Kim Addonizio: Reading and book signing for Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within February 24, 2009

In Ordinary Genius, Kim Addonizio presents exciting new insights into the creative process, craft, and the lessons of her own creative subjects--love, loss, identity, community, along with a heady variety of writing exercises (and innovative ways to use the Internet). Chapters on gender, race, and class challenge readers to explore their creative vision more deeply. Addonizio, hailed for her passionate, award-winning poetry, shares her breakthroughs and frustrations frankly, including samples of rejection slips. She offers not only encouragement but also a wealth of knowledge about form and structure, metaphor and rhythm, revision, and that elusive goal: publishing.

Kim Addonizio is the author of four poetry collections including Tell Me, A National Book Award Finalist. Her fifth collection, Lucifer at the Starlite, will be published in October 2009. Her first novel, Little Beauties was chosen as "Best Book of the Month" by Book of the Month Club. My Dreams Out in the Street, her second novel, was released in 2007. She also has a word/music CD with poet Susan Browne, "Swearing, Smoking, Drinking, & Kissing,"; a book of stories, In the Box Called Pleasure; and the anthology Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos, coedited with Cheryl Dumesnil. Addonizio's awards include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship,a Pushcart Prize, a Commonwealth Club Poetry Medal, and the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared widely in anthologies, literary journals, and textbooks, including Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, Bad Girls, Chick-Lit, Dick for a Day, Gettysburg Review, Paris Review, Penthouse, Poetry, and Threepenny Review. She teaches private workshops in Oakland, CA, and online.

Official Website: http://www.booksmith.com