Ping-Pong Free Press’ 4th Annual Speech is Not Free gathering: Writers Against Fascism and for Freedom of the Press. Ping-Pong Free Press  and Poet Republik Ltd. gathered at the Howl! Happening Gallery in the Bowery to feature readings by writers who oppose fascism and dictatorships, and who are for freedom of the press and against totalitarian notions of state-sponsored propaganda. Read More >

Ping-Pong Free Press’ 4th Annual Speech is Not Free gathering: Writers Against Fascism and for Freedom of the Press. Ping-Pong Free Press and the Henry Miller Memorial Library are proud to feature readings by writers who oppose fascism and dictatorships, and who are for freedom of the press and against totalitarian notions of state-sponsored propaganda.

Ping-Pong Free Press and Poet Republik Ltd. will also feature readings from their newest releases:  Occasionally, I Remove your Brain Through Your Nose, by J. Hope Stein; Invitation to a Rescue, by Kate Lutzner; and Medeaum, by Jameson O’Hara Laurens, with presales of No Ledge Left to Love, by Dylan Krieger.

Readers include: Dylan Krieger, Brenda Coultas, Joanna Fuhrman, Christine Hamm, Kate Lutzner, Jameson O’Hara Laurens, Shelley Marlow, Eleni Sikelianos, Pamela Sneed, J. Hope Stein, and Maria Garcia Teutsch.

Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project

6 East First Street (between Bowery & 2nd Avenue)

New York, NY 10003

(917) 475-1294

contact@howlarts.org

Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project blog here

Henry Miller Memorial Library Blog Here

Kate Lutzner is also having her “soft book launch” at this reading — there will be preview copies of her new chapbook, Invitation to a Rescue, published by Poet Republik, Ltd. Her poetry and stories have appeared in such journals as Antioch Review, Mississippi Review, The Brooklyn Rail, BlazeVOX, Rattle and Barrow Street. Kate holds a J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from City College and has been featured in Verse Daily. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize as well as the Best of the Net Anthology.

Jameson O’Hara Laurens completed her MFA in poetry and translation in 2014, and has collaborated with artists, choreographers, and translators. She is fortunate to call a bilingual secondary literature classroom her professional home, and has recently received research sabbatical and leadership grants for teaching projects. Having grown up in the West, she has an ongoing concern for the natural world, and for all things apiary. She became a feminist writer by necessity. Her work has appeared in Enclave, Alexandria Quarterly, Hawkmoth, and Poet Republik. Medeum is her first collection.

J. Hope Stein is the author of experimental chapbooks Corner Office, [Talking DolI] and [Mary]. She is a Consulting Producer of the film Don’t Think Twice and an Associate Producer of the film Sleepwalk with Me. She is the editor of PoetryCrush.com.

Maria Garcia Teutsch’s chapbook, The Revolution will have its Sky was chosen by Heather McHugh as winner of the Minerva Rising contest in 2015. She still thinks that’s the coolest thing ever. She has published over 25 poetry books in her vast career as Editor in chief of the Homestead Review, Ping-Pong Journal of Art and Literature and the presses, Ping-Pong Free Press and Poet Republik Ltd. In her spare time she teaches at Hartnell College, and serves as President of the Board of Henry Miller Memorial Library.

Christine Hamm has a PhD in American Poetics, and is an editor for Ping Pong Free Press. She is currently an MFA poetry student at Columbia University. Her poetry has been published in Orbis, Nat Brut, BODY, Poetry Midwest, Rattle, Dark Sky, and many others. She has been nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize, and she teaches English at Pace. The New Orleans Review published Christine’s chapbook, A is for Afterimage, and nominated her work for a Pushcart in 2014 and in 2017, Ghostbird Press is publishing an excerpt from her ongoing manuscript, Notes on Wolves and Ruin.

Have you ever been at war with yourself? Have you ever not been? “Devotional poem” by Kate Lutzner, explores this particular human predicament with the precision of an astro-physicist studying the star that may one day annihilate the earth. We here in the Poet Republik love all of Kate’s poetry, and this is just a sample of her forthcoming collection, Invitation to a Rescue which will be out by Poet Republik Ltd. later this month.

Devotional poem

I am at war with myself, all the cells
in my body gathering their weapons,
their fists. The doctor says there will
be a decline, to look for it, to give
myself over to it when the time comes.
I was used to suffering before words
formed on my tongue, my mouth
filled with a concern, the opposite
of empathy. Bits of grief build
like nodules in my throat, all
the devotion that will someday
form there threatening to dissolve
into need. Help me to express
all the uses of my being, to learn
what it means to live with this
urge, this right to nothing
but lending myself to others,
this right to be healed.

Kate Lutzner‘s poetry and stories have appeared in such journals as Antioch Review, Mississippi Review, The Brooklyn Rail, BlazeVOX, Rattle and Barrow Street. She was awarded the Robert Frost Poetry Prize by Kenyon College and is recipient of the Jerome Lowell Dejur Award and the Stark Short Fiction Prize. Kate holds a J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from City College. She has been featured in Verse Daily. Kate has a novel, The Only One Who Loves You, on Amazon Kindle.