InKY

Open mic at 7, solo set by Sean Hopkins at 7:30, readings by Bianca Spriggs and Alessandra Lynch at 8 p.m.! As always, InKY is free and open to you, our adoring public.

Alessandra Lynch is the author of two books of poetry: Sails the Wind Left Behind, winner of Alice James Books’ New York/New England Prize, and It was ...a terrible cloud at twilight, winner of Pleiades Press’ Lena-Miles Wever Todd Award. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals. Originally from New York, she now lives near an Indianapolisian canal and teaches at Butler University.

Bianca Spriggs is an events organizer for the Lexington Art League and a freelance instructor of composition, literature, and creative writing. She is the creator and programmer of the Gypsy Poetry Slam featured annually at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference. An Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem Fellow, Bianca is the author of a collection of poetry, "KaffirLily," forthcoming from Wind Publications, and her work may be found in the anthologies, New Growth: Recent Kentucky Writings, America! What's My Name? and the journals, Caduceus, Alehouse, and the Appalachian Heritage Magazine.

Musical guest Sean Hopkins is the former lead singer of the alt-country band Dallas Alice, one of the loudest, drunkest, foul-mouthed, and downright fun bands you are never going to see again. He'll be singing songs about coal miners, fast women and sad towns, so bring your union card and buy him a beer.Read More

Open mic at 7 - Music at 7:30 - Featured readers at 8

Richard Newman is the author of the poetry collections Domestic Fugues and Borrowed Towns, as well as several chapbooks, including Monster Gallery: 19 Terrifying and Amazing Monster Sonnets! and 24 Tall Boys: Dark Verse for Light Times. His poems, stories, and essays... have appeared in Ted Kooser's "American Life in Poetry," Best American Poetry 2006, Boulevard, Crab Orchard Review, Poetry Daily, StoryQuarterly, Tar River Poetry, The Sun, and many other periodicals and anthologies. He earned his MFA at Spalding University, he lives in St. Louis where he teaches at Washington University and St. Louis Community College and serves as editor of River Styx.

Click for a larger version of this photo.Derek Mong is the 2008 – 2010 Axton Fellow in Poetry at the University of Louisville. From 2006 – 2007 he was the Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His awards include The Missouri Review’s Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Choice Prize, two Pushcart nominations, Alehouse’s Happy Hour Poetry Award, and two Hopwoods. His poems, translations, and prose have appeared in The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, The Kenyon Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, TriQuarterly, Courtgreen, and Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes (C & R Press, 2009). In 2011 Saturnalia Books will publish his debut collection.

Joel Henderson is a singer/songwriter based in Louisville. Heartfelt lyrics and wit are at the core of many songwriters' work, but the ability to translate feelings to others is where Joel Henderson sets himself apart. With true-to-self lyrics and timeless melodies, Joel's sound is a refreshing blend of old standards and modern sensibilities, mixing folk, country, jazz and early American pop influences. Read More

Jim Tomlinson lives and writes in Berea, Kentucky. His debut short story collection, Things Kept, Things Left Behind, won the 2006 Iowa Short Fiction Award. His work has appeared in Five Points, Shenandoah, Bellevue Literary Review, New Stories From The South 2008 and elsewhere. Jim is the recipient of a 2008 National ...Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. His new book of stories, Nothing Like An Ocean, was published earlier this year by University Press of Kentucky as part of their Kentucky Voices Series.

Squire Babcock is the author of The King of Gaheena, a novel. Raised in well-to-do suburban Louisville, he hit bottom in 1972 when he was arrested and jailed for possession of heroin. In the ensuing years, he worked as a ballroom dance instructor, farm hand, weigh-man in a cotton gin, hunting guide, pool table repair mechanic, small business owner, carpenter, free-lance journalist and blues drummer. In 1996 Kentucky Governor Brereton Jones pardoned Babcock's heroin conviction. He currently is associate professor of English at Murray State University, where he has taught English and creative writing for 17 years and heads up the Low-Residency MFA Program in creative writing.

Brigid Kaelin is a plucky redhead. Think Lyle Lovett meets Cole Porter, sung by Natalie Merchant — and played on the accordion. Witty lyrics, intelligent humor. Part pop, part swing, part country, and all original, Brigid plays accordion, piano, guitar, musical saw, and she yodels on demand. Read More

Featuring readings by:

Louisville native Tania James is the author of Atlas of Unknowns, her debut novel recently published by Alfred Knopf. A graduate of the Kentucky Governor's School for the Arts, she studied filmmaking at Harvard University and received her MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Her story "Aerogra...mmes," published in One Story, was selected as one of the 100 Distinguished Stories of 2008 by Best American Short Stories.

Thomas Jeffrey Vasseur is the author of Discovering the World: Thirteen Stories and Touch the Earth: An Aftermath of the Vietnam War. He has received a Utah Fiction Award, a North Point Fellowship, an NEH Grant to UC Berkeley, and is a two-time finalist for Georgia’s Townsend Award for fiction. A native of Kentucky, he graduated from Transylvania University with a degree in English and Philosophy and received a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Utah. He teaches in the English department at Valdosta State University and is the former MFA coordinator at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Our musical guest in May will be Louisville singer/songwriter William Bartley.Read More

Featuring readings by:

Louisville native Tania James is the author of Atlas of Unknowns, her debut novel recently published by Alfred Knopf. A graduate of the Kentucky Governor's School for the Arts, she studied filmmaking at Harvard University and received her MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Her story "Aerogra...mmes," published in One Story, was selected as one of the 100 Distinguished Stories of 2008 by Best American Short Stories.

Thomas Jeffrey Vasseur is the author of Discovering the World: Thirteen Stories and Touch the Earth: An Aftermath of the Vietnam War. He has received a Utah Fiction Award, a North Point Fellowship, an NEH Grant to UC Berkeley, and is a two-time finalist for Georgia’s Townsend Award for fiction. A native of Kentucky, he graduated from Transylvania University with a degree in English and Philosophy and received a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Utah. He teaches in the English department at Valdosta State University and is the former MFA coordinator at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Our musical guest in May will be Louisville singer/songwriter William Bartley.Read More

Lisa Williams is the author of Woman Reading to the Sea, which won the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and The Hammered Dulcimer, which won the May Swenson Poetry Award. She was awarded the Rome Prize in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004. She received her M.F.A. from the University of Virginia, ...where she was awarded a Henry Hoynes fellowship in poetry. Williams' poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Orion, The Missouri Review, Measure, Virginia Quarterly Review and other magazines, Best American Poetry 2009, and The Best American Erotic Poems: 1800 to Present. Originally from Nashville, Tennessee, she is Associate Professor of English at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.

Chris Forhan is the author of the poetry collections The Actual Moon, The Actual Stars and Forgive Us Our Happiness, as well as two chapbooks, x and Crumbs of Bread. His poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry 2008, Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology, Poetry, Paris Review, and many other journals and anthologies. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the Samuel French Morse Prize, and the Pushcart Prize, he teaches creative writing at Butler University in Indianapolis.

Our musical guest in April will be Nashville-based singer/songwriter Korby Lenker.Read More