Monday, June 18, 2018 “Those Who Favor Fire, Those Who Pray to Fire” Official Book Launch Categories: Other Local Events Timelines: 1b: Past Events (Unseen Archive), 4: Benjamin Brindise Workshops & Events
Where:
Resurgence Brewing Company
1250 Niagara St.
Buffalo, NY 14213
Date: June 30, 2018
Time: 6:30-8:30 p.m.
After touring the rust belt with stops at Daemen College, Medaille College’s Write Thing Series, the Pulse Poetry Slam in Jamestown, NY, 9 Stories Book Store in Pittsburgh, PA and more, the authors of this book are excited to bring it back to the city that rests at its very foundation: Buffalo, NY.
The authors invite you to join them at Resurgence Brewing Company around the outdoor fire pit. We will gather and share Buffalonian ghost stories and let the firelight show our true faces. The reading will begin at approximately 7pm to be followed by a book sale and signing. Copies will be available for $10 the night of the launch.
As described, the books intention is to be, “[…]a charred reminder of who you used to be, when you’d connect the stars in the night sky with your toxic fingers, hazily charting your life path with shitty decisions and hashtag hallelujahs, tracing your chalk outline on a full cold moon, when you’d take some dead man’s grill lighter and burn holes in the only people who love you.
It’s a bombed out church where the only people praying look like mounds of oil-slicked snow, where they smell like rotten tacos on a boozy Saturday night, a sacred place where prayer sounds like a first-generation iPod screaming back to life and all we’re trying to do is push through the constant smoke, a chain gang of dirty souls in Purgatory still striving to do better.”
Just Buffalo Literary Center Teaching Artist BENJAMIN BRINDISE provides after school writing and performance poetry programming to various Buffalo Public Schools and community centers (Gloria J. Parks Community Center 2016-2017, North Park Academy 2017-2018). He is the author of ROTTEN KID (Ghost City Press, 2017), which was included in the 25th Annual Poets House Showcase and archived in NYC. In 2018 he published Those Who Favor Fire, Those Who Pray to Fire (EMP Books), a full length collection of poetry co-written with Justin Karcher. He is also an award-winning spoken-word poet who qualified to compete in the 2015 and 2016 National Poetry Slam helping Buffalo to place in the top 15 in the country in 2016. He will represent Buffalo, NY again at the National Poetry Slam in 2018 in Chicago, IL. His poetry has been published in Maudlin House, The Magnitizdat Literary, and Peach Mag, among others. He encourages his students to be brave in their approach to writing and strives to do the same himself. He tweets @benbrindise and can be found on Instagram @benjaminbrindiseauthor
Justin Karcher is a poet and playwright born and raised in Buffalo, New York. He is the author of Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015), the chapbook When Severed Ears Sing You Songs (CWP Collective Press, 2017), and the micro-chapbook Just Because You’ve Been Hospitalized for Depression Doesn’t Mean You’re Kanye West (Ghost City Press, 2017). He is the editor of Ghost City Review and co-editor of the anthology My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry (BlazeVOX [books], 2017). He tweets @Justin_Karcher