Monsters of Poetry 2014

Join Madison’s own Monsters of Poetry Reading Series and the WisconsinBook Festival for a night of autumnal fire. On October 17th, we are proud to present Cole Lavalais, William Waltz, Christopher Bolin, and Shara Lessley. Features a half-time raffle that will include signed copies of the readers’ books and other literary wonders. Come hang out! Your blood will be cidered, your hearts will turn, your minds will be raked congenially into piles in the yard!

Cole Lavalais received her M.F.A. from Chicago State University. She is a fellow of the Callaloo, VONA, and Kimbilio Writer’s Workshops. Her work has appeared in several print and online literary journals. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Willow Books Press in 2016. She lives in Chicago with her husband, son, and the twins — her mastiff and maltese puppies.

William D. Waltz is the author of the poetry collection Zoo Music, which won the Slope Editions Book Prize. His second book of poetry, Adventures in the Lost Interiors of America, won the Cleveland State University Press Open Competition. Factory Hollow Press published his chapbook Confluence of Mysterious Origins in 2012. Waltz is the founder and editor of Conduit magazine. He lives near the Mississippi River in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Christopher Bolin lives in St. Joseph, Minnesota, and teaches at the College of St. Benedict / St. John’s University. His collection of poems, Ascension Theory , was published by the University of Iowa Press (2013) and was named a finalist for the Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award.  He has published poems in jubilat, Lana Turner, Post Road, 1913: A Journal of Forms, VOLT, and Cura. He is a recipient of fellowships from the James A. Michener Foundation, the Corporation at Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony.  He holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Shara Lessley is the author of Two-Headed Nightingale (New Issues 2012). Her awards include Washington College's Mary Wood Fellowship, an Artist Fellowship from the State of North Carolina, the Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, Colgate University’s O’Connor Fellowship, The Gilman School’s Tickner Fellowship, and a “Discovery” / The Nation prize. Shara’s poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, and New England Review, among others. Shara is a Contributing Editor for West Branch and was recently Randolph College's first Anne Spencer Poet-in-Residence. You can reach her at www.sharalessley.com