A Literary Reading with Jason Fisk and Joshua Roark

This week we are happy to host a reading wit Jason Fisk and Joshua Roark. The reading is held on Zoom at 5:30PM Pac Time. You can access the event on our calendar.

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Jason Fisk lives and writes in the suburbs of Chicago. He has worked in a psychiatric unit, labored in a cabinet factory, and mixed cement for a bricklayer. He currently teaches language arts to eighth graders. He was born in Ohio, raised in Minnesota, and has spent the last few decades in the Chicago area. He recently had a collection of poetry published by Kelsay Books: Sub Urbane. He also had a number of books and chapbooks published: Sadly Beautiful, essays, poems, and short stories published by Leaf Garden Press; Salt Creek Anthology, a collection of micro-fiction published by Chicago Center for Literature and Photography; the fierce crackle of fragile wings, a collection of poetry published by Six Gallery Press; and two poetry chapbooks: The Sagging: Spirits and Skin, and Decay, both published by Propaganda Press. ​

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In The Craigslist Incident, Edna Barrett takes an advertisement out on Craigslist: I'm an 18-year-old female and I want to take a hit out on myself. Joe Dolsen, a 20-year-old who has suffered from periodic blackouts his whole life, answers the ad. What would bring two people to such ominous points at such young ages, and will they actually go through with it?

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Joshua Roark is the author of Put One Hand Up, Lean Back (Unsolicited Press), a chapbook of sonnets recollecting and investigating his experience as a middle school teacher in the Mississippi Delta. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Frontier Poetry, a magazine for new voices in poetry. He and his wife live happily in the desert of Joshua Tree, CA.

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Joshua Roark's poetry is crisp and refreshing -- a book of freshly squeezed lemons -- poems that reach out and grab you. Make you laugh. Fill you up. "Buy Your Own Classroom Supplies" Your classroom binder should be big, beefy, yellow maybe, or red, easy for spotting, smudged with something like chocolate, coffee splashed across the pages and set in the rings. Your pens should be sunset colored, show that you mean business, even from your pocket or dry, chapped hands—oh, and don’t forget the bottle of sanitizer. It’ll sit fatlike a trophy at the edge of your desk. Your closet should hold four white button-up shirts, two pairs of heavy polyester pants, black, creased, and a single ink-black clip-on-tie, bought at an army surplus store. Trust me, full length ties are not worth the risk.

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