Ben Clark, Colin Winnette, and Sierra DeMulder read from their work
Three authors from indie publisher Write Bloody Press visit Magers & Quinn–Ben Clark, Colin Winnette, and Sierra DeMulder.
The poems in Reasons to Leave the Slaughter by Ben Clark balance between beauty and brutality. They grapple with death, distance, solitude, love, faith, and belonging. These poems discover, sing, shake, and ask for forgiveness, then stomp around swearing and kicking over grain silos. From cornfields to sailboats adrift in the ocean to fathers warning sons about ghost hay bales to endless laughter and song emerging from the Chicago night these poems dazzle again and again.
Ben Clark grew up in rural Nebraska and now lives in Chicago, Illinois where he is a graduate student at the Art Institute of Chicago and an assistant editor for Muzzle Magazine. He has worked in a microwaveable popcorn factory and as an English teacher, librarian, tile maker, and track coach. He performs, workshops, and teaches poetry across the country.
Colin Winnette is the author of the forthcoming book Revelation, which follows the entire lifespan of a single character. The book chronicles Marcus’ efforts to live in this catastrophic world, to find what human connections he can, and to question their function, as the chaos around him destroys the ground on which these relationships are formed.
Winnette lives in Chicago, Texas, Vermont and between. He’s currently developing a business model for a kissing booth in Martha’s Vineyard, in need of start up capital. His short work is or will be available in American Short Fiction, Spork Press, PANK Magazine, The Lifted Brow, and many others. His novella Revelation will be published this fall 2011 by Mutable Sound.
Sierra DeMulder grew up in a tiny town in upstate New York. In 2007, she moved to Minnesota to pursue her interest in poetry and to slowly freeze to death. Sierra earned Best Female Poet at the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational in 2009. Less than two months later, she was awarded a coveted publishing deal from Write Bloody Publishing, which lead to her first full-length book, The Bones Below, published in January 2010. With Sierra’s help the St. Paul Slam Team won the 2009 National Poetry Slam in West Palm Beach, Florida. Sierra continued on to rank ninth in the world in the Individual World Poetry Slam in Berkeley, California. She was a finalist at the 2010 Women of the World Individual Poetry Slam in Columbus, Ohio. One year later, the Saint Paul Slam Team won the National Poetry Slam, making Sierra one of the only poets to touch every final stage in a calendar year.