SpokenWord Paris

Bill Moran is a performance poet and former medic from Houston, TX.  He is a two-time Austin Poetry Slam Champion, and has an MFA Poetry degree from Louisiana State University. He has toured regularly since 2011, performing and teaching throughout the UK, Europe, Australia, Southeast Asia, and the US. His work has been featured on Button Poetry (video), University of Hell Press, Alien Mouth, Pressure Gauge Press, and Phoebe. He currently lives and works in Houston as a teaching artist for Writers in the Schools, and his solo debut book ‘Oh God Get Out Get Out is now available through Write Bloody Publishing.

Daniel Wilner is a degenerate and a gentleman. Known as Uncle Lush he comprises one half of the Brooklyn based rap group Brotherz Grimm and has performed at NYC open mikes like the Nuyorican, Art of Lyrics, and End of the Weak, as well as Paris Lit Up. He is a slang aficionado, ill drunken master of freestyling, and overall pretty nice guy. His new solo project Lush Life will be released in 2020.

Ed Bell isn’t looking for paradise, despite the thorny road that has led him to the here and now. As host of a Paris-based literary association for the last three years, he has encountered hundreds of short, yet lived, experiences. A notable theme throughout has been that of separation, uprooting, expulsion: Odysseus tossed by a hundred Seas, and Penelope besieged by a hundred Suitors. This performance will use the media of elegiac poetry, blues piano, Norwegian dance and  plaintive voice to sing The Lamentable Tragedy of the Happy Exile.  

Jeffrey Greene has published five collections of poetry.  He is the author of the memoir French Spirits and three personalized nature books.  A fourth nature book, Seven Music Forests, is in production. He is also the author of Shades of the Other Shore, a book of mixed genre writing: sketches, prose pieces, and poetry written in collaboration with painter Ralph Petty.  His writing has been supported by the NEA, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and Rinehart Fund, and he was a winner of the Samuel French Morse Prize, the Randall Jarrell Award, and the “Discovery”/ The Nation Award.  His poems, short stories, and essays have appeared numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, Ploughshares, Agni, Southwest Review and the anthologies Strangers in Paris, Intimacy, and Nothing to Declare: A Guide to Flash Sequence. He is professor emeritus at the American University of Paris and mentors for the Pan-European MFA Program, with its residency in Barcelona this year. 

Rethabile Masilo is a Mosotho poet who has lived in France for more than 30 years.  He left his country,
Lesotho, as a refugee in 1981, eventually ending up in the USA where he continued his biology studies. He moved to France in 1987. Rethabile has published four books of poetry and two poetry anthologies. In 2014 his poem ‘Swimming’ from the book Waslap won the Dalro First Prize in poetry, as well as the Thomas Pringle Award for Poetry in Periodicals a year later.  The poem had first appeared in the magazine New Coin, Vol. 49, Number 1, in June 2013. In 2016 his second volume Waslap, published by The Onslaught Press, was awarded the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. That same year in October he was invited to participate in the 20th Poetry Africa Festival in Darban, and in June 2019 in the International Poetry Festival of Medellin. Masilo’s books are Things that are silent (Pindrop Press, 2012), Waslap (The Onslaught Press, 2015), Letter to country (Canopic Publishing, 2016), and Ooaling (The Onslaught Press, 2018). He blogs at Poéfrika (http://poefrika.blogspot.com) and co-edits Canopic Jar
(https://www.canopicpublishing.com/blog) with the writer Phil Rice. He is currently writing poems toward a fifth volume.

Jennifer Blowdryer

JENNIFER BLOWDRYER got her dumb name from her SF punk band, the Blowdryers, in 1977. She’s written columns for Maximin rock’n’roll, New York press, and downtown, and her books include: white trash debutante, modern English : a slang dictionary, and Good Advice for young trendy people of all ages. She remains a band singer/writer, recent releases include Blowdryer Punk Soul: Pinot Grigio and 4 Essays – the most harmless person you are ever going to meet in your life, Bent Boy Press, SF, 2018. She lives in NYCs East Village.

SpokenWord theme (should you want to follow it): Forests

Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, Carrie Chappell is the author of many poems, some of which have appeared in 45th Parallel, Anastamos, CALAMITY, Cimarron Review, cream city review, FORTH Magazine, Harpur Palate, Leveler, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and those that this. Her lyric and book essays have been published in DIAGRAM, Fanzine, The Iowa Review, The Rumpus, The Rupture, and Xavier Review. Since completing her Master of Fine Arts from the University of New Orleans’ Creative Writing Workshop in 2013, she has shared her creative and scholarly writing both in print and in public readings and has actively sought to publish essays that continue the discussion of contemporary women-authored texts. Each April, she curates the Verse of April project, a digital anthology of homage to the poets. Currently, she lives in Paris, France, and serves as Poetry Editor for Sundog Lit.