Writers Guild Spoken Word Series

featuring Ross Gay (poetry), John James (poetry), Shana Ritter (poetry and fiction)

music by Hoosier Darling (gospel trio)

+ an open mic

$5 suggested donation

SHANA RITTER‘s newly completed novel, In the Time of Leaving, is set in Spain in 1492. Shana grew up in New York but lives out in the country near Bloomington, Indiana. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in Lilith, Fifth Wednesday, Georgetown Review and others. Her chapbook, Stairs of Separation, was published by Finishing Line Press.Shana has been a recipient of the Indiana Individual Artist Grant multiple times. She offers workshops, interviews and readings.

JOHN JAMES is the author of The Milk Hours, selected by Henri Cole for the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize (Milkweed, 2019). He is also the author of Chthonic, winner of the 2014 CutBank Chapbook Award. His poems appear in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry Northwest, Best American Poetry 2017, and elsewhere. A digital collagist, his image-text experiments appear in Quarterly West, The Adroit Journal, and LIT.

ROSS GAY is the author of three books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His collection of essays,The Book of Delights, was released by Algonquin Books in 2019.