In Common Writers Series: Janice Lee and Brenda Iijima, reading from their works

The Poetry Center’s In Common Writers Series, supported by a generous grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, continues with the second event in our premier program. Prolific essayist, fiction writer, and editor Janice Lee, visiting from Portland, Oregon, will be joined by poet, editor, and publisher Brenda Iijima, visiting from Brooklyn, New York, each reading from their own works. This event also marks The Poetry Center’s first-time collaboration with local landmark Alley Cat Books, currently one of the very best bookstores and cultural centers — featuring its remarkable, community-currated gallery and among the best-selected shelves of books — in the Bay Area. This event is free and open to the public. Please note our afternoon start-time!

Janice Lee is a Korean-American writer, artist, and editor. She is the author of KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Press, 2010), Daughter (Jaded Ibis, 2011), Damnation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013), Reconsolidation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2015), and The Sky Isn’t Blue (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). She writes about the filmic long take, slowness, interspecies communication, the apocalypse, and asks the question, how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy? She is Founder & Executive Editor of Entropy, Co-Publisher at Civil Coping Mechanisms, Contributing Editor at Fanzine, and Co-Founder of The Accomplices LLC. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon where she is an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Portland State University.

Brenda Iijima’s involvements occur at the intersections and mutations of poetry, research movement, animal studies, ecological sociology and submerged histories. She is the author of seven full-length collections of poetry and numerous chapbooks and artist’s books. Her most recent book, Remembering Animals was published by Nightboat Books in 2016. She is also the editor of the eco language reader (Nightboat Books and PP@YYL). She is the editor of Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, located in Brooklyn, NY. Currently she is working on the collected works of Charley Shively that include his luminous and radical Fag Rag essays, poems, ephemera, photos and letters. She is also researching the phenomena of extinction.