>From our November salon presenter<br><b>Elizabeth Metzger</b> !!! <div><br></div><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Happy New Year! </span></font></div><div><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></font></div><div><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">I'm writing to you to announce the
start of a new quarterly Los Angeles reading series event with local and
visiting poets, which I believe will be of interest to your students
and your larger campus community. </span></font></div><div><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></font></div><div><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">The
event,
“The Long Freeway: Poets Read Los Angeles,” will be co-hosted by me and
L. A. Johnson, both of us Los Angeles-based poets, and held at
Chevalier's Books, centrally located in Larchmont Village. The event is
free and open to the public and will last about 60-90 minutes and will
include poetry readings from each poet, a Q&A, and an opportunity
for books to be signed. The first event includes Morgan Parker, Natalie
Shapero, Dean Rader, Kien Lam, and Prageeta Sharma. See their bios here
as well as an attached flyer to distribute to any poetry/creative
writing listserv for undergraduates and graduate students:</span></font></div><div><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></font></div><div><div><div><div dir="ltr"><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><b><span style="color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-repeat:initial">Morgan Parker</span></b><span style="color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-repeat:initial"> is the author of <i>Who Put This Song On?</i>, a young adult novel; and the poetry collections <i>Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night</i>, <i>There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé,</i> and <i>Magical Negro</i>, which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. Her debut collection of nonfiction,<i>You Get What You Pay For</i>, will be released in March (and is now available for preorder from your favorite local bookshop).</span></span></font></div><div dir="ltr"><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><span style="color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-repeat:initial"><br></span></span></font></div><div dir="ltr"><div><font style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:arial,sans-serif" size="2" color="#000000"><span><b>Natalie Shapero</b> is a writer whose work has appeared in </span><i>The New Yorker</i><span>, </span><i>The New York Times Magazine, The London Review of Books,</i><span> </span><i>The New York Review of Books</i><span>,<span> </span></span><i>The Paris Review</i><span>, </span><i>The Nation</i><span>, and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry collections </span><i>Popular Longing </i><span>(2021), </span><i>Hard Child </i><span>(2017), and </span><i>No Object<span> </span></i><span>(2013),
and she has performed at The Pulitzer Arts Foundation, The Poetry
Project at St. Mark’s, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles and
teaches at UC Irvine. </span></font></div><div><font style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);font-family:arial,sans-serif" size="2" color="#000000"><span><br></span></font></div></div><div dir="ltr"><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in"><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><b>Dean Rader</b> has
authored or co-edited twelve books, including the poetry collection <i>Self-Portrait
as Wikipedia Entry </i>and <i>Works & Days, </i>which won the T. S. Eliot
Prize. <i>Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly, </i>appeared
in 2023 from Copper Canyon. <span style="color:black">He is a professor at the
University of San Francisco and a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry. <br></span></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in"><font size="2"><span style="color:black;font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></font></p><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><b>Kien Lam</b> is the author of “Extinction Theory,” winner of
the 2021 National Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press). He
received his MFA from Indiana University and is the Kundiman SoCal
co-chair. Poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, The Nation,
and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles where he is currently working on a
novel.<br></span></font></div><div dir="ltr"><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></font></div></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in"></p></div></div><div dir="ltr"><font size="2"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif"><b>Prageeta Sharma </b>is the author of five poetry collections, most recently <i>Grief Sequence</i> (Wave, 2019), a narrative reflection on grief over the loss of a loved one;
<i>Undergloom</i> (Fence, 2013); and <i>Infamous Landscapes</i> (Fence,
2007). She is the founder of the conference Thinking Its Presence: An
Interdisciplinary Conference on Race, Creative Writing, and Artistic and
Aesthetic Practices. A recipient of the 2010
Howard Foundation Award and a finalist for the Poetry Society of
America’s 2020 Four Quartets Prize, she has taught at the New School for
Social Research, Goddard College, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the
University of Montana-Missoula, and is now the Henry
G. Lee ’37 professor of English at Pomona College.</span></font></div><div dir="ltr"><font size="2"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></font></div></div></div></div><div><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">We
would love to see your students or other campus members attend! Feel
free to email us with any questions. </span></font></div><div><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></font></div><div><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Warmest, </span></font></div><div><font size="2"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Elizabeth and Liz</span></font></div></div></div>
<br></div><br><br>-- <br><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><div><font face="georgia, serif"><i>Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, </i></font><i style="font-family:georgia,serif">Distinguished Professor of </i><i style="font-family:georgia,serif">Creative Writing</i></div><div><div><font face="georgia, serif">**She/her & </font><span style="font-family:georgia,serif">Surname is Hedge Coke, no hyphen**</span></div></div><div><font face="georgia, serif" size="1"><i><br></i></font></div><div><div style="font-family:georgia,serif"><i> Weird Times, Be Kind</i></div><div style="font-family:georgia,serif"><i><br></i></div><div style="font-family:georgia,serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)"><a href="https://profiles.ucr.edu/app/home/profile/allisonh" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Allison Adelle Hedge Coke</a></div></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><div dir="ltr"><font face="georgia, serif" style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><i><div><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">Director, </span><a href="http://writersweek.ucr.edu/" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Writers Week 2021, 2022</a><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">, Co-Director in Spring 2023 </span><br></div><div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">Director, Medical Health and Humanities DE, UCR School of Medicine</div></i></font><div><i style="font-family:georgia,serif">Director, </i><font face="georgia, serif"><i>Along the Chaparral, Sandhill Crane Fest</i></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><i>Department of Society, Environment, and Health Equity (SEHE), affiliated faculty</i></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><i>Summer sessions are anticipated, check Banner classes for offerings</i></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><i><br></i></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><i>author/editor of 18 books–m</i></font><i style="font-family:georgia,serif"><font color="#222222">ost recent release, a National Book Award Finalist, winner of an Emory Elliot Book Award, Finalist for the Firecracker Award and ASLE Book Award</font></i><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"> </span></div><font face="georgia, serif"><div><i style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><a href="https://coffeehousepress.org/collections/shop/products/look-at-this-blue" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">Look at This Blue </a></i></div><div><br></div><div><a href="mailto:allisonh@ucr.edu" target="_blank">allisonh@ucr.edu</a></div><div><a href="mailto:allisonh@medsch.ucr.edu" target="_blank">allisonh@medsch.ucr.edu</a></div></font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font face="georgia, serif">(909) 848-3803 messages - VM/text</font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br>