October 11th: Joint Reading with Ivy Writers: Lars Palm, Anna Arov, Megan Garr, Kate Foley, Sarah Ream, & Jane Lewty.

Oct 11th, 19h00 for 19h30, Le Next, 17 rue Tiquetonne (M Metro Etienne Marcel/ RER Les Halles).

For up-to-date information, browse the Ivy Writers blog.

Lars Palm lives in Malmö. He has been publishing poems for 20 years & chapbooks for 10 years in Sweden, the USA, Canada, England, Scotland, Italy, Australia & Japan. His &#fb01;rst long book road song for was recently published by corrupt press. With his lovely wife Petra he had a photo & poetry exhibition & published two online chapbooks. He translates to & from Swedish, English & Spanish, sometimes as a part of the translators’ collective, & now small press, Kompassros. Poems of his have been translated into Spanish & Japanese. He might also say that he runs a small ungovernable press, works way too much for way too little pay, & enjoys cooking & travelling.

Megan M Garr (b. 1979) is an American poet and the editor of the widely-acclaimed literary journal Versal (www.versaljournal.org). A&#fb05;er just a year in Amsterdam, Megan founded the literary community organization “wordsinhere” in 2002. Activist by nature, her goal was to build a supportive infrastructure for Amsterdam’s then-scattered international writing community. By 2003, the organization boasted writing groups, the monthly literary evening “The Open Stanza” (which moved to Nachttheater Sugar Factory in 2004 and ran until 2007), and the journal Versal. Megan remains at the helm of this entirely self-funded and volunteer-run organization, which continues to support local residents through workshops, seminars and events. In 2010, she was chosen as one of 50 “Power Amsterdammers” by TimeOut Amsterdam.Versal has garnered international attention for its unique visual and literary aesthetic, and was named one of seventeen “Indie Innovator” presses by Poets & Writers Magazine (Nov/Dec 2010): “the most visible product of a passionate group helping to sustain ‘transnational networks’ for writers.” Megan’s own work as well as that through Versal have put Amsterdam on the map of the literary world. Her writings on translocalityhave been informed by years of living abroad, and her community work continues to address the concerns of writers who no longer live among their native languages and literary cultures. These writings have been published in several journals, including a piece inA Megaphone, an international anthology of some 75 works on the subject of feminism and writing, edited by Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young. Megan was also a featured panelist on translocality at the Prague Microfestival in 2011. Megan’s poetry has been published in the USA and Europe, most recently in Tuesday: An Art Journal, SpringGun,Sidebrow, VLAK, Lungfull!andCorduroy Mtn, and upcoming in Caketrain and Bateau. Her poetry collectionThe Preservationist Documentswas a &#fb01;nalist in several prizes, and won the Pilot Books Meddling Kids Series in 2010. It will be published by Pilot Books this fall.

Jane Lawty’s poetry can be seen in VOLT, Upstairs at Durocand other magazines in the U.S and U.K. Some recent pieces can be seen at La Petite Zine.com and Dear Sir Her poem The Freight appeared in Versal 9. She is also on the editing team of VLAK, an international journal of the arts, and has co-edited two essay collections: Broadcasting Modernism (University Press of Florida, 2009) which is concerned with the impact of radio on early 20th-century writing, and Pornotopias: Image, Apocalypse, Desire (LitterariaPragensia, 2010). A&#fb05;er holding faculty positions at University College London and the University of Northern Iowa, she currently works as an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Amsterdam.

Kate Foley is a widely published prize-winning UK poet whose 5th collection
- plus another chapbook -will be out in 2012 from ShoestringPress. Her
&#fb01;rst collection, So&#fb05; Engineering was short listed for best &#fb01;rst
collection at Aldeburgh. Her other works include: So&#fb05; Engineering
(Onlywomen Press, 1994); A Year Without Apricots, (Blackwater Press, 1999);
Laughter from the Hive (Shoestring Press, 2004), The Silver Rembrandt
(Shoestring Press 2008) and the chapbook Night and Other Animals (Green
Lantern Press, 2002). She has has read in many London, other UK and
European locations. Her working life has ranged from delivering babies to
conserving delicate archaeological material. She became Head of English
Heritage’s scienti&#fb01;c and technical research laboratories. Although she
has always written poetry it wasn’t until she gave up the day job that
she began to publish more widely. She lives mainly in Amsterdam, where she
works with the magazine Versal and the writer’s collective wordsinhere
but she leads workshops and reads whenever and wherever opportunity o&#fb00;ers.
Her 5th collection, plus a pamphlet, A Fox Assisted Cure, will be published
by Shoestring Press in 2012. She particularly enjoys working with artists
from other disciplines. SOME COMMENTS on Kate’s work: The Silver
Rembrandt Timothy Hyman, painter and critic: ‘…includes all the
material a novelist might engage with, yet shaped with the wrought
intensity and resource of poetic language’ Penelope Shuttle:‘…Foley
uses a remarkable exactness and &#fb02;uidity of language…to depict…the hard
work of &#fb01;rstly claiming the self then mending the self.’ Laughter from
the Hive Dilys Wood ‘…breathtakingly original…a deep interest in
women’s lives…the focus not only on herself as a woman but women at all
stages of their lives….’ ‘…a rare thing, a poet with the candid
Dutch, exact gaze…disturbingly good poems’ U.A. Fanthorpe.

Sarah Ream is a British-born writer and editor. She has lived in the UK, the USA, France and Australia, and has been based in Amsterdam since 2008. She is the managing editor of Versal, the central editor of Poetry International Web and poetry editor at Polygon, the literary imprint of the Edinburgh-based publishing house Birlinn. She also edits &#fb01;ction and non-&#fb01;ction books. In the past, she has worked as a bookseller and a freelance arts and restaurant critic. Her poems and articles have appeared in various publications, including the Guardian website, The List, 14 and V, an anthology of international writing from Edinburgh. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Edinburgh University.

Anna Arov is a Canadian/Russian poet who has been living in Holland for eleven years. Anna is one of the poetry editors for literary journal Versal. She organizes the International Room for the Dutch annual poetry festival, Huis van de Poezie. Anna teaches writing at the Dutch Royal Academy of Art as well as poetry workshops at the English Bookshop for wordsinhere and in elementary schools. She has performed throughout Europe and the Netherlands at various festivals and poetry podiums. Anna’s published work includes Observatory, a collection of poems illustrated by Leon M. Dekker, as well as poems in journals, CDs and in combination with exhibited art. This is her second appearance with IVY Writers Paris.