Contact: City Art Director Joel Long: joeltlong@yahoo.com JP Grasserand Michael Kroesche at City Art Salt Lake Public Library Main Branch 210 East 400 South Salt Lake City UT 84111 Wednesday December 4th, 7:00—9:00 P.M. Poets JP Grasser and Michael Kroesche will read from their work December 4that the Salt Lake City Public Library at 7:00 P.M. as part of the City ArtReading Series. A former Wallace StegnerFellow, JP Grasser is a PhD candidate at the University of Utah, where heserves as Editor-in-Chief for Quarterly West. His latest work is forthcomingfrom Best New Poets 2019, Blackbird, Crazyhorse, Copper Nickel, and NarrativeMagazine, among others. Michael Kroesche is a Salt LakeCity native who recently returned home in December of 2018 following a decadespent writing, publishing, teaching, and working all over the world. Fromteaching ESL in Guangzhou and translating Stéphane Mallarmé’s poetry fromFrench into English in Québec to teaching at the University of Nevada, LasVegas and working intensely in academic, popular, and community levels of LasVegas’ literary and creative communities, writing has managed to remain themost consistent aspect of his experience. While having published short fiction,academic work, and creative nonfiction in a number of journals and presentingit at various events such as the annual Pop Culture Conference in Las Vegas, heworks primarily in poetry. Most recently he has spent the last 5 years workingon a manuscript about grief and Aokigahara, the Japanese “suicide forest” or“sea of trees”. Poetry and creative nonfiction from this work have beenpresented at a number of readings and conferences and has appeared inpublications such as The Colorado Review, The Literary Review, among others,and he was also interviewed by BBC 4’s Whistledown productions in July of 2018about Aokigahara for a long-form piece they were producing about the forest.When he isn’t writing or working in his new career at Capstone Title andEscrow, Michael enjoys cooking, playing piano, boxing, performing at standupcomedy open mics, and spending time with his family and his significant other,Carly, and her cat Lyle. Most featured readings are followed by an openreading. City Art is sponsored by the Utah Arts Council, the Salt Lake CityArts Council, Catalyst, the Salt Lake City Public Library, Xmission, and theZoo, Arts, and Park Fund. Joel Long