Please join us for our next special reading and conversation with Susan Daitch, Brian Evenson, and Bradford Morrow. RSVP

Susan Daitch is the author of four works of fiction. Her short fiction has been included in The Norton Anthology of Postmodern Fiction, Tin House, Guernica, Bomb, Conjunctions, McSweeney’s, The Brooklyn Rail, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Ploughshares, The Village Voice, and elsewhere. Her work has been the recipient of two Vogelstein awards. Her novel L.C. won an NEA Heritage Award and was a Lannan Foundation Selection. She teaches at Hunter College.

Paper Conspiracies, Susan’s new book from City Lights Publishers

David Cooper’s review of Paper Conspiracies at The New York Journal of Books

Tim Horvath’s review of her story “The Restorer” on Matt Bell’s homepage

Larry McCaffrey’s interview with Susan at Dalkey Archive Press

Brian Evenson is the author of ten books of fiction, most recently the limited edition novella Baby Leg, published by New York Tyrant Press in 2009. In 2009 he also published the novel Last Days (which won the American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel of 2009) and the story collection Fugue State, both of which were on Time Out New York‘s top books of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain (Coffee House Press) was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Slovenian. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University’s Literary Arts Program. Other books include The Wavering Knife (which won the IHG Award for best story collection), Dark Property, and Altmann’s Tongue. He has translated work by Christian Gailly, Jean Frémon, Claro, Jacques Jouet, Eric Chevillard, Antoine Volodine, and others. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes as well as an NEA fellowship.

Contagion and Other Stories has just been reissued by Astrophil Press

Brian’s new translation of Gérard Macé’s The Last of the Egyptians from Burning Deck Press

John Madera’s interview with Brian at Rain Taxi

Ryan Call’s review of Fugue State at The Collagist

Bradford Morrow’s new novel, The Diviner’s Tale, is available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the United States and is out in England with Grove Atlantic (Corvus). His earlier novels are available as e-books from Open Road Media. With David Shields, he co-edited The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death, published by W.W. Norton in February 2011. The Uninnocent, Morrow’s first collection of short stories, has been published by Pegasus Books, and a new novella, The Fall of the Birds, has been released as an e-book by Open Road Media and a Kindle Single by Amazon.com as a Kindle Single. He is completing work on his seventh novel, The Prague Sonata, as well as a book of creative nonfiction works, Meditations on a Shadow. A Bard Center fellow and professor of literature at Bard College, he lives in New York City.

Order The Uninnocent

“Bradford Morrow creates beautifully dark and soulfully intimate stories in his first collection, featuring characters who, though hardly citizens of virtue, reveal their true colors with little remorse. Morrow’s stories are hauntingly honest and linger in the consciousness.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred Pick of the Week)

Gabriel Blackwell’s review of The Diviner’s Tale

Stephen O’Connor’s interview with Bradford at HTML Giant

Also, on January 24th  Bradford Morrow, Brian Evenson, and Susan Daitch will be reading. After that the series will be going to four times a year.

Here is a complete list of our past readers: Christine Schutt, Gary Lutz, John Domini, Claire Donato, Mary Caponegro, Tim Horvath, Nick Ripatrazone, Robin Beth Schaer, Brenda Shaughnessy, Anthony Tognazzini, Paula Bomer, Sasha Fletcher, Amy King, Eugene Lim, Matt Bell, John Madera, Jeff Parker, Amber Sparks, Dawn Raffel, David Peak, Ana Božičević, Edward Mullany, Janice Shapiro, Michael Leong, Mike Young, Steve Himmer, Joseph Riippi, Mairéad Byrne, Daniel Groves, Stephanie Barber, Andy Devine, Adam Robinson, Vincent Czyz, Melissa Broder, Stever Himmer, and Josef Horáček.

A very big thank you to all of these past readers and the future ones. You have made and will continue to make the Soda Series a spectacular event!

Please join us for our next special reading and conversation with Roberta Allen, Robin Grearson, John Haskell, and Kirsten Kaschock.

Kirsten Kaschock makes poems, novels, dances, sometimes people. Her novel Sleight has just been released by Coffee House Press. Her second book of poetry, A Beautiful Name for a Girl, is available from Ahsahta Press. She lives in Philly with three proto-men and their father.

John Haskell is the author of American Purgatorio, I Am Not Jackson Pollock, and Out of My Skin. A contributor to the radio program The Next Big Thing, he lives in Brooklyn.

Robin Grearson is a nonfiction writer who relocated to Brooklyn from Los Angeles last year. When she arrived in New York, she sought to collaborate with visual artists in an effort to expand her writing practice. This interest in art and artists has led to her curating art shows and teaching; she leads a writing workshop for artists at 3rd Ward. Her writing has appeared in print in The New York Times and The Brooklyn Rail, and online in various publications. She is currently working on a memoir.

Roberta Allen is the author of eight books, including Certain People, short shorts, published by Coffee House Press. Her two collections were both praised by The New York Times Book Review. She has been a Tennessee Williams Fellow In Fiction. Her popular writing guide in the 1990s, FAST FICTION, was the first to teach flash fiction. A visual/conceptual artist as well, she has exhibited worldwide and has work in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She taught at The New School for eighteen years and has taught in the writing program at Columbia University. She continues to teach private workshops. Recently, she completed a new story collection called The Princess Of Herself. Her 2000 novel, The Dreaming Girl, has just been republished by Ellipsis Press.

Please join us for our next special reading and conversation with Christine Schutt, John Domini, and Claire Donato.

Christine Schutt is the author of two short story collections, Nightwork and A Day, a Night, Another Day, Summer. Her first novel, Florida, was a National Book Award finalist; her second novel, All Souls, a finalist for, the 2009 Pulitzer Prize.  She has published fiction in such magazines as Harper’s, The Kenyon Review, NOON, and Post Road. Among other honors, Schutt has twice won the O.Henry Short Story Prize, as well as a Pushcart Prize, a New York Foundation of the Arts and Guggenheim fellowships. Schutt has been a writer-in-residence at the University of California-Irvine, Hollins, Syracuse, and Washington University. She has also taught in writing programs at Columbia, Sarah Lawrence, Bennington, and Barnard. She lives in New York.

A brief appreciation of Christine, her fiction, and her incredible presence while reading aloud is at Big Other.

John Domini has won awards in all genres, publishing fiction in The Paris Review, non-fiction in The New York Times, and poetry in Meridian (Editors’ Prize, 2006), and elsewhere. Grants have included fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Alan Cheuse, of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” described his work as “witty and biting.” The Emerging Writers Network called his novels from ’07 and ’08, Earthquake I.D. and A Tomb on the Periphery, “back-to-back stunners.” Tomb on the Periphery also made the ’09 short list at the London Book Festival for “the best of international publishing,” and Earthquake I.D., in Italian translation, was runner-up for the Domenico Rea prize. Dzanc Books will soon be bringing out electronic versions of his first four books, and Tomb is now available in Nook and Kindle. Domini makes his home in Des Moines, Iowa.

 Claire Donato (somanytumbleweeds.com) lives in Brooklyn, NY, writes across genres, and has taught at Hunter College, The New School, Brown University, and 826 Valencia/NYC.  Recent writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Boston Review, Black Warrior Review, and Octopus. She holds an MFA from Brown University, where she received the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction. Her first book, Burial, will be published by Tarpaulin Sky Press in Fall 2012.

Join us for our special Bastille Day edition with Mary Caponegro, Tim Horvath, and Gary Lutz.

Mary Caponegro is the author of the short story collections Tales from the Next Village, The Star Cafe, Five Doubts, The Complexities of Intimacy, and All Fall Down. She is the Richard B. Fisher Family Professor of Writing and Literature at Bard College. William Gass said of her work, “The music of Mary Caponegro’s stories is to the mouth what wine is. Readers will find themselves lost among answers, intoxicated, knowing only that these are stories unlike any others before or since, which is, for this reader at least, a relief, a challenge, and a godsend.” Excellent interview in Six Questions.

The Review of Contemporary Fiction called Tim Horvath’s first book, Circulation (sunnyoutside 2011), “perfect for an afternoon of quick rumination,” and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene wrote, “The casual reader and the bibliophile will love this book. It traces men’s lives through their obsession with books and arcania … Highly recommended.” Magazine publications of Horvath’s work include Fiction and Everyday Genius. Tim’s website

Gary Lutz is the author of three short-story collections: Stories in the Worst Way, I Looked Alive, and Partial List of People to Bleach. A fourth, Divorcer, is forthcoming from Calamari Press. Lutz has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. His seminal lecture, “A Sentence is a Lonely Place,” is at The Believer.

Please take part in our next conversation at Soda bar on the evening of Sunday, May 15.

Melissa Broder is the author of MEAT HEART (forthcoming from Publishing Genius; 2012) and WHEN YOU SAY ONE THING BUT MEAN YOUR MOTHER (Ampersand Books; 2010). Poems appear or are forthcoming in Opium, Redivider, Barrelhouse, The Collagist, et al. She edits La Petite Zine and curates the Polestar Poetry Series at Cake Shop in NYC.www.melissabroder.com

Steve Himmer is the author of the novel THE BEE-LOUD GLADE, and editor of the webjournal Necessary Fiction. His stories have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, most recently Hawk & Handsaw, Weber: The Contemporary West, The Collagist, and Re:Telling. He lives near Boston, where he teaches at Emerson College, and he has a website at http://www.stevehimmer.com/.

Josef Horáček’s poems, translations, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Action Yes, New American Writing, Circumference, 1913, Translation Studies, and elsewhere. As a doctoral student at Emory University, he received a 2009 NEA Translation Fellowship and a 2011 Ransom Center Dissertation Research Fellowship. Currently living in Baton Rouge, he teaches at Lousiana State University. He writes for montevidayo.com and his multimedia work can be found at vimeo.com/josefhoracek.

Joseph Riippi is the author of THE ORANGE SUITCASE (2011) and DO SOMETHING! DO SOMETHING! DO SOMETHING! (2009), both rom Ampersand Books. RESEARCH (a novel for performance), is currently in development with [the claque] in New York City for staging in November, and has showcase performances scheduled for May 20 and 22 (visit www.theclaque.org). A chapbook TREESISTERS, is forthcoming from Greying Ghost Press.

My Soda co-host, Greg Gerke, was recently interviewed by David Moscovich at The Rumpus. Greg is quite open about writing and not writing, reading and changing. He also discusses the somnolent softness of the sofas at Soda.

Four more writers talking to each other (And you can ask them questions too!)

Vincent Czyz is the author of the short story collection Adrift in a Vanishing City, to which Paul West devoted a chapter of Master Class. He received two fellowships from the NJ Council on the Arts and won the Faulkner Prize for Short Fiction. His stories have appeared in Shenandoah, AGNI, Louisiana Literature, the Double Dealer Redux, and the Massachusetts Review, which nominated his work for a Pushcart Prize. One his stories was translated into Turkish for an anthology that published in Turkey in 2010.

Michael Leong’s poetry career began in the sixth grade when he won his first and only poetry prize in Mr. Harrison’s class for a haiku about a snake. Since then, he has received degrees in English and Creative Writing from Dartmouth College, Sarah Lawrence College, and Rutgers University and has published poems in journals such as Bird Dog, jubilat, Marginalia, Opium Magazine, Pindeldyboz, and Tin House. He is the author of two volumes of poetry, e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009) and Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions / The Brooklyn Rail, forthcoming), as well as a translation of the Chilean poet Estela Lamat, I, the Worst of All (BlazeVOX [books], 2009). He currently lives in New York City.

Janice Shapiro studied film at UCLA where she won first prize in The Samuel Goldwyn Screenwriting Competition. The short films she directed were screened widely at film festivals around the world and she was a recipient of an AFI Filmmakers’ Grant. She has written scripts for numerous studios and independent producers including the cult film, Dead Beat that she co-wrote with her husband, Adam Dubov. Janice’s short stories have been published in The North American Review, and The Santa Monica Review. A graphic piece that she wrote was part of the anthology, What Were We Thinking? published by St. Martin’s press. Another graphic piece appeared in The Seattle Review. Bummer and Other Stories is her first book. She is currently working on a second collection of short stories, a collection of food essays entitled, Eat Like Me, and a graphic memoir, Crushable – My Life In Crushes From Ricky Nelson to Viggo Mortensen. Janice lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son and dog.

Mike Young is the author of WE ARE ALL GOOD IF THEY TRY HARD ENOUGH (Publishing Genius Press September 2010), LOOK! LOOK! FEATHERS (Word Riot Press December 2010), and the chapbook MC OROVILLE’S ANSWERING MACHINE (Transmission Press 2009). He co-edits NOÖ Journal and Magic Helicopter Press. He lives in Northampton, MA.

A reading and conversation with: Nick Ripatrazone, Robin Beth Schaer, Brenda Shaughnessy and Anthony Tognazzini

Nick Ripatrazone is the author of Oblations (Gold Wake Press 2011), a book of prose poems. His work has appeared in Esquire, The Kenyon Review, West Branch, The Mississippi Review, Sou’wester, The Collagist and Beloit Fiction Journal. He will graduate from the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark in May.

Robin Beth Schaer’s poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Denver Quarterly, Washington Square, Tin House, and
Prairie Schooner, among others. She has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Saltonstall Foundation. She teaches at Marymount Manhattan College and works as a deckhand aboard the Tall Ship Bounty.

Brenda Shaughnessy was born in Okinawa, Japan, in 1970 and grew up in Southern California. She received her B.A. in literature and women’s studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and she earned an M.F.A. at Columbia University. She is the author of Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Interior with Sudden Joy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), which was nominated for the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry, a Lambda Literary Award, and the Norma Farber First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Bomb, Boston Review, Conjunctions, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere.

Anthony Tognazzini’s work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Sentence, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Quarterly West, the Hat, and the Alaska Quarterly Review, among other journals. His collection, I Carry A Hammer in My Pocket for Occasions Such As These, is available from BOA Editions. He lives in Brooklyn.

The fourth edition of our conversation brings together five writers from the cities of Baltimore and Providence.

Mairéad Byrne emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1994, for poetry. Her books include The Best of (What’s Left of) Heaven (Publishing Genius 2010), Talk Poetry (Miami University Press 2007), SOS Poetry (/ubu Editions 2007), and Nelson & The Huruburu Bird (Wild Honey Press 2003). She lives in Providence and teaches at Rhode Island School of Design. Check out the new book at http://www.whatsleftofheaven.

Daniel Groves was born and raised in Narragansett, Rhode Island, and educated at Johns Hopkins University. His first book, The Lost Boys, was recently published as part of the VQR Series (University of Georgia Press). His poems have appeared in Paris Review, Yale Review, Poetry, and Best New Poets 2005. He is on staff at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

Stephanie Barber is a multi media artist who creates meticulously crafted, odd and imaginative writing, films and videos as well as performance pieces which incorporate music, literature and video.  Her poems and essays have been published by Publishing Genius Press, Bronze Skull Press and Crayon among others.  Her films and videos have screened at MoMA, NY; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Tate, London and others. She currently resides in the USA.

Andy Devine’s alphabetical fiction and essays have appeared in a variety of literary magazines, including New York Tyrant, Unsaid, Elimae, Everyday Genius, and Taint. In 2002, he was awarded the Riddley Walker Prize (for a work that ignores conventional rules of grammar and punctuation). In 2007, he published a chapbook, “As Day Same That the the Was Year” (Publishing Genius). In 2009, Andy Devine was awarded The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Award (for fiction in the face of adversity). WORDS (2010, Publishing Genius) is his first book. Andy Devine Avenue — in Flagstaff, Arizona — is named after him.

Adam Robinson lives in Baltimore, where he runs Publishing Genius and plays guitar in Sweatpants, a rock band. His first book, Adam Robison and Other Poems, was just released by Narrow House. He writes for HTMLGIANT, the Internet literature magazine blog of the future.