HOPE, THANKS & THE UNFORGIVING LITERARY SERIES: PHIL CORDELLI, ADITI MACHADO, KANIKA AGRAWAL, AND POUPEH MISSAGHI

The Dikeou Collection is pleased to announce the eleventh installment of our Hope, Thanks & The Unforgiving literary series. The featured readers for the evening include Phil Cordelli, Aditi Machado, Kanika Agrawal, and Poupeh Missaghi. The literary series also has two new organizers, Joe Lennon and Adam Fagin – this is the first installment they have organized. Each reader will pair a text with a film-clip to create evocations of American landscapes, fictional and real, foreign and domestic, in conversation with Independence Day. This event is free and open to the public, light refreshments will be provided.

Phil Cordelli is a farmer and poet, seasonally and respectively. He is the author of Manual of Woody Plants, and a bunch of smaller books. In the mid 90s he recorded a slew of albums with Seatbelt and Cactus Cooler. He now lives in or near Denver, depending.

Aditi Machado is from Bangalore, India and is the poetry editor for Asymptote, an online journal dedicated to translation. She is a current PhD candidate at the University of Denver.

Kanika Agrawal was born on a small island, the name of which, according to an online encyclopedia, means “the two seas.” She shares her first name with a different island. According to a business publication, this island was an “apple of discord” between certain bureaucratic entities. Kanika is the citizen of a country that was a larger country before it was divided. According to the website of a department of a private research university, “[w]hether the [division] . . .was wise and whether it was done too soon is still under debate.” As an alien, Kanika lives under the continuous scrutiny of a major government agency that “exercise[s] a holistic approach to Vigilance.” Given these conditions, she writes.

Poupeh Missaghi is a translator, writer, wanderer/wonderer, and a PhD candidate in fiction at DU’s creative writing program. So far she has published mostly nonfiction, mostly under pen names. She is working on two novel manuscripts, one creative/theoretical/community research project, and several book translations.

Hope, Thanks & The Unforgiving Literary Series is currently organized by Joe Lennon and Adam Fagen. Joe Lennon has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Denver, and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. His recent poems and curations have appeared or are forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, Incessant Pipe, and Denver Quarterly, and he is a contributor to the Denver Poetry Map (www.denverpoetrymap.org). He’s been to every US state except Alaska. Adam Fagin is a doctoral candidate at the University of Denver. His poems have appeared in Boston Review, Fence, Web Conjunctions, Volt, and other journals. He’s the author of a chapbook, T’s Alphabet, and one forthcoming, THE SKY IS A HOWLING WILDERNESS BUT IT CAN’T HOWL WITH HEAVEN.