I’m thrilled to be taking part in the October edition of the Waterbear Reading Series at One More Page Books in Arlington, Virginia. The series, which began earlier this year, has already featured some terrific writers—including both friends (Jen Michalski, Laura Ellen Scott, Amber Sparks) and family (Tara Laskowski!)—and the October event will be the last reading of 2013, given the holidays ahead, so fingers crossed for a big audience to help round out the year with a bang!
I’ll be reading on Saturday, October 26, at 6 p.m., along with three other very distinguished writers:
John Copenhaver placed as a quarterfinalist in the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for Dodging and Burning. The last two summers he attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference as a general contributor in fiction. In 2011 he was invited to be a fellow in genre fiction at the Lambda Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices. He graduated with his BA from Davidson College, MA in literature from Bread Loaf, and MFA in fiction from George Mason, where he served as executive editor of the literary magazine Phoebe. He also spent a summer interning in the literature department of the National Endowment for the Arts. He has published in several regional journals, including Timber Creek Review and The Roanoke Review, and was the first runner-up in the F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest.
Mark Cugini’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Melville House, Hobart, Sink Review, Barrelhouse, NOÖ, Everday Genius, and other publications. He’s a founding editor of Big Lucks, a contributor to HTMLGiant, and the curator of the Three Tents Reading Series in Washington, DC. His chapbook I’M JUST HAPPY TO BE HERE will be released in March 2013.
Jonathan Harper received his MFA from American University in 2010 and was a staff member of the Lambda Literary Foundation from 2002-2005. His writing is scattered about in places like The Nervous Breakdown, Chelsea Station, Icarus Magazine as well as the anthologies: Homewrecker: An Adultery Reader, The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered and Best Gay Stories 2013. He really-really loves Period Pieces and Gillian Anderson has yet to answer one of his fan letters.
Hope to see lots of friendly faces there—and pleased that my parents and brother will be making the trip up for the event as well! — Art Taylor