For Immediate Release

Contact:
City Art Director Joel Long: joeltlong@yahoo.com

Abraham Smith and Ryan Ridge at City Art

Salt Lake Public Library Main Branch
210 East 400 South
Salt Lake City UT 84111

Wednesday April 18th 7:00—9:00 P.M.

            Abraham Smith and Ryan Ridge will read from their work April 18th at the Salt Lake City Public Library at 7:00 P.M. as part of the City Art Reading Series. 

 Assistant professor at Weber State University, Abraham Smith is the author of four poetry collections: Ashagalomancy (Action Books, 2015); Only Jesus Could Icefish in Summer (Action Books, 2014); Hank (Action Books, 2010); and Whim Man Mammon (Action Books, 2007). In 2015, he released Hick Poetics (Lost Roads Press), a co-edited anthology of contemporary rural American poetry and related essays. His creative work has been recognized with fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA, and the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Presently, he is at work upon a poetry manuscript about cranes–birds whose song and stature electrify him. Destruction of Man, his book-length poem about farming, is forthcoming in 2018 from Third Man Books.

Ryan Ridge author of two chapbooks and four books, including the hybrid novel, American Homes (University of Michigan Press, 2015), which was The Michigan Library Publishing Club’s inaugural book club pick. His work has appeared in Tin House Flash Fridays, Mississippi Review, Potomac Review, Los Angeles Review, Lumina, Salt Hill, Santa Monica Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. In 2016, Ridge received the Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction judged by Jonathan Lethem. His next book, Weird Weeks, a chapbook cowritten with Mel Bosworth, won the Editors’ Prize from The Cupboard Pamphlet and will be published in the fall of 2018. He's an assistant professor at Weber State University and lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. He edits the literary magazine Juked. 

Most featured readings are followed by an open reading. City Art is sponsored by the Utah Arts Council, the Salt Lake City Arts Council, Catalyst, the Salt Lake City Public Library, Xmission, and the Zoo, Arts, and Park Fund.