Publishing-in-Transit: The Flow Chart Foundation

Jeffrey Lependorf, Executive Director of The Flow Chart Foundation, formerly served as Executive Director of Small Press Distribution and the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, and currently also directs the Art Omi: Music international musicians residency, a program that he created for musicians from around the globe to collaborate with one another. A composer/musician, he is a master player of the shakuhachi Japanese bamboo flute, and his music has been performed around the globe—literally, in fact: a recording of his “Night Pond” was launched into space when the shuttle Atlantis took off on May 15, 1997 and remained for a year aboard the Mir space station.

Ryan Cook is a Brooklyn-based genderqueer poet and performer. MFA candidate in poetry at Columbia, they were awarded the teaching fellowship. Their work specializes in queer mythologies, digital cultures, and curses, and has been published or are forthcoming in Iterant, Tupelo Quarterly, the Nightboat Blog, No Dear Mag, the Poetry Project’s Footnotes Series, Hot Pink Mag, and others. They serve as a Program Associate at The Flow Chart foundation, an events host at McNally Jackson Bookstore, and an event manager for Futurepoem books.

Born in New Orleans, Dara Barrois/Dixon, formerly Dara Wier, lives and works in western Massachusetts. Her newest book is Tolstoy Killes Anna Karenina (Wave Books); forthcoming in March 2024 is Extremely Expensive Mystical Experiences for Astronauts (Conduit). Other books include You Good Thing and Reverse Rapture. She founded and edits for factory hollow press. Lannan, Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council have all supported her writing. The passage and passageways from private to public and public to private often find their way into her thoughts and frequently cast their powers over her understanding.

Poet Cole Swensen is the author of 17 volumes of poetry and a collection of critical essays, Noise That Stays Noise. A book of hybrid poem-essays, Art in Time, was published by Nightboat in 2021. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she has been a finalist for the National Book Award and has been awarded the Iowa Poetry Prize, the SF State Poetry Center Book Award, and the National Poetry Series. She has also translated over 20 volumes of poetry, prose, and art criticism from French and won the 2004 PEN USA Award in Literary Translation.