SPECTRA Reading Series: Laura A. Ring and Aubrey Ryan at Rozz-Tox -- November 11.
Thursday, November 11, 7 p.m.
Rozz-Tox, 2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL
In celebration of the release of the first two chapbooks published through its Foster-Stahl Chapbook Series that originated last year, the Midwest Writing Center will host a November 11 SPECTRA Reading Series event at Rock Island venue Rozz-Tox, with the evening featuring readings by critically acclaimed authors Laura A. Ring and Aubrey Ryan.
Ring’s book Field Notes Recovered from the Expedition to Devil’s Peak was selected as the inaugural winner of the Foster-Stahl chapbook competition, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in RHINO, Stirring, Rogue Agent, and Dream Pop, among other literary journals. With the author holding a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, where she serves as the librarian in charge of the Southern Asia and Anthropology collections, Ring's ethnography Zenana: Everyday Peace in a Karachi Apartment Building was published by Indiana University Press. Reviewing Ring's book, Katie Ford, author of Blood Lyrics and If You Have to Go, raved, "This book is testament to what a palimpsest the imagination is, if only we would allow one layer to be scratched away until the next shines through, then the next and the next until we see we are not at all alone, especially not in the mind. Laura A. Ring excavates the imagination – brilliantly and gently, as if a fragment of thought could be harmed if mishandled – and unearths the contingencies upon which insight relies."
Iowa-based poet Ryan is the author of Good Beast, winner of the Phantom Books Breitling Chapbook Prize, and the critically lauded Choir, and her work has appeared in Best New Poets, Pinwheel, Anti-, Matter, Hobart, Booth, New Madrid, El Aleph, Quarterly West, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. Her poems have been featured on broadsides by Joseph Lappie and Team Nerd Letterpress, and she is also the winner of the Booth Poetry Prize who has been three times nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In her review of Choir, Brief Moral History in Blue and Like You author Beth Roberts extolled, "With Choir, Aubrey Ryan has created a new myth most needed. It tells of an origin before our origin story, and it stirs the story of our end ... . As in the Greek plays, Ryan enlists a chorus most convincing – hers are oracles, guardians, bees – to help in the telling. Because it is a horrifying tale, but she knows the story of the end must be the kindest tale of all.”
Laura A. Ring and Aubrey Ryan will read in the Midwest Writing Center's SPECTRA series at Rozz-Tox on November 11, there is a $5 suggested donation for the 7 p.m. event, and copies of the authors' chapbooks will be available for purchase ($10 each or $15 for both). For more information, call (309)732-7330 and visit MWCQC.org.
