Sharon Mesmer’s newest poetry collection, Greetings from My Girlie Leisure Place (2015), was voted “Best of 2015” by Entropy. Her previous poetry collections include The Virgin Formica (2008), Annoying Diabetic Bitch (2007), Vertigo Seeks Affinities (2006), Half Angel, Half Lunch (1998), and Crossing Second Avenue (1997). Four of her poems appear in Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (second edition, 2013). Other anthology appearances include Brooklyn Poets Anthology (2017), Poems for the Nation (2000), and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (1999). She is currently at work on a new collection of poems, Even Living Makes Me Die, inspired by the lives and writings of thirty-five female poets of the Americas, from the nineteenth century to modern times. Her fiction collections include Ma Vie à Yonago (2005), In Ordinary Time (2005), and The Empty Quarter (2000). An excerpt of her story “Revenge” appears in I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (2012). Her essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Brooklyn Rail, New York Times, and Paris Review, among other places. Her awards include a Fulbright Specialist grant, a Jerome Foundation/SASE award (as mentor to poet Elisabeth Workman in 2009), and two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships. She teaches in the undergraduate and graduate programs at New York University and the New School, and lives in New York City.
Wayne Koestenbaum has published eighteen books of poetry, criticism, and fiction, including Notes on Glaze (2016), The Pink Trance Notebooks (2015), My 1980s & Other Essays (2013), Humiliation (2011), Hotel Theory (2007), Best-Selling Jewish Porn Films (2006), Andy Warhol (2001), Jackie Under My Skin (1995), and The Queen’s Throat (1993), which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. He has had solo exhibitions of his paintings at White Columns in New York City, 356 Mission in Los Angeles, and the University of Kentucky Art Museum in Lexington. His first piano/vocal record, Lounge Act, was issued by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2017. Koestenbaum is a Distinguished Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and French at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center.