June 4, 2010: Scott McClanahan (fiction) / Jeffrey Thomson (poetry)
Scott McClanahan is the author of Stories (published by Six Galleries Press). His other works include Stories II, Hillbilly and the Nightmares, Stories and Revelations, The Sarah Book (Vol. 3 of McClanahan's Lives) and Crapalachia (all forthcoming). He is co-partner of the company Holler Presents (www.hollerpresents.com), which has produced such films as Preacher Man, Spring, 1386, The Education of Bertie Mae McClanahan, and Lil Audrey's Last Day at School.
Jeffrey Thomson is the author of four books of poems, including Birdwatching in Wartime (Carnegie Mellon 2009). He has also published an anthology of emerging poets, From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems the Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great, co-edited with Camille Dungy and Matt O'Donnell (Persea Books, 2009). He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Arts Commission, and, most recently, was named the 2008 Individual Arts Fellow in the Literary Arts by the Maine Arts Commission. He is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Maine Farmington. www.jeffreythomson.com
“I completely enjoyed reading for the Gist Street Series. The setting—an artist's loft—was cozy and intimate, the kind of place you dream of for a reading. And the audience was fully engaged. It felt like people really were digging in to each word. No poet could ask for more…. reading in your series was one of the highlights of my life as a poet.”
