Reading followed by Brief Q&A

Ananda Lima builds on her volume of poems, Mother/Land with Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil. Its framework: one night at a party, a writer meets the devil; throughout her life she meets him again, writing stories for him about things that are both impossible and true. Spanning the United States and Brazil, these stories are in turns surreal, featuring bite-size Americans in vending machines and ghosts of people who aren't dead, and unflinchingly realistic, speaking to the modern Brazilian-American immigrant's experience of ambition, fear, longing and belonging. Craft reveals the porousness of storytelling and of the places we call home. 

"Propulsive, uncanny, and expertly built, Craft unearths truths about fiction writing, the contemporary immigrant experience, and what it means to live a life of art, all in the clean, marvelous prose of a decorated poet." —Julia Fine, author of What Should Be Wild

Roger Reeves’ poetry consistently garners major national awards, but his most recent publication is a work of nonfiction titled Dark Days: Fugitive Essays. Moving fluidly from literary analysis (turning and returning to Toni Morrison, T.S. Eliot, and Zora Neal Hurston, among others) to family history and cultural critique back to literary analysis and beyond, Reeves' essays find new meaning in silence, protest, fugitivity, freedom, and ecstasy. 

"Pro tip: partake of the brilliance of Roger Reeves. Among other marvels, the essays in Dark Days challenge silences and attempted erasures with acuity, with eloquence, with a thunderous beating heart." —Mitchell S. Jackson, author of Fly