BONFIRE invites you to our upcoming reading, featuring poetry by Jennifer Mackenzie and Charles Legere, photos by Justin Audet, and music by Vijay Bakrania.

Friday, May 9th@ 6:30pm*

5814 Black Street

(Borland Garden in East Liberty)

*doors open at 6:20*

Limited seating. Kids welcome! Snacks Welcome! 

Jennifer MacKenzie’s newly-published book of poems Pain Survey won the Inlandia Books’ Hillary Gravendyk Prize, judged by Julian Brolaski. Her first book, My Not-My Soldier won the Fence Books Modern Poets Prize in 2014. Recent poems have appeared in Jubilat, Prelude, and Conduit, and prose in the Kenyon Review Online, Guernica, Latin American Literature Today, Hyperallergic and Longform. She lives in the Bronx and teaches in the departments of English and Journalism and Media Studies at Lehman College, CUNY, and occasionally co-translates poems from the Arabic.

Charles Legere is a Pittsburgh poet with a chapbook of poems called “My Oakland” (2011) and writing in Fence, Copper Nickel, Open Letter, and Jacket2. Current projects include a serial poem called The Coppices of Pleasure and translation of Jacques Roubaud’s poems for children. He will be reading a new crown of sonnets called “Knotweed Monsters” based on walks with friends on Pittsburgh’s city steps.

Justin Audet is a photographer who currently lives in Philadelphia and has traveled and photographed in Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and the whole of Pennsylvania. He will be showing photos inspired by walks on Pittsburgh’s city steps. He’s exhibited at the Print Center in Philadelphia, Silver Eye Center for Photography and more recently has been published in Allegheny Outdoor Sport including pictures and an essay about a bicycle trip.

Vijay Bakrania is a multi-instrumentalist who mixes the sounds of guitar and hand drums to create grooves that inspire the listener on a playful sonic adventure. Some of his music can be found here.