Kathleen Rooney, Jasmine Dreame Wagner and Samuel Wharton

Join authors/poets Kathleen Rooney, Jasmine Dreame Wagner and Samuel Wharton as they read from their new books.

Kathleen Rooney was born in Beckley, West Virginia and raised in the Midwest. She earned a B.A. from the George Washington University and an M.F.A. in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College. Along with Elisa Gabbert, she is the author of the collaborative poetry chapbook Something Really Wonderful and the collection That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness. Her poems have appeared in AGNI online, 32 Poems, and Cincinnati Review, and her essays have appeared in Gulf Coast, Gettysburg Review, Ninth Letter, Southern Humanities Review and Another Chicago Magazine. She currently lives in Chicago with her husband, the writer Martin Seay.

Jasmine Dreame Wagner is a recent graduate of the MFA program at the University of Montana – Missoula. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Verse, American Letters & Commentary, Colorado Review, Indiana Review, Seattle Review, North American Review, Columbia Review, 32 Poems, and others. A graduate of Columbia University, she was a writer-in-residence at The Hall Farm Center for Arts & Education in Townshend, Vermont. Her chapbook, “Charcoal,” surveys and deconstructs the language and visual field of the American urban ruin from the remains of the 9/11 site and the Greenpoint Terminal Market fire to the eroded mines and mills of the former western frontier. “Charcoal” was published this spring in collaboration with printmaker Matthew Trygve Tung and is part of a commission on the behalf of Windows Gallery (formerly PS2 Gallery) in Long Island City, New York. Wagner also performs in the experimental folk collective Cabinet of Natural Curiosities.

Samuel Wharton has had poems published in various journals, including, most recently, The Concher, Otoliths, & Death Metal Poetry, & his work will appear in Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets . He is the editor of the online poetry journal, Sawbuck . Wharton’s chapbook, Welcome Home, was released by NeOPepper Press in May, 2007, and his music criticism appears regularly at www.urbanpollution.com. He lives and works in Chicago.

More info at:
Kathleen Rooney
Jasmine Dreame Wagner