A Reading and Conversation with Barbara Henning

Born in Detroit, Barbara Henning is the author of four novels and eight collections of poetry, as well as many chapbooks and essays. Her recent books include a hybrid biography of her mother, Fern: A Detroit Story (Spuyten Duyvil 2022); a novel, Just Like That (SD 2018); poetry collections, Digigram (United Artist Books, 2020) and A Day Like Today (Negative Capability Press 2015). She’s also the editor of a book of interviews, Looking Up Harryette Mullen (2011), The Selected Prose of Bobbie Louise Hawkins (2012), and Prompt Book: Experiments for Writing Poetry and Fiction (2020). Barbara presently lives in Brooklyn, where she is Professor Emerita at Long Island University.

The tenth collection of poetry by Martine Bellen, called An Anatomy of Curiosity, will be published by MadHat Press in the fall of 2022. Other collections include This Amazing Cage of Light: New and Selected Poems (Spuyten Duyvil), The Vulnerability of Order (Copper Canyon Press), and Tales of Murasaki and Other Poems (Sun & Moon), which was a winner of the National Poetry Series. Bellen is a recipient of the City Artist Corps Grant, New York Foundation of the Arts, the Queens Art Fund, and a residency from the Rockefeller Foundation at the Bellagio Center in Bellagio, Italy.

Born in Philadelphia and currently living in Manhattan, Peter Bushyeager’s poetry collections include Citadel Luncheonette and In the Green Oval. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications that include New American Writing, Café Review, Local Knowledge, and Sensitive Skin. He edited Wake Me When It’s Over: Selected Poems of Bill Kushner from Talisman House, and writes poetry-focused articles that have appeared in Gathering of the Tribes, Talisman, Exquisite Corpse, Wave Books’ What is Poetry (Just Kidding, I Know You Know), and other places.

Anselm Berrigan is the poetry editor for the Brooklyn Rail, and author of a number of books of poems, most recently Pregrets, from Black Square Editions.