Bathhouse Events this Semester

Writers Tisa Bryant (author of Unexplained Presence) and Douglas Kearney (author of The Black Automaton) will be visiting us for two events (see below for details and book plugs). On Tuesday (11/5), our guests will read from their creative work, and this will be followed on Wednesday (11/6) with each writer presenting a talk/presentation on some aspect of their creative practice. 

 

 

Unexplained Presence

Tisa Bryant. 

Fiction. Essays. African-American Studies. By remixing stories from novels and films to zoom in on the black presences within them, Tisa Bryant's UNEXPLAINED PRESENCE ruminates on the sublime power of history to shape culture in the subconscious of both the artist and the reader/viewer. Moving from interrogations of Francois Ozon's "8 Femmes" and Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" to the machinations of the "Regency House Party" reality TV show, UNEXPLAINED PRESENCE weaves threads of myth, fact and fiction into previously unexplored narratives lurking in our collective imagination. "This is truly a bold book, one that combines scenes of rich technicolor with the light of truth, at once invoking and dissolving cultural myths and faux histories" -Brenda Coultas.

The Black Automaton

Douglas Kearney

Poetry. African American Studies. Winner of the National Poetry Series, selected by Catherine Wagner. From ambivalent animals thriving after Katrina to party chants echoing in a burning city, THE BLACK AUTOMATON troubles rubble, cobbling a kind of life. In this collection bodies at risk seek renewal through violence and fertility, history and myth, flesh and radios. "First, you have to see Douglas Kearney's visual poems, which cheekily diagram cultural memes as if they were parts of speech (as they are). THE BLACK AUTOMATON has its share of sharp, tender lyrics, too...these exploit the political possibilities of puns and the way meanings hinge on inexact resemblance. Kearney's poems tweak and skewer pop culture and literary sources from Paul Laurence Dunbar to T. S. Eliot to traditional ballads and blues...Kearney's work turns poetic and cultural conventions disquietingly inside out."—Catherine Wagner