In this reading presented in conjunction with the Communal Presence conference and featuring the variously challenging and convivial work of Brandon Brown, Rob Halpern, Trisha Low, and the inimitable Camille Roy, we explore what New Narrative sounds like today.

Rob Halpern lives in San Francisco and Ypsilanti, Michigan, where he teaches at Eastern Michigan University and Huron Valley Women’s Prison. Common Place is his most recent volume of poetry. Other titles include Music for Porn, Rumored Place, and Disaster Suites, which was recently translated into Dutch as part of the Contemporary Poetry in Translation series published by the Netherlands’ literary arts foundation, Perdu. Together with Taylor Brady, he also coauthored Snow Sensitive Skin. [ ——— ] Placeholder, a book-length selection of his poetry and prose drawn from across all of these books, was just published in the UK. Among other projects, Halpern is currently translating Georges Perec’s early essays on aesthetics and politics while coediting with Robin Tremblay-McGaw a volume of essays on New Narrative, to be published soon by ON Contemporary Practice.

Camille Roy’s most recent book is Sherwood Forest. Earlier books include Cheap Speech, a play, Craquer, a fictional autobiography, and Swarm, as well as The Rosy Medallions and Cold Heaven. She coedited Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative. Roy has taught creative writing in multiple genres and forms at several institutions, most recently at San Francisco State University.

Trisha Low is the author of The Compleat Purge. She lives in Oakland, where she is working on a book entitled Socialist Realism.

Brandon Brown’s most recent books are The Good Life and Top 40. His work has appeared recently in Fanzine, Art in America, The Best American Experimental Writing, The Felt, and Open Space. He is also the author, with J. Gordon Faylor, of two volumes of Christmas poems, most recently A Christmas Reckoning. In 2018, Wonder will publish a new full-length book, The Four Seasons.