Citizen: An American Lyric

<h4>Nick Flynn’s most recent book, The Reenactments, which Kirkus calls “a truly insightful, original work,” completes a trilogy begun with Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (2004). His previous book, The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands (2011), was a collection of poems linked to the second book of the trilogy, The Ticking is the Bomb (2010), which the Los Angeles Times called a “disquieting masterpiece.” Another Bullshit Night in Suck City won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, was shortlisted for France’s Prix Femina, and has been translated into fifteen languages. He is also the author of a play, Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins (2008), as well as two other books of poetry, Some Ether (2000), and Blind Huber (2002), for which he received fellowships from, among other organizations, The Guggenheim Foundation and The Library of Congress. Some of the venues his poems, essays and nonfiction have appeared in include The New Yorker, The Paris Review, National Public Radio’s This American Life, and The New York Times Book Review. His film credits include artistic collaborator and “field poet” on the film Darwin’s Nightmare (nominated for an Academy Award for best feature documentary in 2006), as well as executive producer and artistic collaborator on Being Flynn, the film version of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (2012, Focus Features, directed by Paul Weitz, starring Robert De Niro, Paul Dano, Julianne Moore, and Lili Taylor). A professor in the creative writing program at the University of Houston, where he teaches each spring, he then spends the rest of the year in (or near) Brooklyn.</h4>

Nick Flynn

<h4>Mark Nowak, a 2010 Guggenheim fellow, is an award-winning poet, social critic, and labor activist, whose writings include The New York Times “Editor’s Choice,” Shut Up Shut Down (2004, afterword by Amiri Baraka), and the acclaimed book on coal mining disasters in the US and China, Coal Mountain Elementary (2009), that Howard Zinn called “a stunning educational tool.” He is currently the director of the graduate creative writing program at Manhattanville College.</h4>

Mark Nowak

<h4>Ruth Ellen Kocher is the author of Ending in Planes ( Noemi Press, 2014), Goodbye Lyric: The Gigans and Lovely Gun (Sheep Meadow Press, 2014), domina Un/blued (Tupelo Press, 2013), One Girl Babylon (New Issues Press, 2003), When the Moon Knows You’re Wandering (New Issues Press, 2002), and Desdemona’s Fire (Lotus Press 1999). Her poems have been translated into Persian in the Iranian literary magazine She’r and have appeared in various anthologies including, Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poets, Black Nature, From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great, An Anthology for Creative Writers: The Garden of Forking Paths, IOU: New Writing On Money, New Bones: Contemporary Black Writing in America. Her work has been published in numerous journals including Torch, Diode, The Medulla Review, Anti-, Callaloo, The Cartier Review, Blackbird, The Superstition Review, Square One, ditch, the Denver Quarterly, and Drunken Boat, Cimarron Review, Ploughshares, African American Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Missouri Review, Washington Square Journal, Crab Orchard Review, and ninth letter among others. She won the Dorset Prize and the 2014 PEN/Open Book Award, and has been awarded fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets, and Yaddo. She has taught poetry writing for the University of Missouri, Southern Illinois University, the New England College Low Residency MFA program, the Indiana Summer Writer’s workshop, and Washington University’s Summer Writing program. She is Associate Chair and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Colorado where she teaches Poetry, Poetics, and Literature, and is a Contributing Editor at Poets &amp; Writers Magazine.</h4>
&nbsp;

Ruth Ellen Kocher

<h4>Born in New York, poet Carmen Giménez Smith earned a BA in English from San Jose State University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa. She writes lyric essays as well as poetry, and is the author of the poetry chapbook Casanova Variations (2009), the full-length collection Odalisque in Pieces (2009), and the memoir Bring Down the Little Birds: On Mothering, Art, Work, and Everything Else(2010). Her most recent book, Milk and Filth (2013), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Giménez Smith’s work explores issues affecting the lives of females, including Latina identity, and frequently references myth and memory.</h4>

Carmen Giménez Smith

Roundtable on “Citizen: An American Lyric,” Part II

"I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry." — John Cage

Poetry

Roundtable on “Citizen: An American Lyric,” Part I

Mark Nowak, a 2010 Guggenheim fellow, is an award-winning poet, social critic, and labor activist, whose writings include The New York Times “Editor’s Choice,” Shut Up Shut Down (2004, afterword by Amiri Baraka), and the acclaimed book on coal mining disasters in the US and China, Coal Mountain Elementary (2009), that Howard Zinn called “a stunning educational tool.” He is currently the director of the graduate creative writing program at Manhattanville College.