Reading and Book Signing by Zach Semel and Erin Stalcup

Date and Time for this Past Event

Wednesday, Aug 18, 2021 7pm - 8pm

Location

Details

Uptown Pubhouse resumes its long tradition of award-winning readings and book signings with Zach Semel and Erin Stalcup. Semel will read from his debut chapbook "Let the tides take my body", winner of the May Day Mountain Prize by Hunger Mountain. Stalcup will read from her forthcoming novel Keen, available from Gold Wake Press in September (we will be taking pre-orders at the reading).

Zach is an M.F.A. candidate in Creative Writing at Northern Arizona University. He is an avid Celtics fan, a wannabe psychoanalyst, and a lover of all things garlicky. His work focuses on sexuality, mental illness, pop culture, and relationships with friends and family. Some of his previous poems, essays, and interviews have appeared in DIAGRAM, CutBank, Eclectica Magazine, The Nervous Breakdown, Wordgathering, Breath & Shadow, and other places. His debut chapbook Let the tides take my body (2021) was awarded the May Day Mountain Prize by Hunger Mountain.

Featuring pop culture homages ranging from Billy Madison to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Let the tides take my body uses familiar media to examine sexuality, masculinity, and friendship. What mistakes can be traced back to our old film and TV obsessions? What realizations? This chapbook pairs turbulent poetry with clarifying prose to depict the desires we may not know we have until we see ourselves on a screen.

Erin Stalcup is Editor-in-Chief of Defunct. Born and raised and educated in Flagstaff, on occupied Diné and Hopi land, she first left to live in Brooklyn, and has never since changed her (917) cellphone number. Erin has taught in community colleges, universities, liberal arts schools, prisons, state schools, and MFA programs in Manhattan, Asheville, Denton, her alma mater in her hometown, Montpelier, and now she’s back in Brooklyn. She is a co-founder of Waxwing, and served as Editor of Hunger Mountain. Her books include the story collection And Yet It Moves, and the novels Every Living Species and the forthcoming Keen (available from Gold Wake Press in September). You can read and hear some of her work at erinstalcup.xyz.

Keen imagines that the ancient Irish custom of hiring women to mourn at funerals has continued into the modern day, and follows the most famous keener in world, Maeve McNamara, during the height of her career. Told in a plural first-person point of view, this book follows the group of people who adore Maeve. Through watching Maeve perform mourning, this collective voice thinks about grief, fame, community, and what we can know about ourselves and others. When a protégé appears and asks Maeve to train her, ideas about race and gender—and ideas about who belongs to what communities, and the tradition of the art of lamentation—all begin to shift and swerve. A hybrid novel/ars poetica/autobiographical essay, Keen attempts to grapple with lineage and innovation, heritage, and what no longer serves us.

For nearly two decades Uptown Pubhouse has hosted readings and book signings from New York Times bestselling authors such as Robert Bly, Dorothy Allison, and Tim Seibles to promising writers at the beginning of their careers. Uptown’s Narrow Chimney reading series won a Viola Award in Literature for its weekly performances.

For more information please visit www.uptownpubhouse.com or email jamesjay@uptownpubhouse.com