Riverfront Readings featuring Stan Banks and B.J. Soloy

Stanley E. Banks has been Poet, English Professor, and Artist-in-Residence at Avila University for 20 years. Banks had his 5th book of poetry, Blue Issues, published in 2013. His  other four books are Blue Beat Syncopation (2003), Rhythm and Guts (1992), Coming From a Funky Time and Place (1988), and On 10th Alley Way (1981). He also was the Editor for two other books of poetry. Further, he has been the Advisor and Creative Director for Avila University’s student literary magazine titled Sound and Fury for 20 years. He won the Langston Hughes Prize for Poetry in 1981, and in 1989 he was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship/Grant.

BJ Soloy is on the English faculty at Metropolitan Community College’s Blue River campus. He has a chapbook, Selected Letters, out with New Michigan Press and poems in places like FIELD, Colorado Review, Barrow Street, LIT, Columbia Poetry Review, New American Writing, and Guernica. He lives in Kansas City with Julie “The Hammer” Rouse, Solomon Longfellow, and Julie’s unstable familiar, Alette.

This event features music by Too Late for Satellites.

Multi-instrumentalists Ian Blackie, Jeremy Gulley, Trevon Waddle, and Jake Brooks team up to form Too Late for Satellites, blending together singer-songwriting, indie, folk, classical, and atmospheric music. The key to their music is patience--exploring the potential of each moment.