Kate Zambreno will read from her debut novella O Fallen Angel, published in April by Chiasmus Press, winner of their “Undoing the Novel” contest. The work is a triptych of modern America set in a banal Midwestern landscape, inspired by Francis Bacon’s Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, also a grotesque homage to Mrs. Dalloway. O Fallen Angel commits an act of anarchic literary sacrilege that calls to mind the rant and rage of an American Elfriede Jelinek, an exorcism of the culture wars and pop-cultural debris, a sneering indictment of deaf ears, blind eyes, and mute mouths. An editor at Nightboat Books, Zambreno keeps the literary blog Frances Farmer Is My Sister. An essay collection inspired by the blog will be published by Semiotext(e)’s Active Agents series in Fall 2011.

Like Angela Carter’s fairy tales, Kate Zambreno’s O Fallen Angel deftly exposes the psychic brutality that lies underneath the smooth glassy surface of parable. Set in Midwestern America in approximately 2006, Zambreno’s character/archetypes—a Mommy who names her golden retriever after Scott Peterson’s murdered wife Laci, a daughter who signs her suicide note with a smiley face and a doomed psychotic prophet—are all agents and victims of disinformation, but this doesn’t make their pain any less real. In Zambreno’s SUV-era America, unhappiness doesn’t exist because it can be broken down into treatable diagnostic codes. As she writes, “Maggie wants to be FREE but she also wants to be LOVED and these are polar instincts, which is why she is bipolar, which is a malady of mood.” A brilliant, hilarious debut.  -Chris Kraus, author of  I Love Dick and Aliens & Anorexia

Also joining the bill is John Beer, Jeremy Davies, Daniel Borzutsky, Megan Milks and AD Jameson.

For more info: http://francesfarmerismysister.blogspot.com/

Michael Bernstein is the author of the chapbooks cinderbook (Gold Wake Press, 2009), the rot to light (Gold Wake Press, 2010), 8s (Scantily Clad Press, forthcoming 2010), imaginary grace (Recycled Karma Press, 2010) from “a heap of swords and mirrors” (Bedouin Books, forthcoming 2010), the transit illuminate (mud luscious press, forthcoming 2010),  nanostars (greying ghost press, forthcoming 2010), and the Fire District (Differentia Press, forthcoming 2010) . His poems have appeared in magazines such as Puppy Flowers, milk, Moria, BlazeVOX, and New American Writing. He currently co-edits the online literary arts magazine Pinstripe Fedora. Michael lives and writes in Wisconsin.

Lewis Freedman writes poems. He (as of recently) lives in Madison. A chapbook, The Third Word (2009), was published by what to us(press) and another, Catfish Po’ Boys (2009), was published by MinutesBooks. He is co-editor of Agnes Fox Press.

Andy Gricevich lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he edits Cannot Exist magazine and, with Lewis Freedman. His poems have been published here and there, most recently in Pinstripe Fedora and We Are So Happy to Know Something. He has toured internationally as a performer of strange chamber music, theater and satirical cabaret songs with the Prince Myshkins and the Nonsense Company. He is uncomfortable writing this in the third person. Lately he’s been baking bread and finding the prevailing forms of irony in our poetic culture to be utterly inadequate in every possible way. The bread is getting better.

For more info:
www.cannotexist.blogspot.com
www.agnesfox.wordpress.com
www.pinstripefedora.com