Monthly Archives: June 2011

As usual, Bill Hughes’ photographs of our Saturday June 25 readings deserve a post all their own.

Bruce Jacobs and John Barry

Marion Winik

Grisby

Jay Imbrenda

Caryn Colye

Betsy Boyd, Deborah Rudacille

Bruce Jacobs

Clockwise from top left: Caryn Coyle, John Barry, Jay Imbrenda, Marion Winik, and Bruce Jacobs. Photo display by Bill Hughes

Saturday again, as we often say, brought surprises that we couldn’t have planned no matter how hard we tried. The evening began with Caryn Coyle, with a retelling of a visit with her father/World War II vet to the Air and Space Museum. That was followed by Jay Imbrenda’s meditation on the distance between teachers and students. Marion Winik, explained that it ain’t easy dating a convicted murderer. And Bruce Jacobs, interjecting saxophone and his own writing, gave us a feeling for what saxophone playing really is.

On June 25th, The New Mercury Nonfiction Readings  returns, with four more Baltimore nonfiction writers.  Come, enjoy, meet up with other writers, don’t pay for admission, but buy a drink, enjoy the informal atmosphere, and check out the Windup Space, on North Avenue and St. Paul Street at the heart of the  Arts District.  Readings begin at 5:30 and end at 7:30. Hope to see you there. Here are our four readers:

Jay Imbrenda

Jay Imbrenda is the Chair of the Literary Arts Department at Carver Center for Arts and Technology, a magnet school in Towson.  He spends his time there complicit in all sorts of teenage shenanigans, while doing his best to guide a clan of talented students toward being better writers than he will ever be.  Nonetheless, he occasionally answers the muse’s call, and hopes to soon revisit his old hobby of collecting rejection slips.  A graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, he has taught at JHU, Goucher College, and Towson University, and was recently awarded the ISTE Sigol Award for Online Learning.

Bruce Jacobs

Bruce A. Jacobs is an author and musician. His current performances treat words and music as one. His latest nonfiction book is RACE MANNERS FOR THE 21st Century, published by Arcade/Skyhorse. His books of poems are SPEAKING THROUGH MY SKIN (Michigan State University Press) and CATHODE RAY BLUES (Tropos Press). He has appeared on NPR, C-SPAN, Sirius, Pacifica, and other networks. His work has appeared in dozens of literary journals and anthologies, including 180 MORE, edited by former Poet Laureate Billy Collins. Bruce founded the long-running First Tuesdays Poetry Reading Series at Irina’s Cafe in Baltimore in the 1990s, and he has won poetry slams in Baltimore and at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York City. He also writes a weekly Tuesday poetry blog at agonist.com, and a race and politics blog at aliasbruce.typepad.com. He plays drums, words, and saxophone. A friend has promised she will teach him how to whistle through his teeth.

Marion Winik

Marion Winik is the author of eight books of creative nonfiction and poetry, most recently THE GLEN ROCK BOOK OF THE DEAD (Counterpoint, 2008.) Her other works include TELLING (Random House, 1994), a best-selling collection of personal essays; FIRST COMES LOVE (Random House, 1996), a memoir now in development for motion-picture release; THE LUNCH-BOX CHRONICLES (Random House, 1998); RULES FOR THE UNRULY (Simon and Schuster, 2001) and ABOVE US ONLY SKY (Seal Press, 2005.) She is also the author of two books of poetry. Winik’s essays and articles have been published in The New York Times Magazine, O, Salon, and Real Simple, among others, and she was a columnist for Ladies Home Journal from 2008-2011. Her commentaries for All Things Considered are collected on the npr.org website. She reviews books for Newsday, More, and The Los Angeles Times. Currently teaching writing at the University of Baltimore, Winik was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Non-Fiction and has been inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. She has appeared on the Today Show, Politically Incorrect and Oprah.

Caryn Coyle

Four years ago, Caryn Coyle’s first story appeared in the online literary journal JMWW.  Since then, her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in more than a dozen literary journals and the anthology, City Sages: Baltimore, which was published in the spring of 2010 by City Lit Press.  Her latest story, “Ballerina” is published in the summer 2011 issue of Little Patuxent Review.   She won the 2009 Maryland Writers Association Fiction Award.