Lit Balm Founders' Reading with John Yau, Elaine Equi, and Jerome Sala

This Saturday July 4 at 5:00 EST: Founders' Reading - Marc Vincenz, Jonathan Penton and I will read, as well as special guests John Yau, Elaine Equi, and Jerome Sala! Be sure to check it out, either in the Zoom room or Facebook Live!
https://www.facebook.com/events/744556266363891/

Every Saturday at 5pm US East Coast Time

Join our Zoom meeting

Join us on Facebook

See our archives on YouTube

LIT BALM FOUNDERS CELEBRATE NEW AMERICAN WRITING

LIT BALM presents a special reading celebrating issue 38 of New American Writing with readings by Paul Hoover, Maria Baranda (Mexico). Alexandria Peary plus open mic this Sat May 30 at 5:00 pm! The Lit Balm founders Marc Vincenz of MadHat, Jonathan Penton of Unlikely Stories and emcee Larissa Shmailo of the Feminist Poets in Low Cut Blouses.will also read. Be sure to join us!
Every Saturday at 5:00 pm EST.
Zoom https://us04web.zoom.us/j/461603228
Livestream at https://www.facebook.com/LitBalm
Website: www.litbalm.org
YouTube: LIT BALM

AMY KING, KEVIN GALLAGHER, JOANNA SOLFRIAN AT LIT BALM MAY 23

LIT BALM is thrilled to present Amy King, Kevin Gallagher, and Joanna Solfrian plus open mic this Sat May 23 at 5:00 pm! Be sure to join us! Our question for this reading is "Which books would you take to a desert island?"
LIT BALM is a new weekly interactive livestream reading series brought to you by Jonathan Penton of Unlikely Stories Mark V and Unlikely Books, Marc Vincenz of MadHat and New American Writing (Magazine), and emcee Larissa Shmailo of the Feminist Poets in Low Cut Blouses.
Every Saturday at 5:00 pm EST.
Zoom https://us04web.zoom.us/j/461603228
Livestream at https://www.facebook.com/LitBalm
Website: www.litbalm.org
YouTube: LIT BALM

LAVENDER, BURNS, AND THE NEW ORLEANS POETRY FESTIVAL AT LIT BALM MAY 16

We have a special show this week Saturday May 16, 5:00 pm East Coast time at LIT BALM - Jonathan Penton will be interviewing Bill Lavender and Megan Burns about the NEW ORLEANS POETRY FESTIVAL and there will be lively NOLA readings, too! Join us!

LIT BALM is a new weekly interactive livestream reading series brought to you by Jonathan Penton of Unlikely Stories Mark V and Unlikely Books, Marc Vincenz of MadHat and New American Writing (Magazine), and emcee Larissa Shmailo of the Feminist Poets in Low Cut Blouses.
Every Saturday at 5:00 pm EST.
Zoom https://us04web.zoom.us/j/461603228
Livestream at https://www.facebook.com/LitBalm
Website: www.litbalm.org

SVOBODA, FINKELSTEIN, AND BICHER AT LIT BALM MAY 9

LIT BALM is thrilled to present Terese Svoboda, Kristina Andersson Bicher, and special guest Norman Finkelstein plus open mic! Our question for this reading is "What are you reading?"
LIT BALM is a new weekly interactive livestream reading series brought to you by Jonathan Penton of Unlikely Stories Mark V and Unlikely Books, Marc Vincenz of MadHat and New American Writing (Magazine), and emcee Larissa Shmailo of the Feminist Poets in Low Cut Blouses.
Every Saturday at 5:00 pm EST.
Zoom https://us04web.zoom.us/j/461603228
Livestream at https://www.facebook.com/LitBalm
Website: www.litbalm.org

LIT BALM - An Interative Livestream Reading Series

LIT BALM is a new weekly interactive livestream reading series brought to you by Jonathan Penton of Unlikely Stories Mark V and Unlikely Books, Marc Vincenz of MadHat and New American Writing (Magazine), and Larissa Shmailo of the Feminist Poets in Low Cut Blouses. This Saturday April 4 at 5:00 pm East Coast Time expect great writing, panels, special guests, chat, open mikes and YOU! Join the fun at https://us04web.zoom.us/j/949509843

AWP PORTLAND EVENTS

Please add my events to your AWP schedule! Both happen Thursday, March 28.

12:00 pm to 1:15 pm
Portland Ballroom 256, Oregon Convention Center, Level 2	R214. The Critical Creative: The Editor-Poet. (Marc Vincenz, Larissa Shmailo, Michael Anania, Amy King, Kwame Dawes) This panel will offer an insiders' look into poetry editorship and publication from poets who edit prominent journals and presses. How do these tandem roles, poet and editor, influence one another? Do they detract from or enhance poetry publishing? Does the critical mind impede the creative mind or strengthen it? How? Are certain poetic schools favored? Where does preference end and narrowness begin? Panelists will offer real-life anecdotes and insights on poetry selection and editing.  Check here to add to my schedule
1:30 pm to 2:45 pm
B116, Oregon Convention Center, Level 1	R223. Hybrid Sex Writing: What's Your Position?. (Larissa Shmailo, Jonathan Penton, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Cecilia Tan, Erica Jong) In The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault argues that sex was not repressed in past centuries, but codified. How does contemporary hybrid sex writing crack these codes? Is there a relationship between gender politics and hybrid writing? How does hybrid writing give voice to marginalized gender identities? What is hybrid ecstasy? Is there a special connection between transgressive sex and hybrid writing? Panelists will discuss these questions with a focus on 21st-century writers.

READ AN EXCERPT FROM SLY BANG!

Thanks to Jonathan Penton of Unlikely Stories for publishing this excerpt from my novel, SLY BANG! You can purchase a copy from Amazon or from my publisher, Spuyten Duyvil, HERE 

READ SLY BANG HERE!!!

AWP 2019 PORTLAND PANELS

Here are my two back-to-back panels for AWP 2019 in Portland!
Thrilled to be presenting with the likes of Erica Jong, Amy King, Cecilia Tan, Kwame Dawes, Michael Anania, Marc Vincenz, Thaddeus Rutkowski, and Jonathan Penton!

Thursday, March 28, 2019
12:00 pm to 1:15 pm
Portland Ballroom 256, Oregon Convention Center, Level 2

R214. The Critical Creative: The Editor-Poet. (Marc Vincenz, Larissa Shmailo, Michael Anania, Amy King, Kwame Dawes) This panel will offer an insiders' look into poetry editorship and publication from poets who edit prominent journals and presses. How do these tandem roles, poet and editor, influence one another? Do they detract from or enhance poetry publishing? Does the critical mind impede the creative mind or strengthen it? How? Are certain poetic schools favored? Where does preference end and narrowness begin? Panelists will offer real-life anecdotes and insights on poetry selection and editing.

1:30 pm to 2:45 pm
B116, Oregon Convention Center, Level 1

R223. Hybrid Sex Writing: What's Your Position?. (Larissa Shmailo, Jonathan Penton, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Cecilia Tan, Erica Jong) In The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault argues that sex was not repressed in past centuries, but codified. How does contemporary hybrid sex writing crack these codes? Is there a relationship between gender politics and hybrid writing? How does hybrid writing give voice to marginalized gender identities? What is hybrid ecstasy? Is there a special connection between transgressive sex and hybrid writing? Panelists will discuss these questions with a focus on 21st-century writers.

TWO AWP PROPOSALS ACCEPTED FOR PORTLAND 2019!!!!

Spectacular news! Two AWP proposals I am participating in have been accepted for the 2019 Portland Conference! So thrilled to be moderating "Hybrid Sex Writing: What's Your Position?" with panelists Cecilia Tan, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Jonathan Penton, and extra-amazing special guest Erica Jong!!!!! I am also event organizer and panelist for "The Critical Creative: The Editor-Poet" with our brilliant moderator Marc Vincenz and wonderful panelists Amy King, Kwame Dawes, and Michael Anania! What incredible colleagues and what great panels! Looking forward to a brilliant literary spring in 2019!

Blow-by-Blow: My Beating as a Psychiatric Patient at Mount Sinai Hospital

Thanks to Jonathan Penton and Unlikely Stories Mark V for publishing this piece..http://www.unlikelystories.org/content/blow-by-blow

 2014, October, close to Halloween: A brain-shaking blow to my left-temple, then one to my right.

It was a bad episode, unexpected; I hadn’t been in a hospital for bipolar disorder since 1997. The last thing I remember before coming to at Mount Sinai was lying on my belly on the floor of my bedroom, surrounded by five cops, enormous from my vantage point. They talked among themselves and on their radios, ignoring me. Finally, they cuffed me behind my back; I begged them to tell me what I had done, but I was not worth a word.

I don’t remember my first two days at Mount Sinai; when I did come to, they were giving me Haldol, which gave me horrible dyskinesia, an unbearable restlessness in the legs, arms, and mouth. I did not realize that the incorrect medication was the cause of my discomfort; I thought this was part of my episode, and didn’t tell the doctors as they rushed by, trying to avoid the patients.

How did I get into the empty room with the orderly?

It was night. He led me into the room. He told me to sit down on the bed. He then drew his arm back and gave me two powerful, calculated blows with the palm of his hand against my temples, first left, then right. Something practiced about the beating, as though he knew this would leave no marks, only unconsciousness or concussion. I remained conscious. I saw a thick jagged scar on the length of his arm, from inches below his armpit to inches below the elbow crease, stitched broadly.

“Lie down,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I quietly replied. He left, and I lay my head on a bare pillow, and wished, willed myself to die.

I would see the orderly often on the ward. I had no clothing and the hospital uniform stretched in embarrassing gaps across my obese form. And the Haldol was causing horrible twitching, a torture of restless limbs. Could I have imagined the beating? No.

I approached a nurse to ask his name. Before I could say a word, she exclaimed, “You are not the same person that came in! You were horrible.”

This is your fault, the staff seemed to say; not sick, murmured the walls, bad. What was his name? I was afraid to ask.

He took my blood pressure, even gave me meds. “You were horrible, inhuman, bad,” his co-workers said. Yes, people like you should be beaten, thrown to the floor, cuffed. We are saints who love the damaged like you.

Indeed, I was subhuman in my uniform and with my twitching limbs. I did something to the orderly, that was it! I finally got the courage to ask him.

“You spilt on my shirt.”

Oh.

Emboldened, I asked him about the scar. He laughed wildly and said he was crazy when young. From Queens or Qatar? What planet do such men come from?

A few days later on the ward, a senior psychiatrist who knew I was a writer asked me to speak to her students about Otto Kernberg’s borderline personality diagnosis, ordinarily a favorite subject of mine. “They don’t know,” she said, pointing to the residents.

I haltingly tried to describe Kernberg’s theory of introjects in the borderline personality, cornerstone of that useless and damning label; all the “borderline” needs to do is to treat her addictions, food, drugs, sex, codependence, and the “instability” and “psychotic episodes” disappear. But I was too conscious of my ill-fitting uniform, and mumbled an excuse; the residents were deprived of their show, the patient who has read psychology.

When I was released, I related the events surrounding my beating to two therapists at the Karen Horney Clinic, later, to two residents at Payne Whitney. They stared into space, smiled, changed the subject. Because I am mentally ill, I don’t have perceptions, sensations, memories. More, their silence seemed to say, because I am mentally ill I can be abused, beaten with impunity, and my caregivers don’t have to care. I must have medication and this treatment is paid for by my insurance, so I let it go. But it comes back, often.

I have tried to forget this episode, go along with the clinicians who ignore a patient being beaten, and cannot. Fat and mentally ill, I have evoked new heights of condescension from mental health workers who find it easier to talk of mechanics, medication up or down, calories to consume. Meanwhile, Long Scar and his ilk continue to offer their “treatments” in mental hospitals everywhere. Some have said, and will continue to say, that people like me had it coming. All I can do is breathe, rest, and speak my truth until someone listens.

New at HOWL (Humanities Opposition World League)

See the HOWL (Humanities Opposition World League) blog for poetry by Rachel Hadas and Annie Finch, performance videos of Anne Waldman, a new translation of Anna Akhmatova's Requiem by Alexander Cigale, and an address to El Dorado by Jonathan Penton! CLICK TO READ HERE! 

"Lager NYC" - rage against the alt right

Thanks to editor Jonathan Penton. Text and audio of "Lager NYC" here:

http://www.unlikelystories.org/content/lager-nyc

You Want Unlikely Stories

Support Unlikely Stories on Patreon and get the absolute coolest prizes. Plus cutting edge lit.
https://www.patreon.com/unlikelystories

My poems, The Trick Wants to Go to Plato's and Bhakti, in Unlikely Stories Mark V

Pleased to have poetry in this brilliant new issue of Unlikely Stories Mark V. Thanks to editor Jonathan Penton!

Read here:
The Trick Wants to Go to Plato's and Bhakti

Unlikely Stories Tribute Issue for Michelle Greenblatt

Unlikely Stories: Episode IV and Unlikely Books present DEVORAH: a tribute to Michelle Greenblatt, Editor and Friend, at http://www.unlikelystories.org/
We are grateful for the opportunity to remember Michelle with the contributors to this volume: Reed Alteums, Glen Armstrong, Lana Bella (Nia Nguyễn), John M. Bennett, Alexandria Bryan, Charles J. Butler, Wendy Taylor Carlisle, Vincent Cellucci, Joel Chace, Kimberly Rae Lorenz-Copeland, Maria Damon, Bryson Dean Gautier, Vernon Frazer, Alan Fyfe, Larry Goodell, Win Harms, mark hartenbach, Stephen Harrison, Carolyn Hembree, Cindy Sostchen-Hochman, Steffen Horstmann, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Dylan Krieger, Brian Kovich, Donna Kuhn, Jim Leftwich, Louise Landes Levi, James Lineberger, Dennis Mahagin, Peter Marra, Frankie Met, Alexis Moon (Alexis Phillips), MOO - Monika Mori, Sheila Murphy, Jay Passer, Annie Pluto, Marthe Reed, Gabriel Ricard, Alison Clockwise Cat Ross, Bernd Sauermann, Christopher Shipman, Larissa Shmailo, Jeffrey Side, Jay Sizemore, Felino A. Soriano, Jamie Stoneman, Ray Succre, Yuriy Tarnawsky, and Marc Vincenz.
DEVORAH was edited by Jonathan Penton, K.R. Copeland, Vernon Frazer, and Justin Herrmann.

A vid of my New Orleans reading on the Unlikely Saints tour

Reading in my red New Orleans hat!

Southern Love

We just finished the fourth leg of our Unlikely Saints tour of Southern Louisiana, with shows in New Orleans, Baton Rouge. Lafayette, and Grand Coteau. What an experience! The poetry, the music, the dancing, the food, and most of all, the people! Thanks to Jonathan Penton for organizing this mindblowing word trip! I'll be back for more crawfish, zydeco dancing, and southern love soon!

Countdown to Louisiana!

Dear Louisiana friends, I am so excited to be visiting the legendary cities of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette for the very first time. I'll be reading from my books In Paran, #specialcharacters, and my new novel, Patient Women. I hope to see you at my readings there!

 

Tuesday, November 3, 7pm-9pm

Elevator Projects

451 Florida St., Suite 102, Baton Rouge

(in the downtown Chase building)

No cover, wine provided

Readers include Xander Bilyk (New Orleans), Wendy Taylor Carlisle (Eureka Springs, AR), Michael Harold (Shreveport), Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson (Lafayette), Dylan Krieger (Baton Rouge), and Larissa Shmailo (NYC)

Thursday, November 5, 6pm sharp-8pm sharp:

Crescent City Books

230 Chartres St., New Orleans

No cover, wine provided

Readers include Wendy Taylor Carlisle (Eureka Springs, AR), Michael Harold (Shreveport), Carolyn Hembree (New Orleans), Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson (Lafayette), Christopher Shipman (New Orleans), and Larissa Shmailo (NYC)

Friday, November 6, 7:30 pm-9:30pm

The Ballet Académie

200 Polk St., Lafayette

No cover, wine provided

Readers include Wendy Taylor Carlisle (Eureka Springs, AR), Michael Harold (Shreveport), Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson (Lafayette), Dylan Krieger (Baton Rouge), Larissa Shmailo (NYC), and John Warner Smith (Baton Rouge)

Readings in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette in November

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“UNLIKELY SAINTS”

Literary events in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette

Supporting the Festival of Words, Lyrically Inclined, and Unlikely Books

                                                CONTACT:    Jonathan Penton

                                                                        (337) 207-8713

                                                                        jonathan@unlikelystories.org

 In the first week of November, 2015, south Louisiana publisher Unlikely Books will join with Lafayette’s premiere open-mic-and-slam series, Lyrically Inclined, and the Festival of Words in Grand Coteau in a celebration of the literature produced by and available to south Louisiana readers. Six writers from south Louisiana will join Larissa Shmailo of New York City, Michael Harold of Shreveport, and Wendy Taylor Carlisle of Eureka Springs, AR in a series of three literary events featuring diverse backgrounds, styles, and literary themes.

The events are called the “Unlikely Saints” tour, mimicking a similar tour in November 2011. Flyers and publicity photo attached.

Tuesday, November 3, 7pm-9pm

Elevator Projects

451 Florida St., Suite 102, Baton Rouge

(in the downtown Chase building)

No cover, wine provided

Readers include Xander Bilyk (New Orleans), Wendy Taylor Carlisle (Eureka Springs, AR), Michael Harold (Shreveport), Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson (Lafayette), Dylan Krieger (Baton Rouge), and Larissa Shmailo (NYC)

Thursday, November 5, 6pm sharp-8pm sharp:

Crescent City Books

230 Chartres St., New Orleans

No cover, wine provided

Readers include Wendy Taylor Carlisle (Eureka Springs, AR), Michael Harold (Shreveport), Carolyn Hembree (New Orleans), Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson (Lafayette), Christopher Shipman (New Orleans), and Larissa Shmailo (NYC)

Friday, November 6, 7:30 pm-9:30pm

The Ballet Académie

200 Polk St., Lafayette

No cover, wine provided

Readers include Wendy Taylor Carlisle (Eureka Springs, AR), Michael Harold (Shreveport), Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson (Lafayette), Dylan Krieger (Baton Rouge), Larissa Shmailo (NYC), and John Warner Smith (Baton Rouge)