A reading of poets of Nirala Books and Pratik magazine, featuring Yuyutsu Sharma, David Austell, Otis Kidwell Burger, Jill Hoffman, Ruth Danon, Michael Graves, Mike Jurkovic, Anna Halberstadt and Jack Tar
The poets will read from their new Nirala Books and Pratik Magazine’s recent issues. In addition, Yuyutsu Sharma will conduct a Poetry workshop at 4 pm-5:pm more details write to yuyutsurd@yahoo.com.
Recipient of fellowships and grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, Ireland Literature Exchange, Trubar Foundation, Slovenia, The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature and The Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature, Yuyutsu Sharma is a world renowned Himalayan poet and translator. He has published ten poetry collections including, The Second Buddha Walk, A Blizzard in my Bones: New York Poems, Quaking Cantos: Nepal Earthquake Poems, Nepal Trilogy, Space Cake, Amsterdam and Annapurna Poems. Three books of his poetry, Poemes de l’ Himalayas (L’Harmattan, Paris), Poemas de Los Himalayas (Cosmopoeticia, Cordoba, Spain) and Jezero Fewa & Konj (Sodobnost International) have appeared in French, Spanish and Slovenian respectively. In addition, Eternal Snow: A Worldwide Anthology of One Hundred Twenty-Five Poetic Intersections with Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu RD Sharma has just appeared. Widely traveled author, he has read his works at several prestigious places and held workshops in creative writing and translation at Queen’s University, Belfast, University of Ottawa and South Asian Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany, University of California, Davis, Sacramento State University, California, Beijing Open University and New York University, New York. Half the year, he travels and reads all over the world and conducts Creative Writing workshops at various universities in North America and Europe but goes trekking in the Himalayas when back home. Currently, Yuyutsu Sharma is a visiting poet at Columbia University and edits, Pratik: A Quarterly Magazine of Contemporary Writing.
David B. Austell, Ph.D. is Associate Provost and Director of the International Students and Scholars Office at Columbia University in New York City where he is also an Associate Professor of International Education in Teachers College-Columbia University (adjunct). David has over thirty years of executive leadership experience in International Education, and is a frequent writer and presenter in his professional field. David has undergraduate and graduate degrees in English Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he also completed his Ph.D. in Higher Education, focusing on International Education. His doctoral dissertation, The Birds in the Rich Forest, concerned Chinese students in the United States during the Student Democracy Movement. David was a Fulbright Fellow in Japan and Korea in 1992. He is also a poet, and The Tin Man is his third book.
Jill Hoffman is the Founding Editor of Mudfish (Box Turtle Press), and the Mudfish Individual Poet Series. Box Turtle Press has just published The Gates of Pearl, a book-length poem in two voices, hers and her mother Pearl’s, as Mudfish Individual Poet Series #11. Black Diaries (Mudfish Individual Poet Series # 2) was published in 2000. Her first book of poems, Mink Coat, was published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1973. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974-75. Jilted, a novel, was published by Simon & Schuster in 1993. She has a B.A. from Bennington College, M.A. from Columbia University and Ph. D. from Cornell University. She has taught in major universities (Bard, Barnard, Brooklyn, Columbia) and published in major magazines, such as The New Yorker and Paris Review. She has led the Mudfish Writing Workshop in Tribeca since 1990. She is also a painter.
Ruth Danon is the author of Word Has It (Nirala ), Limitless Tiny Boat , Living With the Fireman, Work in the English Novel,and Triangulation from a Known Point. Her poetry and prose have appeared in The Florida Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Post Road, Noon, Versal, Mead, BOMB, The Paris Review, Fence, The Boston Review, 3rd Bed, Crayon,and many other publications in the US and abroad. Her work was selected by Robert Creeley for Best American Poetry, 2002. Her poems also appear in the anthologies, Eternal Snow (Nirala, 2017) and Resist Much, Obey Little (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017). She has been a fellow at the Ragdale Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, the Ora Lerman Foundation, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She taught for many years in the Creative and Expository Writing Programs that she directed for the McGhee Division of the School of Professional Studies of New York University. There she was also founding director of the SPS Summer Intensive Creative Writing Workshops that for seventeen years brought the best American and international writers to work with students from NYU, across the nation, and around the globe. In 2017 she left NYU to expand her own teaching practice in New York City and Beacon, NY.
Michael Graves is the author of three full-length collections of poems, A Prayer for Less Violent Offenders, (Nirala) Adam and Cain and In Fragility as well as and two chapbooks, Illegal Border Crosser (Cervana Barva, 2008) and Outside St. Jude’s (R. E. M. Press, 1990). In 2004 he was the recipient of a substantial grant of from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. Thirteen of his poems appear in the James Joyce Quarterly.
American writer and artist Otis Kidwell Burger was born in 1923 in Staten Island, NY, and has lived in Greenwich Village since 1932. She graduated from Cornell University and married Knox Breckenridge Burger in 1946; they had two daughters, Neall and Katherine. Her published work includes: An Interesting Condition, a novel; The String That Went Up, a children’s book; poetry in The New Yorker, Good Housekeeping, and Gourmet Magazine; science fiction in Galaxy and Astounding magazines. She’s written book reviews for The New York Times, Book of the Month Club; The Village Voice, and Kirkus Services, as well as articles in the Villager.
New York-based poet, psychologist and translator, Anna Halberstadt has published six books, including, Vilnius Diary, 2014, Transit, 2016, Green in a Landscape with Ashes, 2017 and Gloomy Sun, 2017, and two books of translations: Selected Selected by Eileen Myles and Nocturnal Fire by Edward Hirsch, in Russian. Her work has appeared in over 60 literary journals and anthologies, such as Alabama Literary Review, Alembic, AmarilloBay, Atlanta Review, Bluestem, Caliban, Café Review, Cimarron Review, East Jasmine Review, FatherNature, Literary Imagination, (Oxford Journals) and many others. Halberstadt was a finalist of the 2013 Mudfish poetry contest and she was nominated for the Pushcart prize twice.She is a recipient of the International Merit Award by Atlanta Review, 2016, Award for Poetry by the journal Children of Ra in 2016. Her book Vilnius Diary in Lithuanian translation had won TOP 10 by Lt.15– named one of the best ten books published in Lithuania in 2017. It also won the Award of the Association of Lithuanian Translators in 2017. Anna was named Translator of the Year 2017 by the journal Persona PLUS for her translation of Bob Dylan’s poem. She is a member of the American PEN center.
American poet, Mike Jurkovic is the 2016 Pushcart nominee, poetry and musical criticism have appeared in hundreds of magazines and periodicals. Full length collections, Blue Fan Whiring, (Nirala), smitten by harpies & shiny banjo catfish (Lion Autumn Press, 2016) Chapbooks: Eve’s Venom (Post Traumatic Press, 2014), Purgatory Road (Pudding House Press) Anthologies: WaterWrites and Riverine (Codhill Press, 2009, 2007). President, Calling All Poets, New Paltz, NY and producer of CAPSCASTS, performances from Calling All Poets Series. Features & CD reviews appear in All About Jazz (August 2017 – ) & the Van Wyck Gazette. He loves Emily most of all.
Brooklyn based Jack Tar is a poet and writer who chronicles environmental movements, the aging Beat Poets, and life on the water. Jack is a fisherman, a sailor, and an environmentalist.