February 21st Readings (It Is Going to Be So Great)

Blake Butler is the author of Ever (Calamari Press 01/09) and Scorch Atlas (Featherproof Books 09/09). Brian Evenson calls Ever "a strange, visionary ontological dismemberment that takes you well beyond what you'd ever expect." Blake Butler's work has appeared in Fence, Willow Springs, Ninth Letter, Unsaid, and etc. He edits No Colony and HTMLGiant, lives in Atlanta, and blogs at blakebutler.blogspot.com.

Shane Jones was born in Albany, New York, the first child of Marcia and Dennis Jones. Educated at Buffalo University, he studied with Robert Creeley, Charles Bernstein and Susan Howe. He is the author of the short collections Maybe Tomorrow and I Will Unfold You With My Hairy Hands. Work has appeared widely online and in print. Of his first novel, Deb Olin Unferth said his "imaginative voice is like some winged thing . . . Light Boxes is a beautiful, heartful work."

Rahne Alexander is a writer and a multimedia artist from Baltimore. She is the vocalist and songwriter for the all-girl garage rock trio, The Degenerettes; she is also a producer of the Charm City Kitty Club, Baltimore's long-running queer cabaret. Rahne is a frequent contributor to City Paper and Smile Hon, You're In Baltimore and her award-winning films have screened in festivals across the US. www.rahne.com

Kathleen Rooney is the editor of Rose Metal Press and the author of the nonfiction books, Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object and Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America, as well as the poetry collections Oneiromance (an epithalamion) (Switchback Books, 2008), Something Really Wonderful, and That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (the latter two written collaboratively with Elisa Gabbert). Her essay Live Nude Girl appeared in the anthology Twentysomething Essays for Twentysomething Writers, and other essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Sycamore Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and Gettysburg Review.

Kyle Minor is the author of In the Devil's Territory, a collection of short fiction just out from Dzanc, and co-editor of The Other Chekhov, an anthology of Anton Chekhov's lesser-known and more lurid stories. His recent work appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2008, The Southern Review, and Random House's Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers. A Florida native, he now lives in Ohio, where he is at work on a novel and a nonfiction account of a kidnapping in Haiti.

You do not want to miss this reading.