september 23 • 8PM

THE URBANE ARTS CLUB

Carissa Chesanek is a Brooklyn-based writer with an MFA in Creative Writing (fiction) from The New School. Her creative work has appeared in The Rumpus, The Brooklyn Rail, Writer’s Digest, BOMB, Electric Literature, and Litro Magazine, where her creative non-fiction essay, “White Deer,” won the Art of Reflection competition. Currently, she is a volunteer mentor with Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Visible Ink writing program for cancer patients and co-host of the Sunday Salon reading series in New York City.

Cat Fitzpatrick is the Editrix at LittlePuss Press and teaches at Rutgers University—Newark. Her novel-in-rhyme The Call-Out won the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction. She has also published a collection of poems, Glamourpuss, and co-edited the anthology Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction & Fantasy from Transgender Writers, which won the 2018 ALA Stonewall Barbara Gittings Award for Literature. Her most recent book, The Dinner Party: A Book About Love is out now from Seven Stories Press.

Elizabeth T. Gray Jr. is a poet, translator, critic, and corporate consultant. Poetry collections include Salient (New Directions), and After the Operation and Series | India (Four Way Books). Her translations from classical and contemporary Persian include Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season, selected poems of Forough Farrokhzad (New Directions, Finalist for the PEN Prize for Poetry in Translation 2023) and The Green Sea of Heaven: Eighty Ghazals from the Diwan of Hafiz: 30th Anniversary Edition (Monkfish Publishing). She serves on the Boards of World Poetry, Kimbilio Fiction, Flood Editions, Friends of Writers, The Beloit Poetry Journal Foundation, and Human Rights and Democracy in Iran. She holds a BA and JD from Harvard University and an MFA from Warren Wilson College.  She was the founding CEO of Conflict Management, Inc. and Alliance Management Partners, boutique corporate consulting firms. www.etgrayjr.com. Photo Credit Susan Johann

Jaya Saxena is a founding worker-owner at Ravenous, a food and culture publication. She is also the series editor of Best American Food and Travel Writing. She lives in Queens.

Doors open at 7:30, show starts at 8. RSVP here.