Rhapsodomancy Reading Series with Carol Potter, Nan Cohen and more June 5, 2005

Sunday, June 5, 2005

Doors open at 7:00 - Reading begins at 7:15pm
The Good Luck Bar, 1514 Hillhurst Ave., Los Angeles (east Hollywood/Silver Lake: corner of Hollywood & Hillhurst)
Email for directions/info: [email protected]
RSVP at [email protected]
$3 suggested donation: part of the proceeds will benefit an organization to be determined.
There will be a cash bar.

Questions or more info: [email protected] or http://rhapsodomancy.typepad.com

About the poets:

Armine Iknadossian lives in Pasadena, California and teaches high school English. She is a student at Antioch University?s MFA program in Creative Writing and has been published in Pasadena City College's Inscape arts journal, UCLA?s Wisteria poetry journal and California State University Northridge?s Edges poetry journal. For three years, she was a member ofThe Women's Poetry Project of Los Angeles led by Terry Wolverton. In 2001, her prose poem, ?March Eulogy,? was chosen to be published by the City of Los Angeles on free postcard racks around the city. She is currently working on a series of poems that explore the physical and emotional effects of migration.

June Melby grew up on a 1950?s era hand-built miniature golf course in Wisconsin that her parents owned for thirty years. Her poetry and whimsical music have been featured by National Public Radio, the UCLA Hammer Museum, the Seattle Bumbershoot Arts Festival, as well as poetry festivals in Bristol and Paddington, England; Munich and Hamburg, Germany. She was the winner of the 2002 Children?s Poetry Competition in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her book of poetry, Tub Toys, was published both in the U.S. and in Germany (UBooks, 2003; and FarStarFire Press, 2002) and she is published in numerous anthologies including Vokalpatrioten, (Germany 2004); Dustup, (Dust-Up, 2004); So Luminous the Wildflowers: An Anthology of California Poets (Tebot Bach 2003), as well as the LA Weekly. She was the recipient of a 2003 City of Hamburg Artist Fellowship and one-month residency in Hamburg, Germany. In 2002 she recorded a full-length cd of her music and poetry with her band, ?June Melby and Her Future Enemies.? This and her latest cd, ?Orange You June? (2005) are available on her website www.junemelby.com. Also, she knows how to make cotton candy better than most anyone.

Nan Cohen's first book of poems is Rope Bridge (Cherry Grove Collections, 2005). She has been the recipient of an NEA Literature Fellowship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. She was shortlisted for this year's Koret Young Writer on Jewish Themes Award. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, Tikkun, and other magazines and anthologies. She lives in Van Nuys and is the poetry director of the Napa Valley Writers' Conference.

Carol Potter's third book of poems, Short History of Pets, won the 1999 Cleveland State University Poetry Center award, and the Balcones Prize from Austin Community College, Austin, Texas. Most recently, she won the dA center for the Arts Poetry Award. Her latest book, Otherwise Obedient, will be published by Red Hen Press in December 2005. Her previous books are Before We Were Born (1990), and Upside Down in the Dark (1995) from Alice James Books. Her poems have appeared in Pushcart XXVI, Poetry Magazine, Field, The Massachusetts Review, The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, The Women's Review of Books, Prairie Schooner, and many other journals. Other awards include: The Pushcart Prize, The Tom McAfee Discovery Award from The Missouri Review (1986), the New Letters Award for Poetry (1990), and three time finalist for Massachusetts Cultural Council awards. She has been awarded residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Fundacion Valparaiso, Villa Montalvo, Centrum and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Currently her poems are forthcoming from Maize, The Journal, and Arts & Letters. Of Short History of Pets, Naomi Shihab Nye wrote: "Short History of Pets is a knock-out punch from the get-go. With captivating power, it reminds us that what claims or appears to be short may also be profound, deep and enduring. Carol Potter writes with a magnetically potent instinct for pacing and a stunning originality of style." Potter was Writer-in-Residence at the Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio, in April 2003, and was the Visiting Poet in the MFA program at Indiana University in 2003-2004.