A Reading by Vi Khi Nao and Alicia Jo Rabins

Vi Khi Nao is the author of Sheep Machine (Black Sun Lit, 2018) and Umbilical Hospital (Press 1913, 2017), and of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture, which won FC2’s Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize in 2016, the novel, Fish in Exile (Coffee House Press, 2016), and the poetry collection, The Old Philosopher, which won the Nightboat Books Prize for Poetry in 2014.  Her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. Her stories, poems, and drawings have appeared in NOON, Ploughshares, Black Warrior Review and BOMB, among others. She holds an MFA in fiction from Brown University, where she received the John Hawkes and Feldman Prizes in fiction and the Kim Ann Arstark Memorial Award in poetry.
 
Alicia Jo Rabins is a poet, composer, performer and Torah teacher. She is the author of Divinity School (APR/Honickman First Book Prize, 2015) and Fruit Geode (Augury Books, 2018). Rabins is the creator and performer of Girls in Trouble, an indie-folk song cycle about women in Torah, and A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff, a one-woman chamber-rock opera about finance and mysticism currently being made into a film. An internationally touring violinist and singer, Alicia lives in Portland, OR with her partner and two children. She loves plants, ancient texts and coffee, and is currently at work on a memoir.