HEATHER DERR-SMITH's new collection, TONGUE SCREW (Spark Wheel Press) explores themes of female sexuality and agency, of personal connection, of love, and of desire sometimes gone wrong and violent.
HEATHER-DERR SMITH was born in Dallas, Texas in 1971. She spent most of her childhood in Fredericksburg, Virginia. She earned her B.A. from Art History at the University of Virginia, where she also took poetry workshops with Charles Wright, Rita Dove, and Greg Orr. She went on to earn her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has published two books of poems, Each End of the World (Main Street Rag Press, 2005) and The Bride Minaret (University of Akron Press, 2008). Tongue Screw is her third collection.
SASS BROWN is a recipient of the Ruth Lilly Fellowship in Poetry, a Vermont Studio Center fellowship, and a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference scholarship, among other honors. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Indiana University. Her poetry has been published in many literary journals, including Hayden’s Ferry Review, Crazyhorse, Black Warrior Review, and Gulf Coast. USA-1000 is her first book.
And hosted by:
ELIZABETH HAZEN - a poet and essayist whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2013, The Normal School, Southwest Review, The Threepenny Review, and other journals. Her debut poetry collection, Chaos Theories (2016), is an Atomic Books bestseller. She teaches English at Calvert School in Baltimore.
Writers Under The Influence takes place in Atomic Books' Eightbar - the backroom bottleshop serving beer, wine and soda.