from Lauren Wiser

Left Bank Books presents authors Kate Gale, William Trowbridge, and Ron Koertge, who will read from and discuss their newest works at a showcase for Red Hen Press on Wednesday, November 19, 7pm, at Left Bank Books (399 N. Euclid).

Kate Gale will read from her newest collection of poetry, Echo Light (Red Mountain Press, September 2014). Of Echo Light, poet Lory Bedikian said, “Gale crafts poems that are ‘curiously powerful’ and offer us ‘salvation from boredom.’ The stories, the speakers weave myths of intoxication and sensuality, reminding us of ‘words you aren’t saying.’ They roam from earth and snow to sun, stars and sky. Echo Light ‘has invented the world’ of poetry that we yearn for – a world full of imagination, music and flight.”

Kate Gale is the Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Editor of The Los Angeles Review and President of the American Composers Forum, Los Angeles. She teaches in Low Residency MFA programs around the country and serves on the board of A Room of Her Own Foundation and Poetry Society of America. Kate is the author of six librettos including Rio de Sangre, which premiered in October 2010 at the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee. Her latest poetry collection is The Goldilocks Zone. She is also the editor of several anthologies and blogs for Huffington Post.

William Trowbridge will read from his newest collection of poetry, Put This On, Please: New & Selected Poems (Red Hen Press, March 2014), which contains work from all five of his full collections, as well as a group of new poems. In lines that capture the rhythms of everyday speech, Trowbridge follows misfits and outcasts whose ramblings and shamblings reflect our own well-meaning gropes for fulfillment. Throughout this seriocomic account of human foibles, vices, and wonders, Trowbridge makes a strong case for laughter as the only appropriate response to our post-post-modern condition.

William Trowbridge is the Poet Laureate of Missouri. He is the author of the poetry collections Ship of Fool, Enter Dark Stranger, O Paradise, Flickers, and The Complete Book of Kong. His poems have appeared in such periodicals as The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Georgia Review, Poetry, Boulevard, and New Letters. He lives in the Kansas City area and teaches in the University of Nebraska’s low-residency MFA program.

Ron Koertge will read from his newest collection of flash fiction, Sex World (Red Hen Press, September 2014). A robot who travels what is left of the world claims that the sound of turbines is his lullaby. A fed-up daughter finds a foolproof way to do away with her awful mother. A page from Lois Lane’s secret diary reveals a shocking secret. A distant relative of Leda takes her boyfriend to the arboretum with grisly results. In these and dozens more, a poet whom Billy Collins calls “sly, inventive, and deeply good-hearted” brings those qualities, as well as wit and sass, to the shortest of short stories.

Ron Koertge teaches at Hamline University in their low-residency MFA program for Children’s Writing. A prolific writer, he has published widely in such seminal magazines as Kayak and Poetry Now. His books of poetry include The Father Poems; Fever; Indigo; Lies, Knives, and Girls in Red Dresses; and The Ogre’s Wife. He is a contributor to many anthologies such as Billy Collins’s Poetry 180 and Hamby’s Seriously Funny. Koertge also writes fiction for teenagers, including many novels and novels-in-verse, all of which were honored by the American Library Association. He has poems in two volumes of Best American Poetry. He lives in South Pasadena, California.