Read the Flea with Seven Cleveland Authors this September
This September, The Flea goes literary in support of Cleveland Book Week. In addition to hosting an on-site popup bookshop and literary cafe, seven local authors will share our stage for short readings of their works on the half hour. We recommend grabbing a drink at the bar and getting cozy under the tent before readings start. Select authors will have work for sale during their performances, so don't forget to bring a bit of cash!
Cleveland Book Week, which runs September 10–16, is a production of The Cleveland Foundation. A full list of the week's activities can be found on the organization's website. Follow the hashtags #CBW2016 and #ReadTheFlea on social media for event photos and updates!
SCHEDULE OF READINGS
9:30am–David Giffels
David Giffels is the author of The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches From the Rust Belt (Scribner 2014), nominated for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvoget Award for the Art of the Essay, and the memoir All the Way Home (William Morrow/HarperCollins 2008), winner of the Ohioana Book Award. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, Parade, the Wall Street Journal, Esquire.com, Grantland.com, Redbook, and many other publications. He also was a writer for the MTV series Beavis and Butt-Head. He is an associate professor of English at University of Akron, where he teaches creative nonfiction in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts Program.
10:30am–Eva Barrett
Eva Barrett is a poet and playwright from Cleveland, OH. She is a 2014 graduate of the Cleveland School of the Arts and is currently studying History and German at Case Western Reserve University. Eva’s primary artistic focus is studying discourse as power in dialogue and public space, and translating the nuances of human interactions into written and spoken word. She has facilitated classes and workshops in playwriting, poetry, and the historical analysis of poetry, centered around the intersections of postcolonial studies and erotic subjectivity. Eva was the 2016 recipient of the Rocks Experiential Learning Fellowship, with which she travelled to participate in the James Madison University Undergraduate Writing Conference. She is currently an artist in residence at the Cleveland School of the Arts.
11:30am–Dave Lucas
Dave Lucas is the author of Weather (Georgia, 2011), which received the 2012 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. The same year, Rita Dove named him as one of thirteen “young poets to watch.” He has also been awarded a “Discovery”/The Nation Prize, a Creative Workforce Fellowship from the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, and a 2016 Cleveland Arts Prize. A co-founder of Brews + Prose at Market Garden Brewery and Cleveland Book Week, he teaches at Case Western Reserve University and serves as the inaugural Cuyahoga County Public Library Writer in Residence at the William N. Skirball Writers’ Center.
12:30pm–Ali McClain
Ali McClain is a poet, educator, consultant and youth advocate. She directs one of the City's most successful after school and summer program for girls ages 10-18 at West Side Community House (WSCH). WSCH is a nonprofit social service agency on Cleveland's West Side. Literacy is the heart of the Sisterhood program as it prepares girls for womanhood and their life beyond. Ali has been writing and performing poetry for over 15 years. She believes that art is her power tool for healing and she is determined to heal others through language. She has taught and performed at Playhouse Square, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, various schools throughout Cuyahoga County and elsewhere. She is also the co-founder of acerbic, an arts collective dedicated to providing a safe and resourceful home for artists of color. She is currently working on her first collection of poetry and is a current graduate student for poetry at Cleveland State University's NEOMFA program.
1:30pm–Michael Clune
Michael W. Clune's White Out was chosen as a "Best Book of 2013" by The New Yorker, NPR, and other venues. Gamelife appeared in 2015 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. His most recent critical book is Writing Against Time (Stanford University Press, 2013). He is a professor of English at Case Western Reserve University.
2:30pm–Aubrey Hirsch
Aubrey Hirsch is the author of a short story collection, Why We Never Talk About Sugar, and a flash fiction chapbook, This Will Be His Legacy. Her work has appeared in Third Coast, American Short Fiction, Hobart, The Los Angeles Review and The New York Times, among others. She currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Oberlin College.
3:30pm–RA Washington
RA Washington is the author of over 25 books, including The Paris Notebooks (NightBallet Press, 2015) and the novel CITI (Red Giant Books, 2015). In 2014, Washington was awarded a Creative Workforce Fellowship from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, and a retrospective containing more than 100 of his multi-media projects, music and writing was organized for Fact/co in Montreal, Quebec through Constellation Records. In 2013 Washington Co-founded Guide To Kulchur: Text, Art & News, a bookstore, publishing imprint and show space located in Cleveland’s Historic Detroit Shoreway Neighborhood.
Having a great time and want to share with friends? Use the hashtags #CBW2016 and #ReadTheFlea on social media.