Leah Umansky & DJ Ceremony present:
“COUPLET”—A Quarterly Poetry Reading Series & Social at The Delancey, LES.
Fall 2014 Edition: Friday, October 17, 2014. (The Three Year Annniversary!)

Hosted by poet Leah Umansky, Couplet is a quarterly reading series held on the Lower East Side featuring both emerging and established poets. Every event features music & after-party by DJ Ceremony.

#CoupletNYC (Instagram/Twitter)

This edition’s featured poets:

1. JASON KOO
Jason Koo is the author of two collections of poetry, America’s Favorite Poem (C&R Press, 2014) and Man on Extremely Small Island (C&R Press, 2009), and is winner of the De Novo Poetry Prize and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop Members’ Choice Award for the best Asian American book of 2009. An assistant professor of English at Quinnipiac University, Koo is also the founder and executive director of Brooklyn Poets, a nonprofit organization celebrating and cultivating the poets, poetry and literary heritage of Brooklyn, where he lives.

2. RACHEL McKIBBENS
Rachel McKibbens is the author of Pink Elephant (2009) and Into the Dark & Emptying Field (2013) a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, as well as a chapbook Mammoth (2014.) For four years, McKibbens taught poetry through the Healing Arts Program at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan and continues to teach poetry and creative writing and give lectures across the country as an advocate for mental health awareness, gender-equality and victims of violence and domestic abuse.

3. HILA RATZABI
Hila Ratzabi was selected by Adrienne Rich as a recipient of a National Writers Union Poetry Prize and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is the author of the chapbook The Apparatus of Visible Things (Finishing Line Press). Her poetry is published in The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, Narrative, Alaska Quarterly Review, Drunken Boat, About Place, The Normal School, H_NGM_N, Cortland Review, and others. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and lives in Philadelphia where she founded the Red Sofa Salon & Poetry Workshop.

4. JOHN REED
John Reed is the author of the novels, A Still Small Voice (Delacorte Press), The Whole (MTV / Simon & Schuster), the SPD bestseller, Snowball’s Chance (Roof Books, tenth anniversary edition from Melville House), All The World’s A Grave: A New Play By William Shakespeare (Penguin / Plume), and Tales of Woe (MTV Press); MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University; fiction, essays, poetry and cultural criticism published in (selected): Paper Magazine, Popmatters, the Brooklyn Rail, the New York Press, Timeout New York, Artforum, Bomb Magazine, Playboy, Vice Magazine, Out Magazine, Art in America, the PEN Poetry Series, the Los Angeles Times, the Good Men Project, the Paris Review, the Believer, the Rumpus, the Daily Beast, Gawker, Slate, the Wall Street Journal; two-term member of the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle; current Faculty at The New School University.

5. TALIA SHALEV
Talia Shalev has taught writing at the University of Washington, Brooklyn College, and Stern College for Women, as well as in various summer programs. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Washington and is currently an Enhanced Chancellor’s Fellow at the Graduate Center, CUNY, where she is pursuing a PhD in English. Talia is also assistant poetry editor for the Los Angeles Review and a co-editor of the recently released “What We Are Part Of: Teaching at CUNY: 1968 – 1974,” a selection of the poet Adrienne Rich’s syllabi, teaching notes, and course exercises (Lost & Found Series IV, CUNY Center for the Humanities). Her poems have appeared in Mare Nostrum and the Seattle Review, for which she received the journal’s Kameros Prize.

Your Hostess:
Leah Umansky is the author of the Mad-Men inspired chapbook, Don Dreams and I Dream and a full length collection, Domestic Uncertainties. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Philadelphia Review of Books, & Coconut Poetry. Her next full-length collection will focus on gender & power in our 21st century world and in the worlds of GoT & MM. She also hosts and curates the COUPLET Reading Series in NYC. When she’s not teaching, reading, collaging, writing or watching Mad Men or Game of Thrones, you can follow her at @Lady_Bronte.. Find more of her work at: www.iammyownheroine.wordpress.com/

Your DJ:
Co-producer of Couplet, DJ Ceremony has played at well over 150 venues in and around New York City since 2001. He is the current producer and DJ of the celebrated monthly NYC Smiths & Morrissey fan party at The Gallery At LPR: “Oscillate Wildly”. He also founded and co-produced a weekly neo-burlesque and variety show: “Corruption At Tammany Hall” in 2012, and currently produces an array of special themed parties around New York City. www.djceremony.com

Leah Umansky & DJ Ceremony present:
“COUPLET”—A Quarterly Poetry Reading Series & Social
Fall 2014 Edition: The 3 Year Anniversary!
Hosted by poet Leah Umansky with music by DJ Ceremony
Friday, October 17, 2014, 7 to 10 PM
Venue: The Delancey, Lower live performance level
168 Delancey Street (Between Clinton & Attorney)
Lower East Side, NYC
#CoupletNYC