March 16, 2023 Deep Dish
The first Deep Dish reading event of the year is coming up, next week Thursday March 16, at 6:30 PM CST. If you’re in the Chicago area, and want to see some great readers in action, come to Volumes Book Café in Wicker Park. Featured readers include Tara Betts, Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, and Angeli Primlani. Amongst our Rapid Fire readers we have some returning Deep Dish veterans such as Sue Burke, Terry Galvan, Darius Vinesar, and Aurelius Raines II
Featured Readers
Dr. Tara Betts is the author of Refuse to Disappear, Break the Habit, and Arc & Hue. In addition to her work as a teaching artist and mentor for young poets, she has taught at Rutgers University, University of Illinois-Chicago, Northwestern University and at Stateville Prison via the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project. She is the Inaugural Poet for the People Practitioner Fellow at University of Chicago. Betts currently teaches at DePaul University and serves as Poetry Editor at The Langston Hughes Review. She is also founder of the nonprofit organization The Whirlwind Learning Center on Chicago’s South Side.
Yvette Lisa Ndlovu is a Zimbabwean sarungano. Her debut short story collection Drinking from Graveyard Wells (University Press of Kentucky, Spring 2023) was selected for the 2021 UPK New Poetry & Prose Series. Her novel manuscript in progress was selected by George R.R. Martin for the Worldbuilder Scholarship. She is pursuing her MFA at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst where she teaches in the Writing Program and earned her BA at Cornell University. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Tin House Workshop, Bread Loaf Writers Workshop, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute. She is the co-founder of the Voodoonauts Summer Workshop for Black SFF writers. Her work has been anthologized in the World Fantasy Award winning anthology Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2021 and the NAACP award-nominated anthology African Risen. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in F&SF, Lightspeed, Tor.com, FANTASY Magazine, Columbia Journal, and Fiyah Literary Magazine.
Angeli Primlani is a Chicago-based playwright, director, producer and actor. She was culture and features writer and online editor for The Prague Post in the Czech Republic. She was the founding Artistic Director of Accidental Shakespeare Theatre Company. Her play The Black Knight premiered in spring of 2022. The Marlen of Prague is her first novel.
Rapid Fire Readers
Sue Burke
Sue Burke is going to read an excerpt from her next science fiction novel, Dual Memory, coming in May 2023. She also wrote the novels Semiosis, Interference, and Immunity Index, along with short stories, and she translates from Spanish to English. When she’s not writing, she likes to cook, raise houseplants, and walk along Lake Michigan.
Terry Galvan
Terry Galvan writes speculative fiction about the people of Chicago. Before the pandemic, Terry performed regularly at spec-fic events throughout the city & contributed at Third Coast Review. Currently they’re shopping an epic urban fantasy trilogy about demons and angels dueling among Chicago skyscrapers. You can find Terry on rooftops admiring the city’s architecture or in dive bars trying to buy everyone malort shots.
Darius Vinesar
Darius Vinesar is a writer with a love for the fantasy and post-apocalyptic genres. He’s currently working on a fantasy novel set in an alternate world during a late Victorian-esque era with guns, swords, airships, and an ancient and dangerous magic system that uses writing. As the Managing Director of the SLF, Darius is dedicated to making sure the organization is running smoothly and efficiently from day to day. Darius is also an editor and producer for the podcast, Mohanraj and Rosenbaum Are Humans, a show sponsored by the SLF. On Saturdays, Darius hosts the SLF’s weekly co-writing sessions.
Aurelius Raines II
Aurelius Raines II writes and lives in Chicago. His short stories and essays have been included in the Fantasy & Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, Apparition Literature, Fiyah Magazine and Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler, which was the winner of the Locus Award in Non-Fiction. He is a Voodoonauts Fellow (c/o ‘21). In his spare time, he teaches Physics to high-schoolers by showing them how to use science to survive the end of civilization.
