Amie Whittemore in the SPECTRA Reading Series at Roxx-Tox -- March 15.
Saturday, March 15, 8 p.m.
Rozz-Tox, 2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL
With the event co-presented by the Midwest Writing Center, the Quad Cities' longest-running reading series SPECTRA returns to Rock Island's Rozz-Tox on March 15 in celebration of the release of two new MWC Press chapbooks: Amie Whittemore's Hesitation Waltz and Joshua Bohnsack's Atonality. Both books were selected for the 2023 Foster-Stahl Chapbook Series, with Whittemore's work the Series Selection and Bohnsack's the Editors’ Choice.
Amie Whittemore is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Nest of Matches (Autumn House). She was the 2020-21 Poet Laureate of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, as well as an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Her poems have won multiple awards, including a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, and her poems and prose have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Nashville Review, Smartish Pace, Pleiades. Currently, Whittemore teaches creative writing at Eastern Illinois University, and in her praise of Hesitation Waltz, I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World author Kendra DeColo raved, "In these vibrant elegies, odes, and epistles, Whittemore does not spare us the pain and anxiety of witnessing ongoing ruin. But she doesn’t refuse beauty or abundance either. Instead, she has created a book that feels like someone telling you who they are, what they love, and what they mourn, and my god, did I need to read this.”
Joshua Bohnsack’s work has appeared in AGNI, Salt Hill, The Rumpus, and literary outlets. A native of Taylor Ridge who currently lives in Chicago, he is the publisher of Long Day Press and also plays in the band Gold Dust. Heralding Bohnsack's latest offering, Someone Who Isn't Me author Geoff Rickly stated, "In Atonality, Joshua Bohnsack navigates the end of the postmodern age through his deep connection with music and measures the shifting distances between musician and listener by showing us his own displacement. These essays start sharply and gather power over the course of the book, revealing Bohnsack’s vulnerability in the face of a noisy world.”
At SPECTRA's latest open-to-the-public gathering, an open-mic event will start things off at 7 p.m. (spaces are limited, five-minute sets, first come first served), and the featured readings will begin at 8 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, and both Whittemore's and Bohnsack's chapbooks will be available for purchase for $10 each, with the works also available via pre-order through the Midwest Writing Center Web site. Though admission is free, donations to MWC are always welcome, and go to support youth writing programs in the Quad Cities.
For more information on the March 15 event, contact Rozz-Tox at (309)200-0978 and RozzTox.com, and the Midwest Writing Center at (309)732-7330 and MWCQC.org.
