Meekling Press

happy birthday to ! who celebrated, in part, with a terrific talk & reading at yesterday, queering the gallery— including talking about Edmondia Lewis — the first professional Black / Native American sculptor in the US who moved to Rome to escape preoccupation with race / skin color; touching on the multitude of unnamed laborers who contributed to this artisan peacock (the gloss is lead based) and how this carries through to today; finishing with a reading from TELEVISION FATHERS (here, “Tenderheaded”); what a pleasure of B’more interconnectedness too to be joined by !

the consensus is GWENDA, RODNEY’s a favorite! here’s a second year-end list featuring Olivia Cronk’s poetry novel as a staff pick x2 ! —via

Come out in your best haute louche for the cabaret-style launch celebration of Olivia Cronk’s exquistely genre-ambiguous poetry novel, Gwenda, Rodney.

with readings by Olivia Cronk, Amanda Goldblatt, Hana Urban, & Raquel Gómez Savoy.

light refreshments & libations will be provided, so please rsvp !

Olivia Cronk is the author of WOMONSTER (Tarpaulin Sky, 2020), Louise and Louise and Louise (The Lettered Streets Press, 2016), and Skin Horse (Action Books, 2012).

Amanda Goldblatt is the author of the novel Hard Mouth and teaches at Northeastern Illinois University with her good friend and co-conspirator Olivia Cronk. More information is available at amandagoldblatt.com.

Hana Urban is a trans and disabled poet based in Chicago. Their work has appeared in Sobotka Literary Review, La Mosca, and others. Hana is set to graduate from Randolph College’s low-res MFA program next year.

Raquel Gómez Savoy is a writer/poet from Chicago. She is working on a poetry collection focusing on trauma and its various, complicated forms. Raquel is obsessed with her rescue dogs and children, in that order.