August Kleinzahler & Ed Barrett October 19, 2005

Ed Barrett is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently Sheepshead Bay (Zoland Press) and Rub Out (Pressed Wafer), a trilogy of experimental verse novels. Born and raised in Brooklyn NY, he now lives in Cambridge MA where he is senior lecturer in writing and comparative media studies at MIT. August Kleinzahler published his first book of poetry, A Calendar of Airs, in 1978. Since then, he has published six others, including Storm over Hackensack (1985); Earthquake Weather (1989); Red Sauce Whiskey and Snow (FSG, 1995); Green Sees Things in Waves (FSG, 1998); and Live from the Hong Kong Nile Club: Poems 1975-1990 (FSG, 2000). In 2003, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published The Strange Hours Travelers Keep, which won the 2004 Griffin International Poetry Prize and the 2004 Gold Medal in Poetry from the Commonwealth Club of California, and was short-listed for the U.K.'s Forward Prize in Poetry. A native of Jersey City, Kleinzahler has been a taxi driver, a locksmith, a logger, and a building manager. He has taught creative writing courses at Brown University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, as well as to homeless veterans in the Bay Area. He lives in San Francisco.