Tire Fire Presents: Black / Surani / Armstong / Lisicky / Santos

WE MISSED YOU! we're back to kick off the 2015 season with a rousing line-up of stellar readers. we're so excited to welcome some of our favorite hometown writers - and guests from new york, toronto, and new jersey! we're also happy to announce that our friends at Spodee & Art In the Age will be celebrating Jack Kerouac's birthday at the reading by serving up some cocktail specials & giveaways, including vintage copies of On The Road, and more! our line-up! Robin E. Black! Paul Lisicky! Moez Surani! Hugo F Dos Santos! Meakin Armstrong! Robin Black's short story collection If I loved you, I would tell you this, was a finalist for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize and an O. Magazine Summer Reading Pick. Her debut novel Life Drawing has been called and "magnificent literary achievement," by Karen Russell; and of Black's writing Claire Messud has said " (she) is a writer of great wisdom, and illuminates, without undue emphasis, the flickering complexity of individual histories ." Black's stories and essays have been widely published including in The New York Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, The Southern Review and One Story. She was the 2012-13 Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bryn Mawr College and has taught most recently in the Brooklyn College MFA Program. A collection of Black's essays is forthcoming from Engine Books in April 2016. Paul Lisicky is the author of LAWNBOY, FAMOUS BUILDER, THE BURNING HOUSE, and UNBUILT PROJECTS. His work has appeared in CONJUNCTIONS, DENVER QUARTERLY, FENCE. GULF COAST, IOWA REVIEW, PLOUGHSHARES, TIN HOUSE and elsewhere. His awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus Society, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He's twice been a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in both Gay Men's Fiction and in Autobiography. He teaches in the MFA Program at Rutgers University-Camden and serves as editor of StoryQuarterly and on the Writing Committee of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. A memoir, THE NARROW DOOR, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in January 2016. Moez Surani’s writing has been published internationally, including in Harper’s Magazine, The Awl, Best Canadian Poetry 2013 and Best Canadian Poetry 2014. He has attended artists’ residencies in Italy, Taiwan, Switzerland and Finland and his work has received numerous awards including a Chalmers Arts Fellowship, which supported a research project to India and East Africa. He has published two collections of poetry: Reticent Bodies and Floating Life. His art and performance pieces have been exhibited in Canada, Italy and Taiwan. He is currently working on a series of interdisciplinary pieces in partnership with the Institute for Art and Olfaction. Hugo dos Santos was born in Portugal and raised in New Jersey. He earned an MA in writing from Rutgers-Newark, and was recently a Disquiet International Scholarship winner. He is the author of ironbound - a blog, and is currently working on his first novel, Brick City. Meakin Armstrong is the senior fiction editor at Guernica. His work has featured in or been cited by Esquire, TheAtlantic.com, Time Out, Maxim, and more.