Our fabulous and lovely readers:

Suzanne Wise is the author of the poetry collection The Kingdom of the Subjunctive. More recently, her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in the anthologies Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century and From the Fishouse and in the journals American Letters and Commentary, Guernica, and Quarter After Eight.

Rob Jacklosky’s comic essays, (“Dispatches from the Napoleonic Wars,” and “Dispatches from the Wings of the ABT”) have appeared for the last couple of years in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His essay, “A Version of Me on Network T.V.” was chosen by Phillip Lopate as a winner of a WNYC contest. His short stories have appeared in Sonora Review, Sendero, Konundrum Literary Engine Review and The Foghorn Magazine. In 2007, his unpublished novel Nazi in the Living Room was a finalist in the William Faulkner-William Wisdom fiction competition, work-in-progress category. He was a top-15 finalist in the New Century Writers Award for the unpublished first chapters of Cheerio, Idiot.

KC Trommer’s poems have appeared in AGNI, The Antioch Review, Coconut, MARGIE, Octopus, Poetry East, The Sycamore Review, and other journals. A graduate of the MFA program at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, KC has been the recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize, as well as fellowships from the Maine Summer Arts Program, the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Prague Summer Program. Her sound and video work can be accessed via www.kctrommer.com. She lives in New York with her husband, the writer Justin Courter.

Justin Courter is the author of the novel Skunk: A Love Story, and a collection of prose poems, The Death of the Poem and Other Paragraphs. He is married to his fellow Sunday Salon reader, the fabulous poet KC Trommer.

SALON STANDS WITH HAITI
Here are some other events happening in NYC this week & next raising funds for Haiti:

Friday, January 15, 6pm-8:30pm
New Yorkers for Haiti
Talay, 701 West 135th St. at 12th Ave.

Sunday, January 17, 10pm-4am
Unity Sound Reggae Sundays MLK Edition/Fundraiser for Haiti Earthquake Victims
Deity, 368 Atlantic Ave. btw Hoyt & Bond, Brooklyn
Join us this Sunday and pledge your love and support for Haiti’s earthquake relief efforts. Music by Haiti’s own DJ Hard Hittin Harry, Special guest: Natural Freaks. Dancehall reggae, roots & culture, with a touch of soca calypso, Hatian compas, world beat and much more. Portion of the proceeds to benefit Helping Hands Bring Sunshine & Rural Haiti Project.

Monday, January 18, 9pm-2am
Music for Medicine
Sputnik, 262 Taffe Place, Brooklyn
An emergency show for Earthquake relief in HAITI featuring: Kongo (traditional Haitian roots band), Jeremiah Hosea (soul vocals & bass=earthdriver.org rep), DJ Chela (Zulu Nation), DJ Oja (Sunchild Productions/earthdriver.org) & more. 9pm-2am. All proceeds benefit Doctors Without Borders and Yele.

Friday, January 22, 6:30pm-9pm
I Am Ayiti (Haiti) Relief Fundraiser and Benefit
Caribbean Cultural Center
408 W. 58th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues)
212-30-7420 ext. 3008
www.cccadi.org
Minimum Donation $10 but feel free to donate more! Featuring performances by: DJ Laylo on the 1s and 2s, Kalunga Neg Mawon, Tiga Jean-Baptiste & T’Chaka, & Jhon Clarke (formerly of Black Parents)

And a list of some of our favorite organizations helping the relief efforts. Want to know more about a charity before you donate? Check out greatnonprofits.org for first-hand reviews.

• AARP (providing matching donations up to $500K for aid to older victims)
• ActionAid USA
• American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
• American Jewish World Service
• American National Red Cross
• Americares
• CARE
• Catholic Relief Services
• Clinton Foundation
• Direct Relief International
• Disasters Emergency Committee (UK)
• Doctors Without Borders
• Habitat for Humanity
• International Medical Corps
• Medical Teams International
• Mercy Corps
• Operation Blessing International
• Operation USA
• Oxfam America
• Parners in Health
• Plan USA
• Save the Children
• Stand With Haiti
• US Fund for UNICEF
• Week of Compassion
• World Concern
• World Vision

Help Fill Sunday Salon’s Balikbayan Box for Typhoon Victims!

Please help the victims in the Philippines who have been directly impacted by devastating typhoons. The people of Caba, a small fishing town in La Union Province, have been affected by the second major typhoon to hit the Philippines last month.We will be sending, in true Filipino style, a ‘balikbayan box’ (or an extra-large cardboard box filled to capacity containing various comfort items then shipped directly to the Philippines by a specialized freight service for a flat fee).  

A donation ‘balikbayan box’ will be set up at the Sunday Salon, November 15th. Please help by donating any basic items that you can spare (see list below). 

Our contact in the barangay, or barrio, of Caba is Pete Gonzales, a Filipino-American painter / musician, who after over forty years of living in the US, decided to move back to the Philippines to manage a small family business of vacation guest houses, which employs many of the people from the village. Since the severe flooding began, Mr. Gonzales has been reaching out to anyone who can help in his effort to provide relief to his local community. He will receive and distribute any donated items to assure proper distribution to those in the most need.

*Rice is by far the most important staple, but any of the below items will help and be greatly appreciated.*

Food:

• Rice (5lb bags)
• Canned goods: proteins such as Vienna sausages, corned beef, cans of corn beef, Spam, pork and beans, sardines
• Instant noodles such as Top Ramen cup-o-noodles
• Instant drinks such as coffee, Taster’s Choice,Nescafe, powdered milk

Clothing: (Any summer items that you need to purge?)

• Mens S-L, Womens XS-L. Children – All sizes 
• T-shirts 
• Shorts
• New underwear
• Light pants / jeans
• Flip-Flops 
• Shoes

Other items:

• Bandages
• Hydrogen peroxide
• Betadine
• Pain relievers
• For children: coloring books, crayons, candy, small toys

Below is an additional list from The Philippine National Red Cross:

• Food items: Rice, noodles, canned goods, sugar, iodized salt, cooking oil, monggo beans
• Medicines: Paracetamol, antibiotics, analgesic, oral rehydration salts, multivitamins and medications to treat diarrheal diseases
• Non-food items: Bath soaps, face towels, shampoo, toothbrush, toothpaste, plastic mats, blankets, mosquito nets, jerry cans, water containers, water purification tablets, plastic sheeting, and laundry soap

If you want to send items directly to Caba, you may send to the following address:

Mr. Pete Gonzales
Paiko Shores Resort
Barangay, San Carlos
Caba, La Union, Philippines

Thank you in advance for helping the people of Caba, La Union, and special thanks to thanks to writer Erica Miguel for bridging us to the community of Cabo!

Exquisite Corpse: Dec. 6th Writers’ Workshop with Andrei Codrescu

Sunday Salon is thrilled to welcome writer Andrei Codrescu for a special writers’ workshop and reading event, both free and open to the public, on Sunday, December 6, 2009 from 4-6pm at Jimmy’s No. 43 at 43 E. 7th St. (btw 2 & 3 Ave.) in Manhattan!

Workshop Description:

Writing exquisite corpses on paper, fruit, and skin with Andrei Codrescu. Participants should bring a fine point magic marker and a writeable fruit (no oranges, they’re too bumpy). Session will be podcast from corpse.org.

(And feel free to bring laptop/questions!)

Andrei Codrescu is senior commentator on National Public Radio’s (NPR) All Things Considered, the national news-magazine he has contributed to for 25 years (www.npr.org). The listenership for ATC has grown from six million listeners in 1983 when he started to twenty-three million listeners today. While he was never off the air for longer than six weeks, there has recently been an upswell of interest in his consistently radical and demythicising work, and NPR has decided to air his essays regularly every Wednesday. Andrei Codrescu’s work in radio is complemented by film: his documentary movie, Road Scholar (which was also a book published in both hardcover and paper by Hyperion) had wide theatrical distribution, and the nationally broadcast PBS version won a Peabody Award.

Andrei is also a novelist: The Blood Countess (Simon & Schuster, a national best-seller in both hardcover and paper), Messiah, Casanova in Bohemia, and Wakefield have sold well, received a good deal of critical attention, and were translated in a number of languages. Andrei is also a poet and an essayist, the author of monographs and scholarly essays on diverse subjects (see codrescu.com). He is the editor of Exquisite Corpse: a Journal of Life & Letters, online at www.corpse.org, and MacCurdy Distinguished Professor at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge.

In addition to the Peabody Award, he is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the ACLU Freedom of Speech Award, the Ovidius Prize, and the Towson University Literature Prize. For a list of his published work, work in other media, and live appearances, there is more at www.codrescu.com.

This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. with public funds from The New York State Council for the Arts, a state agency.

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{SALON NYC RECENT WRITERS}

Hettie Jones

Hettie Jones is a poet and prose writer, author of How I Became Hettie Jones, a memoir of the “beat scene” of the fifties and sixties, currently available in a paperback edition from Grove Press. Jones’s short prose has been published in journals such as Fence, Global City Review and Ploughshares, and she has also written numerous books for children and young adults. In 1998 Jones’s poetry collection, Drive, was issued by Hanging Loose Press. Drive won the Poetry Society of America’s 1999 Norma Farber First Book Award. Jones’s second collection, All Told, was published in 2003. Her third collection, Doing 70, appeared in March 2007 and Marie Ponsot writes in Commonweal, “tuneful poems…centered and engaged….I know of no other poet’s voice so at ease in welcoming the fact that we are all people of color, “looking/for bread but asking/ for roses.” Jones teaches currently in the Graduate Writing Program of the New School and at the 92nd St. Y Poetry Center. The mother of two grown daughters, Hettie Jones lives in Manhattan’s East Village. She is currently at work on Love, H. a memoir in letters; Race Tracks, a book of linked stories; and Press Firmly, a collection of new and selected poems.

Mitch Levenberg

Mitch Levenberg has published essays and short fiction in such journals as The Common Review, Fiction, The New Delta Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, Confluence, and others. His collection of stories, Principles of Uncertainty and Other Constants was published in March 2006. He teaches writing at St. Francis College and New York University and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, daughter and four dogs.

Spring Ulmer

Spring Ulmer holds a M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Arizona, and a M.F.A. in Nonfiction from the University of Iowa. She’s worked as a photo-journalist, a journalist, a teacher of photography and writing to migrant, homeless, and incarcerated youth, an ESL instructor, and a horse hand. Her honors include grants for photography and writing from the Kentucky Arts Council, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the Andrea Frank Foundation, as well as residencies from the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California, and the University of Iowa’s Museum of Art. Ulmer’s book of poetry, Benjamin’s Spectacles, was selected by Sonia Sanchez for Kore Press’s 2007 First Book Award. A collection of Ulmer’s essays, The Age of Virtual Reproduction, was published by Essay Press in 2009. She lives in Brooklyn and also teaches at John Jay College and Fordham University.

Ethan Gilsdorf

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. After playing Dungeons & Dragons religiously in the 1970s and 1980s, Ethan Gilsdorf went on to become a poet, teacher, and journalist. In the U.S. and in Paris, he’s worked as a freelance correspondent, guidebook writer, and film, book and restaurant reviewer. Now based in Somerville, Massachusetts, he publishes travel, arts, and pop culture stories regularly in the New York Times, Boston Globe, and Christian Science Monitor, and has been published in other magazines and newspapers including National Geographic Traveler, Psychology Today, and the Washington Post. His blog “Geek Pride” is seen regularly on PsychologyToday.com and he has also been a guest on talk radio as a fantasy and escapism expert. He does not own elf ears, but he has kept all his old D&D gear, and has been known to host a Lord of the Rings party or two. Follow Ethan’s adventures at http://www.ethangilsdorf.com.

Mustafa Zİyalan

Mustafa Zİyalan, coeditor of the critically acclaimed story collection Istanbul Noir, was born in Zonguldak, on the Black Sea coast of Turkey. He worked as a general practitioner and coroner in a rural Anatolian village, and now lives and practices psychiatry in Brooklyn, NY. His poetry, short fiction, and essays have appeared in many literary periodicals, anthologies, and in book form. He is the author of the poetry book Kızıl Kanca Şiirleri, Yakılacak Kentlerden, a collection of travel writing and essays, and Su Kedileri, a collection of short fiction.

See all Salon NYC writers»

{ABOUT SALON NYC}

Nita Noveno and co-host/fellow New School grad Caroline Berger keep a refreshing blend of new and experienced literary voices on tap at Stain Bar every third Sunday of the month and online in the Sunday Salon zine.

Nita Noveno is a graduate of the New School MFA Creative Writing Program. She founded the Sunday Salon series in the summer of 2002. She has most recently been published in Lost and Found: An Anthology of Teachers Writing and Worldview and was a finalist for the Missouri Review's 2005 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors� Prize. Nita read at the July 2002 Salon.

Caroline Berger lives in up-and-coming Bed Stuy (she's waiting patiently). Her proetry (that's not a typo; she likes to make up her own genres) has appeared most recently on La Petite Zine and Pindeldyboz and in Barrow Street. She is the co-host of the Sunday Salon and once used all 7 letters in a game of Scrabble to spell e-t-i-o-l-a-t-e. She teaches writing at The New School & has recently succumb to the world of blogging: Apocalyptic Whimsy. Caroline read at the August 2002 Salon.