Final Blood Jet Poetry Series reading of spring to be held June 8 at BJ’s

Poets Bill Lavender and Addie Citchens headline the Blood Jet Poetry Series’ final reading of their spring season this Wednesday, June 8, at BJ’s in the Bywater (4301 Burgundy).

Bill Lavender is the founder and proprietor of Lavender Ink / Diálogos and co-founder, with Megan Burns, of the New Orleans Poetry Festival. His most recent book of poetry, the ground-breaking verse memoir, Memory Wing, dubbed by Rodger Kamenetz “a contemporary autobiographical masterpiece,” was published by Black Widow in 2011. Other books of poetry include While Sleeping (Chax Press, 2003), Transfixion and I of the Storm (both from Trembling Pillow). His novel, Q, a neo-picaresque view of a world in constant economic and social crisis, appeared from Trembling Pillow in 2013. The sequel to Q, entitled Little A, from which he’ll be reading at Blood Jet, should be finished later this century.

Addie Citchens is a fiction writer from Clarksdale, Mississippi. Her work covers the performance of blackness, sexuality, sexual violence, generational trauma, and personal healing/liberation/triumph. Her art has been featured in the Oxford American, Callaloo, and Mixed Company. She independently published her novel, The Fire-Starter, on Amazon in 2015.