Caffe Lena Poetry Open Mic Featuring Shira Dentz and Andrew Sullivan

Shira Dentz is the author of two books, black seeds on a white dish (Shearsman, 2011) and door of thin skins (CavanKerry Press, 2013), and two chapbooks, Leaf Weather (Shearsman, 2012) and Sisyphusina (forthcoming from Red Glass Books). Her third full-length manuscript was a National Poetry Series finalist this year. Her writing appears in many journals, including The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, and New American Writing, and has featured online at The Academy of American Poets’ website (Poets.org), NPR, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily. Her awards include an Academy of American Poets’ Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poem Award and Cecil Hemley Memorial Award, Electronic Poetry Review’s Discovery Award, and Painted Bride Quarterly’s Poetry Prize. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she holds a Ph.D. in creative writing and literature from the University of Utah. Shira is also Reviews Editor at Drunken Boat and Lecturer in Creative Writing at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Andrew Sullivan is a professional engineer and less-professional writer who has lived in the Saratoga area on-and-off for most of his life. He stared writing in college at SUNY Binghamton to take his mind off of math and physics, and he has continued to write ever since. For the past 2 years, he’s been attending readings and open mics in Albany and Saratoga and sporadically self-publishing on his wordpress blog, Cohesive Narrative.

Locally produced, micro-budget, indie feature “Life On the Run” will be filming for the first part of the evening. They’ll be bringing in some open mic people to begin the night.  The film is an optimistic and witty celebration of humanity’s will to be creative against all odds.  Sheila O’Shea plays Beth Farrell whose success as a novelist takes her into new territory as she explores poetry. Her debut as a poet will be filmed during Caffe Lena Poetry Night. For more info, please visit: facebook.com/lifeontherunfilm.