Miles Budimir's newest chapbook is Departures (Burning River Press, 2012). His poetry has recently appeared in The Long Islander, Red Fez, Compost 2010, and MoonLit, among others. His day gigs include freelance technical writing and teaching philosophy courses to the college-aged youth of America. He lives in Cleveland, OH.  "With 'Departures,' Miles Budimir takes readers on a journey that often leaves us on the outside looking into the human heart." - John Dorsey, Author of "Sodomy is a City in New Jersey" (American Mettle Books, 2010)  

Steve Goldberg has been part of the Cleveland poetry scene for longer than anyone expected. He has been published in many of Cleveland's small press anthologies and even tied for third place in the 2008 Hessler Street Fair poetry competition.  Steve has been a featured reader at many Cleveland area venues including Visible Voice Books, as well as a few dive bars, shady theaters, and bordellos across the country. In a poorly veiled attempt at self-promotion, he has also been interviewed on local poetry radio show, Wordplay, by renown poet George Bilgere after being plied with beer. Steve also organized a monthly poetry free-for-all for 4 years at the Literary Café in the historic Cleveland neighborhood of Tremont and a once in a millennium poetry spectacular on November 11, 2011.  He claims to run the small press, WhatsInTheBag, but seems to only have put out his own book, Tremont Crawl, which, of course, is available at Visible Voice Books.

Bree is a Cleveland poet and the woman behind Green Panda Press which has produced chapbooks and anthologies by independent poets since 2001. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines such as Arthur, Big Bridge, Ecstatic Peace, Bottom Dog, Bottle of Smoke, Kirpan and other presses. She is the author of poetry collections and memoirs including THE RAINBOW SWEATER & MY MOTHER (Green Panda 2011), LET CUPID KNOW (Ronin 2011), LAYING PANS (Ecstatic Peace 2009), Was Chicken Trax Amid Sparrows Tread (Temple 2009). Much of her poetry is online at http://breepoems.blogspot.com/.

Let's start with The Others! Joe Rollin Porter on guitar and vocals, Mike Pereira on bass and vocals. Sheela Das on guitar, pennywhistle, vocals, and possibly kazoo if the moment strikes and Carl DeScott on drums. This is a blues, rock, folk group that packs musical and vocal harmony into the sound. We electrify traditional music with flute and guitars. This band formed by the traditional formula: musicians, plus basement, plus sound system = Sheela and The Others.  Check out this video of the summery sound of Sheela and her musical pals!

Join us for a monthly reading series held at The Market Garden Brewery with books provided by Visible Voice. Pauline Chen was born in California, and grew up in Stony Brook, New York. After studying classics at Harvard and law at Yale, she completed a doctorate in Chinese literature at Princeton University. Her dissertation focused on the late Tang poets Du Fu, Li He, and Li Shangyin. She has taught Chinese language, literature, and film at the University of Minnesota and Oberlin College. She is the author of Peiling and the Chicken-Fried Christmas, a novel for young readers. Her essays on Chinese film have appeared in Cineaste and Film Comment. The Red Chamber is her first book for adults, and has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and Polish. Pauline lives in Oberlin, Ohio, with her two children.

Michael Heaton is an award-winning columnist and reporter. His byline has appeared regularly in the Plain Dealer since 1987. Prior to that he was a critic and columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and a reporter for People magazine. He is a graduate of Kent State University. He is co-author of the New York Times bestseller Motherhood and Hollywood by his sister, actress Patricia Heaton, and co-author of I'll Be Right Back, the autobiography of TV host Mike Douglas. A book collecting his Plain Dealer columns, titled Best of the Minister of Culture, was published in 1992. The son of legendary Plain Dealer sportswriter Chuck Heaton, he lives in Bay Village, Ohio.   This event, sponsored by Visible Voice Books, will take place at the Market Garden Brewery, located in Ohio City.

Friday, February 8, 2013 6 - 10 pm Tremont ArtWalk 

The Natural Order of Things, comprised of 15 interconnected stories, is properly thought of as a novel in the tradition of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio or John Steinbeck's The Pastures of Heaven, but with a gothic sensibility. The novel concerns the adventures and exploits of a small group of students, teachers, employees, and priests at a Jesuit prep school in a dying industrial city. Its stories harbor star quarterbacks who sabotage important games, the head coach with a gambling addiction wagering on his own team, an elderly priest suffering from acute memory loss who dabbles in heretical beliefs, and others who swim against the tides of society's proscribed roles. "The Black Death of Gentile da Foligno" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by author Thomas E. Kennedy. Another story, "Uncreated Creatures," was nominated for a StorySouth Million Writers Award by the editor of The Stickman Review. A third story, "The Spy" won second prize for the Lorain County/Ohio Arts Council Award, judged by Nancy Zafris, editor of The Kenyon Review.

Cheers!

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Cleveland, Ohio 44113
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