis
Poetry Project: Guillermo Felice Castro, Krystal Languell, Rangi McNeil
Reception
6PM – 7PM, Elebash Recital Hall
PSA Chapbook Fellowship Award Ceremony
7PM, Elebash Recital Hall
The Poetry Society of America launched the PSA Chapbook Fellowship Program a decade ago to establish the template for a community of peers and mentors who encourage and support talented poets who have not yet published a first book. Since the inception of the program we have introduced 40 new voices—next spring, the total will grow to 44. A uniquely supportive publication opportunity, the Fellowship provides exposure, mentorship, and career-building resources for promising poets in the earliest stages of their careers. Five years ago, PSA built on the program’s early momentum by joining with the NYC/CUNY Chapbook Festival. Each year, the Festival is scheduled to coincide with the launch of the new set of Chapbooks, and features a reading by current PSA Fellows at which they are introduced by their selecting judges. This year’s readers include: Thomas Sayers Ellis, John Yau, and Nick Flynn will read along with the chapbook winners: MRB Chelko, Tyler Flynn Dorholt, Alicia Salvadeo, and Xavier Cavazos.
Thursday, April 3
Book Fair
10AM-8PM, The Graduate Center, CUNY (C-Level)
Click here for the full list of publishers.
A Story of Two Museums: An Ethnographic Exhibition
12PM – 7PM, The Graduate Center, CUNY (The James Gallery)
for more information.
Poetry Project Presents: The Best of Public Access Poetry Screenings
12PM – 6PM, The Graduate Center, CUNY (C-Level)
Even if you were watching the innovation called cable TV in 1977 and 1978, what are the chances that you saw a show titled Public Access Poetry? Produced by Poetry Project stalwarts Greg Masters, Gary Lenhart, David Herz, Didi Susan Dubelyew, Daniel Krakauer, Bob Rosenthal and Rochelle Kraut, PAP programs featured half-hour readings by a wide range of poets and performers who could roughly be categorized as “downtown,� more often than not linked in one way or another with the Poetry Project. Forty-six fragile open-reel videotapes of these shows were preserved and, in 2009, were donated to the Poetry Project by the PAP team. This screening will feature highlights from various episodes.
CLMP Advice Dispensary
10AM-6PM, The Graduate Center, CUNY (C-Level)
Visit The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) staff members Julie Buntin (Programs Director) and Trisha Low (Development Director) at their one-stop shop for free literary publishing advice. From fiscal sponsorships and composing project budgets to talking about best practices for DIY digital marketing and publicity, we’re here to help. Bring your financials, grant proposals, marketing copy, press releases for us to peruse – or just come as you are, we got your back!
Chapbooks and Pedagogy
10:30AM, The Graduate Center, CUNY (C-Level)
This workshop asks how to communities throughout NYC are employing chapbook publications as a means to reach at-risk youth by promoting free ongoing poetry workshops, festivals, self-publication, and innovative poetry libraries in branches throughout the NYC boroughs. How do self-expression, self-publication, and printed matter effect local politics and inform our sense of personal efficacy? If we produce and distribute our own chapbooks, pamphlets, and information, are we taking charge of our own stories? Our own lives? Our own community? And lastly, what does poetry – and its publication – mean to people in times of economic, environmental, or personal crisis on the regional level? Featuring: Alex Cuff, Amanda Deutch, Kari Henry, Dorothea Lasky, Elizabeth Rosario, Lnette Smith and Tianna Wells.
“What Is the Name of the Pamphlet?�: Chapbooks in Contexts
12PM, The Graduate Center, CUNY (C-Level)
One or more sheets of paper, written, drawn, or printed, usually folded — from the medieval scriptorium to the digital commons, ephemeral or enduring, topical and utilitarian or abstract and utopian, broadsheets / pamphlets / chapbooks can be found threaded through a startling range of cultural situations. Touching on, among other things, medieval scenes and contemporary archives, the Harlem and the Berkeley Renaissances, African markets and pdf sites, this panel will investigate the phenomenon of the chapbook through echoes and shadows of past things to come. Featuring: Dan Remein, Kurt Thometz, Nancy Kuhl, and Danny Snelson with David Abel as moderator.
Nuts , Bolts, & Beyond: How to Get Your Work into Print
1:30PM, The Graduate Center, CUNY (C-Level)
Four independent publishers discuss both traditional and innovative forms of chapbook publishing, including digital and PDF formats, alternative and mixed media, and expanding the idea of the chapbook to include fiction, nonfiction, and cross-genre work. Publishers will also offer advice on how to prepare and submit your work for print, resources for publication, and how to do it yourself. Featuring Shanna Compton, MC Hyland, Adam Robinson, and Bianca Stone with Melissa Faliveno as moderator.
Lost & Found Release
4PM, The Graduate Center, CUNY (C-Level)
Join us for a celebration of the publication of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative Series IV, an award-winning, internationally recognized publication of original research and extra-poetic work edited by Graduate Center students and faculty. Editors will read, perform, present multimedia, and discuss their projects, which include the Pauline Kael and Robert Duncan correspondence; a film script by Ed Dorn intended for Stan Brakhage; Adrienne Rich’s CUNY teaching materials from the early years of Open Admissions; Before Gloucester, portraying poet Vincent Ferrini’s years as a factory worker, and After the Harlem Renaissance, the later poems of Helene Johnson. Lost & Found Series IV will be available for pre-publication purchase.