Beyond Baroque Reading

February 17th HITCHED will feature KATE DURBIN with LINDA LAY and NATALIE DIAZ with SARAH VAP. HITCHED is a monthly reading series that couples established poets and writers with newer voices as a way to broaden community and celebrate writing relationships.

$7 at the door, $5 for students, FREE for members
Hosted by XOCHITL-JULISA BERMEJO

BIOS------------------

KATE DURBIN is a Los Angeles-based writer, performer, and transmedia artist. She is author of The Ravenous Audience (Akashic Books) and E! Entertainment (Blanc Press Diamond Edition, forthcoming). She is co-author of Abra, forthcoming in artists' book and iOS editions. She is a recipient the Expanded Artists' Book grant from Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago, and the winner of an &Now Innovative Writing Award. She is founding editor of Gaga Stigmata, an online arts and criticism journal about Lady Gaga, which has been featured in news outlets such as Salon.com, NPR, AOL, and Yale's The American Scholar. Her tumblr project, Women as Objects, has been featured in TMobile's Your Digital Daily, Hyperallergic, Bright Stupid Confetti, and other news and arts sites, and she has presented it at Cal Arts, the WeHo Library, and for the School of Global Arts Down Under.

NATALIE DIAZwas born and raised on the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation in Needles, California. Having played professional basketball for four years in western Europe and Asia, Diaz returned to the states to complete her MFA at Old Dominion University in 2007. She has received the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize and her work has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including Prairie Schooner, Nimrod International, and North American Review. She lives in Surprise, Arizona.

LINDA LAY received her B.F.A. in Painting at the Kansas City Art Institute and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Otis College of Art and Design. Currently she teaches at an alternative private school and is actively involved in the art and writing communities of Los Angeles. For more information and work samples, please visit www.lindalay.com.

SARAH VAP grew up in Missoula, Montana. She attended Brown University, where she studied English and American Literature. She received her MFA from Arizona State University, and is completing her PhD at the University of Southern California. She is the recipient of a 2013 National Endowment of the Arts grant.

She is the author of four collections of poetry. Her first book, Dummy Fire, was selected by Forrest Gander to receive the Saturnalia Poetry Prize. Her second, American Spikenard, was selected by Ira Sadoff to receive the Iowa Poetry Prize. Her third book, Faulkner’s Rosary, was released by Saturnalia Books in 2010. She lives with her family in Santa Monica, CA.