Readings by contributors to Who’s Yer Daddy? Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners

Readers: Peter Covino, David Groff (co-editor), Ben Grossberg, Dave King, Michael Klein, Brian Leung, Paul Lisicky, Timothy Liu, Charles Rice-Gonzalez, and Ellery Washington.

Peter Covino is the author of the poetry collections, both from Western Michigan University/New Issues Press, The Right Place to Jump (2012) and Cut Off the Ears of Winter (2005), winner of the 2007 PEN/America Osterweil Award and a finalist for the Publishing Triangle Thom Gunn Award, and the Paterson Poetry Prize. His chapbook, Straight Boyfriend (2001), won the Frank O’Hara Poetry Prize; and recent poems have been published or are forthcoming both in America and Italy in such places as the American Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, Connecticut Review, Gulf Coast, The Paris Review, tutteStorie, The Yale Review, and The Penguin Anthology of Italian-American Writing, among others. His translations of Italian poets have been featured in Atlanta Review, Italian Americana, Italoamericana, The Journal of Italian Translation, and the anthology New European Poets, Graywolf Press 2008. Covino is also one of the founding editors of the literary press, Barrow Street Inc., and the Barrow Street Books; and in 2009, he was appointed poetry editor for VIA: Voices in Italian Americana.  He is an Associate Professor of Literature with Creative Writing at the University of Rhode Island.

David Groff is an independent writer and poet, is author of Theory of Devolution and coeditor of Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS and Whitman’s Men: Walt Whitman’s Calamus Poems Celebrated by Contemporary Photographers. Groff’s work was published in American Poetry Review, Bloom, Chicago Review, Christopher Street, Confrontation, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Men on Men 2, Men on Men 2000, Missouri Review, New York, North American Review, Northwest Review, Out, Poetry, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, Poz, Prairie Schooner, QW, Self, 7 Days, 7 Carmine, and Wigwag. Groff graduated from the University of Iowa, with an MFA, and MA. He has taught at University of Iowa, Rutgers University, and NYU, and at William Paterson University.

Benjamin S. Grossberg is an associate professor of English at University of Hartford.  His books are Sweet Core Orchard (2009), winner of the 2008 Tampa Review Prize and a Lambda Literary Award, and Underwater Lengths in a Single Breath (2007).  His poems have appeared in many venues including New England Review, Paris Review, Southwest Review, and the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies.  Space Travelor, his third collection, will be published in 2013.

Dave King holds a BFA in painting and film from Cooper Union and an MFA in writing from Columbia University; he taught English at Baruch College and Cultural Studies at the School of Visual Arts in New York before moving to New York University’s Gallatin School of Interdisciplinary Studies. Of his bestselling debut novel, The New York Times Book Review wrote, “The Ha-Ha is full of emotional truth and establishes King as a writer of consequence.” The Ha-Ha was a finalist for Book of the Month Club’s best Literary Fiction Award and the Quill Foundation’s award for Best Debut Fiction and was named one of the best books of 2005 by The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Amazon.com’s Best Books of 2005. Several foreign language editions are in print, and a film version was optioned by Warner Brothers Pictures. In addition, The Ha-Ha earned Dave King the 2006 John Guare Writers Fund Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

King’s poems and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The Village Voice and Big City Lit, and in the Italian literary journal Nuovi Argomenti. He divides his time between Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley of New York. He is a translator of the Italian poet Massimo Gezzi, and a new novel, tentatively entitled The Beast and Beauty, is forthcoming.

Michael Klein has written three books of poetry, the most recent of which is “The Talking Day” (Sibling Rivalry Press).  His first book, “1990” (Provincetown Arts Press) tied with James Schuyler to win a Lambda Literary Award in 1993.  He is also the author of a memoir, “Track Conditions”, a Lambda finalist and “The End of Being Known” a book of linked essays about sex and friendship, both published by the University of Wisconsin Press.  His poetry, essays and interviews with poets have been published in American Poetry Review, Provincetown Arts, Court Green, New England Review, Ploughshares , Tin House, Fence, Poets & Writers and many other publications.  His collection of lyric essays, “States of Independence” won the inaugural BLOOM Chapbook prize judged by Rigoberto Gonzalez and he received a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he also taught poetry and memoir in their summer program for 15 years.  He has also taught writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Binghamton University, Manhattanville and, since 1994, in the MFA Program at Goddard College, in Vermont.  He lives in New York and Provincetown.

Brian Leung’s short story collection World Famous Love Acts won the Asian American Literary Award in 2005 and the Mary McCarthy Award for Short Fiction in 2002.  He has  published two novels Lost Men (Three Rivers Press) and Take Me Home (Harper Collins). Brian’s fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Story, Crazyhorse, Grain, Gulf Coast, Kinesis, The Barcelona Review, The Bellingham Review, Blithe House Quarterly, Indiana Review, Crab Orchard Review, and in the short story anthology The Habit of Art. He is also the coauthor of the nonfiction humor title Not Another Feel Good Singles Book. Since 2000, Brian has taught in Cincinnati and Los Angeles, and now in Louisville, where he is an Associate Professor at the University of Louisville.  The recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, Brian earned his B.A. and MA. at California State University, and an M.F.A from Indiana University.

Paul Lisicky is the author of Lawnboy (1999), Famous Builder (2002), The Burning House (2011) and Unbuilt Projects (2012).  His recent work appears in Fence, Tin House, The Iowa Review, The Rumpus, Story Quarterly and elsewhere.  He has taught in the writing programs at Cornell University, New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.  He is currently the New Voices Professor at Rutgers University.  A memoir, The Narrow Door, is forthcoming in 2014.

Timothy Liu has three new books forthcoming: Kingdom Come: A Novel (Talisman House, 2013), Don’t Go Back To Sleep: Poems (Saturnalia Books, 2014) and Let It Ride: Poems (Station Hill, 2015). He lives in Manhattan with his husband.

Charles Rice-Gonzalez is a writer, LGBT activist and the co-founder and executive director of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance.  His debut novel Chulito (Magnus Books) has received several awards including a 2013 Stonewall Book Awards – Barbara Gittings Literature Award Honor from the American Library Association.  He co-edited, From Macho To Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction with Charlie Vazquez and his work has appeared in several anthologies including Love, Christopher Street, Ambientes: New Gay Latino Writing also released by University of Wisconsin Press and Who’s Yer Daddy.  His award-winning play, I Just Love Andy Gibb, will be published Blacktino Queer Performance: A Critical Anthology co-edited by E. Patrick Johnson and Ramón H. Rivera-Servera. University of Michigan Press.

Ellery Washington teaches fiction and creative nonfiction at the Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, NY. He is the author of Buffulo, a novel, forthcoming from Creston Books. His short fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares, The International Review, The Frankfurter Allgemeine, The Berkeley Fiction Review, Out Magazine, the National Bestseller State by State—A Panoramic Portrait of America, and numerous literary journals and anthologies. As a screenwriter and script consultant, his credits include work with Paramount Pictures, Tristar and Fox Searchlight, as well as a wide variety of independent directors and producers. He is the recipient of a PEN Center West Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship and the IBWA Prize for short fiction. He currently divides his time between Oakland, CA, and New York.