Come ready to this reading series from Durham’s own Bull City Press for engaging poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from established and emerging writers.

November 14 at 6:00 pm (book signing at 5:45): Michele Bombardier & Leslie Pietrzyk with Girlhood Comedy

Michele Bombardier is the author of Don’t Ask Me How I Know (2026), runner-up for the Alibso Award and finalist for the Washington Prize, and What We Do (2018), finalist for the Washington Book Award. Before returning to graduate school for her MFA in Poetry, Michele worked as a neurological specialist speech-language pathologist in hospitals and private practice. Recent work can be found in JAMA, New Ohio Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Atlanta Review, Parabola, Bellevue Literary Review, and others. Michele is the winner of the 2024 NORward Prize and has received fellowships and support from Centrum, Hedgebrook, Mineral School, Edith Wharton Residency, Tyrone Guthrie Centre and Humanities Washington. Michele is certified in narrative medicine and is the founder of Fishplate Poetry, offering workshops and retreats while raising funds for humanitarian relief. She served as the inaugural Poet Laureate of Bainbridge Island, Washington, where she lives with her partner and her two cats, Dorianne Laux and Joe Millar the Cat.

Leslie Pietrzyk’s recent collection of linked stories is set in DC, Admit This to No One. This Angel on My Chest won the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Short stories/essays in: Ploughshares, Hudson Review, Southern Review, Iowa Review, Pithead Chapel, and Split Lip Magazine. Awards include a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she roots for the Dash and struggles to learn the mysterious rules of mahjong. 

Admission: Free!