Come join us at the Union Club, located in Plaster Student Union, Suite 400, on February 20, 2020 at
6 p.m. for a fascinating evening of readings by none other than the graphic story-teller, Ron A. Austin and the riveting poet and essayist Jason Vasser-Elong.

 

Many of Austin’s short stories have been published in journals such as Masters Review, Pleiades, Story Quarterly, Ninth Letter, and several others. In 2015, Austin received a special mention in the annual anthology Pushcart Prize, and he received the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis, in 2016.

For his first book of linked stories, Avery Colt is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar, Austin was awarded the 2017 Nilsen Prize and is currently under consideration for the 2020 Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vasser-Elong’s new book of poetry, Shrimp, was released in 2018 and is a culmination of his love for anthropology and the search for his roots and his own culture. Vasser-Elong is one of 79 poets and essayists that contributed to the book Black Lives Have Always Mattered that was published in 2017. Black Lives Have Always Mattered gives us a first-hand glimpse of white privilege, racism, inequality, and other problems faced by African-Americans long before we knew about the Black Lives Matter movement.

Several of his poems have been pubished in Unveiling Visions: The Alchemy of the Black Imagination while The Canadian Journal for Netherlandic Studies has published his essay Treading the Atlantic.