Tonight at KGB: Monica Ferrell and Arisa White

Hosted by John Deming and Matthew Yeager

Monica Ferrell is the author of a collection of poems, Beasts for the Chase, which won the Kathryn A. Morton Prize and was published by Sarabande Books, as well as of a novel, The Answer Is Always Yes (The Dial Press/Random House), which was named a Borders Original Voices Selection and one of Booklist’s Top Ten Debut Novels of 2008.  Her poems have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Tin House, Slate, and many other journals and anthologies.  A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and “Discovery”/ The Nation prizewinner, she directs the creative writing program at Purchase College and lives in Brooklyn.

Arisa White is a Cave Canem fellow, an MFA graduate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of the poetry collections Hurrah’s Nest and A Penny Saved. Her debut collection, Hurrah’s Nest, has been nominated for a 44th NAACP Image Award. Co-editor of HER KIND, the official blog of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, and the editorial manager for Dance Studio Life magazine, Arisa has received residencies, fellowships, or scholarships from Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, Rose O’Neill Literary House, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Hedgebrook, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Prague Summer Program, Fine Arts Work Center, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005, her poetry has been widely published and is featured on the recording WORD with the Jessica Jones Quartet. Arisa is a native New Yorker, living in Oakland, CA, with her partner and is currently working on adapting her chapbook, Post Pardon, into an opera.