ČERVENÁ BARVA PRESS NEWSLETTER

WHAT'S NEW

Poetry chapbooks forthcoming:

Fishing in Green Waters by Judy Ray

Bilingual Poems by Richard Kostelanetz

Fiction chapbook forthcoming:

Out Of The Arcadian Ghetto by Ian Randall Wilson

There are more chapbooks forthcoming. I'm waiting on their manuscripts.
2006 is going to be a great year in publishing and very exciting!

A sneak peak at 2007:

A book by poet CL Bledsoe
Two plays by Michael Nash

CHECK IT OUT

Check out William James Austin's new issue of BLACKBOX. I am so excited about having two poems in this issue. I want my poems to be read! The writers and art work in this issue are wonderful. I am so happy to be among them.

http://www.williamjamesaustin.com/blackbox.html

INTERVIEW WITH SUSAN TEPPER

GIVE A BIO ABOUT YOURSELF

I came to writing through the back doors of acting and music. In my early teens I began devouring the plays of Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams, just blown away by what those guys had to say. I was growing up on Long Island, sandwiched between New York City and a farm. Close to our house there was a working dairy farm where I spent a lot of my free time with cows, feeding them potatoes, learning to hand-milk. So here was this suburban kid hanging at the farm, who went home for supper then read "The Great God Brown" before bedtime. Mixing things up a bit, I think, but ultimately in a good way. Then somewhere down the line I made up my mind to become an actress, and hit the city running, earning a scholarship at Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop and becoming part of that repertory company. I've probably studied just about every acting method with all the great actor/teachers. In the eighties I did a stint at Actors Studio. Music came into the mix. I was the proverbial "girl singer" in a slew of bands, doing country, folk and rock music. So for many years it was "other people's words" that consumed me.

DESCRIBE THE ROOM YOU WRITE IN

Fiction I mostly write in a cramped upstairs room of my house, though I can begin a story just about anywhere. Piles of writing are scattered throughout the house. Poems I write on the porch, the dining room table, wherever. I've made my writing room look kind of French, sort of La Boheme but pretty. The ceiling slopes and the walls have been papered a soft blue-gray with all these tiny roses bunched together. Two narrow windows have awning-striped valances above distressed window shutters. Several paintings I love hang in that room. One is by a deceased relative, the artist Marjorie Kuhr. It was painted in Denmark during World War II, from the inside of her dining room, and shows a river viewed through her window, and the German gunboat that patrolled every day while she lived there waiting out the war. Another painting, by the expressionist artist Marco Celotti, is of a room not unlike my writing room, but more dreamlike. I like things old, or at least to look old. A threadbare Persian rug someone once gave me covers most of the floor, it's very beautiful, the rug, and getting more worn out where my writing chair rolls back and forth.

WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW?

Because I write full-time now, both fiction and poetry nearly every day, I guess it's fair to say I'm working on both. There's this story I'm doing about a country doctor, and I try to write a poem a day. When the poem is finished, I send it by e-mail to my close friend and mentor, the incredible poet Simon Perchik. He's very gentle. He'll say things like: you could lose the "and" in line 8; or why not lose line 8 altogether, it slows down the poem. Small stuff like that. Getting to know Simon, having him as my friend - well there are simply no words to convey what this means to me. I believe him to be the most talented lyric poet working in the English language today. And yet Si is one of the most regular guys you could ever meet! My husband, Miles, a burgeoning poet, has also become a great pal of Si's.

YOU WRITE BOTH FICTION AND POETRY, DID YOU START BOTH AT THE SAME TIME?

About twenty years ago, on the Garden State Parkway, I pulled onto the shoulder of the road, stopped the car and wrote my first poem. It was just banging in my head to come out! I still like that poem, it's called Gypsies. After that, I didn't write another poem for a decade. About twelve years ago a little voice began to whisper in my head: write that story. What story? What story? I kept asking the voice all that long hot summer. Toward the end of that August, I wrote my first short story. The poems started coming a few years later.

TALK ABOUT THE NOVEL YOU ARE WRITING

I've completed two novels and around seventy short stories. I just did a big revision on one of the novels, it just went back to the publisher. I hope they like the changes. It would be nice to see one of my novels in print before I'm a very old woman! The two books are quite different in setting and scope, though thematically, well, perhaps there are similarities. The first book is set at the Jersey shore, post-Vietnam circa 1976, and is the story of a family reduced by painful circumstance (the Vietnam war) from four to three, yet the missing person (the husband/father) is still very much alive, his haunting presence felt right to the story's end. I wrote the second novel approximately five years after the first. It's about fraternal twins, and identity; how a violent action creates loss, and how one twin must cope with the loss of the other; that whole twin thing that can run very deep. Loss. Definitely one of my themes. It's been said that we write our themes over and over. I also write "triangle relationships", of which I was unaware. The poet Michael Graves pointed that out, after I'd read a number of stories in his Phoenix Reading Series. Was I ever surprised!

HOW DO YOU FIND INSPIRATION FOR WRITING?

I don't like "thinking" about my work, I believe if you start thinking while you're writing you will kill off intuition. When I'm done with a piece, I don't analyze it or look for the metaphors. Either the story works or it doesn't. I tell my writing students not to think while they write, just take it moment to moment the way stage actors do. I'm a totally intuitive writer, have never outlined a novel or story, just go by the seat of my pants. I work my fiction the way I do poetry, allowing the images to come forth and create a story. That's where the thrill lies! Writing has to be thrilling, the actual process of doing it. Otherwise, why bother? Beyond the process there can be so much frustration and disappointment in trying to place the work. I tell this to my students, too. The true writers get it, they understand instinctively, don't need to be told. The others just think I'm full of it, but that's okay too.

POETRY READINGS

THE ARLINGTON CENTER FOR THE ARTS FALL 2005 WRITERS AND POETS SERIES:

We are located in the Gibbs Center at 41 Foster Street in Arlington, MA,
Contact us by email: info@acarts.org
by phone : 781-648-6220
Website:  http://www.acarts.org/writerspoets.php

three nights
six poets
a world of inspiration

Next Reading:

Thursday, November 17th, 7:30 p.m.
Cammy Thomas and Michael C. White
Gibbs Gallery, 41 Foster Street, Arlington

JUBILAT /JONES FALL READING SERIES:

Andrew Michael Roberts coordinator for Amherst's Jones Library and Jubilat Reading Series announces the 4th annual jubilat/Jones fall reading series. Readings will take place in the Trustees Room at the Jones Library, 43 Amity Street in Amherst, Massachusetts and will be followed by a Q & A session with both guest poets, then a reception with light refreshments, during which visitors can meet the poets. All readings are free and open to the public.

Sunday, November 6th, 3:00 p.m.
Mary Jo Salter and Rebecca Wolff
Q & A and reception to follow reading

Sunday, December 4th, 3:00 p.m.
Suzanne Buffam and Dan Chiasson
Q & A and reception to follow reading

PORTER SQUARE BOOKS:

25 white St.
Cambridge, MA
617/491-2220

Friday, Nov. 4 7:00 p.m.
Forrest Gander
A Faithful Existence
Poet and essayist (not to mention professor of comparative lit.) Gander presents a collection of essays that pay homage to the landscape of the American South, to snapping turtles and antiparticles, to iconoclastic physicists, and more.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005, 7:00 p.m.
Poetry Reading
Frannie Lindsay and Ellen Steinbaum

Wednesday, Nov. 30, 7:00 p.m.
Poetic Voices Without Borders
Four of the poets (Cathleen Calbert, V. Jane Schneeloch, Victoria Bosch Murray, and H. Susan Freireich) featured in this "edgy" collection of poetry by nearly 150 poets from six continents—and nominated for the 2006 Benjamin Franklin Award for Poetry/Literary Criticism—will read from their works.

WILBRAHAM PUBLIC LIBRARY:

Saturday, November 19, 2:00 p.m.
Wilbraham Public Library, Wilbraham MA
Poetry Reading
Margaret Szumowski, Edwina Trentham, and Sophie Wadsworth

BORDERS BOSTON:

Thursday, NOVEMBER 3rd, 2005 - 6:30 p.m. -FREE
A Tapestry of Voices
Hosted by Harris Gardner
With an OPEN MIC’ to follow
FEATURED POETS :

SARAH GETTY’S second book of poems, Bring Me Her Heart, will be published next March by Higganum HillBooks. Her first book, The Land of Milk and Honey, ( James Dickey Contemporary American Poetry Series) won a Cambridge Poetry Award in 2002. Her poem, “That Woman”, is in Birds in the Hand, an anthology published in 2004 by Farrar, Straus, Giroux. In 2004, she also won The New England Poetry Club’s Barbara Bradley Prize. Her publication credits include The Paris Review,The Eleventh Muse, The Fourth River, Diner, and others. For more information: www.sarahgetty.net.

PRESTON HOOD III’s poems have appeared in Animus, Ciphers (Ireland), Icarus (Ireland), Main Street Rag, Nimrod: International Journal, PoetryMotel, Rattle,The Café Review, The Journal of American Culture, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Salamander, Vietnam War Generation Journal, PEACE IS OUR PROFESSION Anthology, Summer Home Review, Anthology, and many others. He has poems forthcoming in The Endicott Review and 4AM. His CD,Snake Medicine, was recorded and produced in 2002. He recently completed his manuscript :THE CHILL I UNDERSTAND.

IRENE KORONAS has fve chapbooks. Publication credits include on- line poetry venues and zines as well as Free Verse Journal, Boston Poet, Lynx, Lummox Journal, and others. She won the 2003 Cambridge Poetry Award for experimental poetry. Her current chapbook: Confessions in 64 Parts, takes abrupt and often meaningless connections, to tell her love affair with word juxtapositions.

LAMONT B. STEPTOE is the author of ten collections of poetry and the recepient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship. He is this year’s winner of an American Book Award. His recent work can be found in the just published Oxford Anthology of African American Literature edited by Arnold Rampersad, and Longman’s Anthology of African Literature,edited by Keith Gilyard . He has numerous publication credits. Steptoe is a publisher, photographer, poet, father, and Vietnam Veteran.

Borders Boston -Downtown Crossing
Corner of Washington and School Streets

Harris Gardner
Director of Tapestry of Voices
website: http://tapestryofvoices.com

NEW YORK READINGS:

Thursday, November 3, 2005, 7:00 p.m
Academy of American Poets Awards Ceremony
Lang auditorium, New School University
55 W. 13th St. NYC
Free
Readings by award and prize winners: Gerald Stern, Claudia Rankine,
Mary Rose O'Reilley, Barbara Jane Reyes, Daryl Hine, Ann Snodgrass
and the winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize to be announced.

Sunday, November 6, 7:00 p.m.
Poet Michael Graves will host a "group reading"
of Phoenix Series poets & fiction writers
Place is: "Musis Suite Music"
516 West 25th Street
NYC
All are welcome

November 11, Friday, doors 10:00 p.m., show 10:30 p.m.
Thaddeus Rutkowski's book launch party for Tetched
St. Mark's Poetry Project, 131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan.
With guests Hal Sirowitz, Janice Eidus, Cheryl B., Tsaurah Litzky, Amy Ouzoonian.
Hosted by Regie Cabico. $8. Refreshments.
Info: www.poetryproject.org

Thursday, November 17, 2005, 7:00 p.m.

The Academy of American poets presents the fourth annual reading by
members of its distinguished Board of Chancellors.

Robert Hass, Galway Kinnell, Philip Levine, Heather McHugh, others

Poets: C. K. Williams, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Frank Bidart, Galway Kinnell, Heather McHugh, Nathaniel Mackey, Philip Levine, Robert Hass, Susan Howe, Susan Stewart, Yusef Komunyakaa

Proshansky Auditorium, CUNY, 365 Fifth Avenue, at 34th Street, New York, NY
$10, $7 for Academy members

For tickets call 212-817-8215 (reference event #6380).
Cosponsored by The Center for the Humanities, The Graduate Center, CUNY.

Sponsored by Academy of American Poets

Info: 212-274-0343
academy@poets.org
http://www.poets.org

November 20th and December 11th, at 7:00 p.m.

Sunday Salon will be having readings
at Stain Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Hosted by Nita Noveno / Caroline Berger

Our readers in Nov. are:
Rene Vasicek, Tom Beer, James Van Oosting, and Marcy Demansky.

Our readers in Dec. are:
Jackson Taylor, Anne Elliot, Ellis Avery, and Thomas Hopkins.

Their bios and information on the readings can be found at:
www.sundaysalon.com

Stain Bar
766 grand street
Brooklyn, NY 11211

getting there:
Take the L subway line to Grand Street in Brooklyn & walk 1 block west.
Stain Bar is located at 766 Grand Street.

RICHARD KOSTELANEZ shows again
VIDEO POEMS & VIDEO STORIES,

whose content is exclusively kinetic words (edited at the Institute of Electronic Arts at Alfred, NY), on the large projection screen at the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, just north of Houston St, west side of the street, on Sunday 27 November, at 8:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. True to their unprecedented titles, these camera-less syntheses are unlike anything you've seen/read before, as the latest development in my writing for media—audio, video, film, holography, computer, etc. As the 99 parts on each of these DVDs can only be randomly accessed (itself a state-of-the-art innovation), each has no fixed length. The Poems & Stories simply come one after another. I'll feature the POEMS for the first hour and the STORIES for the second hour. As these VIDEO POEMS and VIDEO STORIES have no sound, expect to celebrate SundayAfterThanksgiving with me, each other, and your cellphone favorites. The tapes are free, as am I, but for food and drink the Bowery Poetry Club will extract its customary charges.

Richard Kostelanetz
PO Box 444, Prince St.
New York, NY 10012-0008
website: www.richardkostelanetz.com
art gallery: www.minusspace.com

Dec. 3, Saturday, 2:00-4:00 p.m.
Reading from Thaddeus Rutkowski's chapbook Baby Steps for Sisyphus Press event
Bowery Poetry Club, 308 The Bowery.
With Tom Savag, Jeffrey Wright, James Hoff, and others
Hosted by Steve Dalachinsy and Yuko Otomo. Free.
www.bowerypoetry.com

Dec. 5, Monday, 8:00 p.m.
Smut series, hosted by Desiree Lee Burch
Galapagos Arts Space, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Sunday Jan. 1, 2006, 2:00-p.m.-12 midnight
Alternative New Year's Day Extravaganza
Bowery Poetry Club, 308 The Bowery.
Hosted by Bruce Weber, others. Free.
www.bowerypoetry.com

PHILADELPHIA & PENNSYLVANIA READINGS:

November 6, Sunday, 1:00 p.m.
Book event for Thaddeus Rutkowski's Tetched,
Webster's Bookstore and Cafe
128 South Allen Street, near College Avenue. State College, Pa.
With guests Mish Irish, Jim McElwee, Ann Stewart. Betsy MacBride,
Paul Kellerman, Carol McClure, William Sefchick. Free.
Info: (814) 234-1507

MANAYUNK ART CENTER POETRY AND HUMANITIES SERIES 2005-2006

All Manayunk Art Center (MAC) literary events are on Sundays from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Requested donation fee is $4.00. Refreshments are provided. The MAC is in Philadelphia at 419 Green Lane (rear). Zip code is 19128. Peter Krok is Humanities/Poetry Director of the MAC. His email address is macpoet1@aol.com. MAC Web site address is www.manayunkartcenter.org. The MAC phone number is ( 215) 482-3363. The goal, as E. M. Forster wrote, is "Only Connect." Please contact the MAC if you have any program suggestions.

OHIO READINGS:

Dec. 9, Friday, 8:00 p.m.
The North Water Street Gallery, 259 N. Water St., Kent, Ohio.
Hosted by Maj Ragain.

Dec. 10, Saturday, 7:00 p.m.
Mac's Backs Books on Coventry, 1820 Coventry Road, Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
Free. Info: info@macsbacks.com

VIRGINIA READINGS:

November 17, 2005 6:30 p.m. Reception 7:00 p.m.
Reading and book signing/Book Launch Party
for Luisa Igloria's new poetry book TRILL & MORDENT (WordTech Editions, 2005;
Runnerup, 2004 Editions Poetry Prize; see also www.luisaigloria.com )
Broad Street Books in Ghent
517 W. 21st Street
Norfolk, VA 23517517 W.
Tel: 757-622-2468
Fax: 757-622-2493
broadstreetbooks@aol.com
Contact: SUSIE WEAVER (proprietor)

November 19, 2005, 12 noon
Luisa Igloria and her new book TRILL & MORDENT
will be featured at the LUNCH WITH AUTHORS/AUTHOR TALK
event for the Chesapeake Bay Academy Festival of the Book
Contact Suzette Rashkind, Special Events Coordinator
srashkind@chesapeakebayacademy.net
Chesapeake Bay Academy
821 Baker Road
Virginia Beach, VA 23462
Ph: 757-497-6200, Fax: 757-497-6304

TORONTO AND ONTARIO, CANADA READINGS:

November 17, 2005, 19.00 O'clock (7:00 p.m.)
A Poetry Evening with Flavia Cosma
Organized by ARTA-The Romanian Association
At 33 Bridgeport Road, Waterloo, Ontario
(Focus for Ethnic Women)
For more information contact:
Mirela Banica-President
Mirela.Banica@comdev.ca

Tuesday, November 22, 8:00 p.m.
An Evening of "Poetry in Translation"
Romanian poet Flavia Cosma will read from her work.
Also reading Dae-Tong Huh from S. Korea and Ljerka Lukic from Bosnia.
The Victory Cafe   www.artbar.org/november.htm
581 Markham St.
Toronto, Canada
Flavia Cosma's Website www.flaviacosma.com/