The newest reading series from Bull City Press brings you poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from established and emerging writers for free on the second Saturday each month.

This month’s featuring writers Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach & Jessica Q. Stark with Mackensie Pless!

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach (www.juliakolchinskydasbach.com) emigrated from Ukraine as a Jewish refugee when she was six years old. She is the author of three poetry collections: The Many Names for Mother, winner the Wick Poetry Prize (Kent State University Press, 2019); Don’t Touch the Bones (Lost Horse Press, 2020), winner of the 2019 Idaho Poetry Prize, and 40 WEEKS (YesYes Books, 2021). Her poems appear in POETRY, American Poetry Review, and The Nation, among others. Julia is the editor of Construction Magazine. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and is completing her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in Philly with her two kids, two cats, one dog, and one husband.

Mackensie Pless is a poet from Southport, North Carolina. She is currently in her second year as an MFA Candidate in Poetry at NC State University’s creative writing program. In addition to being a graduate teaching assistant in NC State’s First-Year Writing Program, she works as an intern in the Books Marketing department at Duke University Press. Her poems have appeared in The Carolina Quarterly and After Happy Hour Review.

Jessica Q. Stark is a mixed-race, Vietnamese poet originally from California. She is a doctoral candidate in English at Duke University where she writes on the intersections of American poetry and comic books. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, the latest titled Vasilisa the Wise (Ethel Zine Press, 2018). Her chapbook manuscript, The Liminal Parade, was selected by Dorothea Lasky for Heavy Feather‘s Double Take Poetry Prize in 2016. Her poems have appeared in Hobart, Tupelo Quarterly, Potluck, Glass Poetry Journal, and others. Her first full-length poetry collection, Savage Pageant, is forthcoming with Birds, LLC 2020. She writes an ongoing poetry zine called INNANET and is an Assistant Poetry Editor for AGNI.