Brian Turner & Kelle Groom: READINGS, Q&A, BOOK SIGNINGS

BRIAN TURNER & KELLE GROOM

Readings, Q&A, Book Signings

Friday, December 15, 6 PM

ACA Downtown: Harris House

214 South Riverside Drive, New Smyrna Beach

Join us as two acclaimed Central Florida writers launch new books at ACA.

Brian Turner, author of the poetry collections, Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise (Alice James), a memoir My Life as a Foreign Country (W.W. Norton), and editor of The Kiss, and published in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, and Harper’s, was featured in the documentary film Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, nominated for an Academy Award. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, USA Hillcrest Fellowship in Literature, NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry, Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship, a US-Japan Friendship Commission Fellowship, the Poets’ Prize, and a Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation, he lives in Orlando with Dene, the world’s sweetest golden retriever.

Brian will be reading poems from his newest writing project from Alice James Books, a triptych of poetry collections exploring the capacity to transform grief into art: The Wild Delight of Wild Things, (August 2023), The Goodbye World Poem (Sept 2023), and The Dead Peasant’s Handbook (Oct 2023). “Brian Turner possesses the extraordinary capacity to transform grief into art, whether intimate or collective, immediate or historical, illuminating that anguish so that we may learn, survive, even flourish in its wake. Known as a war poet, Turner writes with great moral authority on war. Yet, Turner believes in the redemptive power of love against death. —Martín Espada

Kelle Groom is the author of How to Live: A Memoir in Essays (Tupelo Press) and I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (Simon & Schuster) a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, and four poetry collections, including Underwater City (University Press of Florida), Five Kingdoms and Spill (Anhinga Press). A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow, and two-time Florida Book Award winner, Groom’s work appears in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, New York Times, Ploughshares, and Poetry. Groom’s honors also include fellowships from Black Mountain Institute, University of Nevada-Las Vegas in partnership with the Library of Congress, Civitella Ranieri (Italy), among others. She is a Nonfiction Editor at AGNI Magazine, Boston University, and Director of Foundation Relations and Communications for Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Kelle will be reading from How to Live: A Memoir in Essays (Tupelo Press, October 2023), which explores the idea of home, and how to live with fear and uncertainty.  Is home the place you left, or the place you are now? This is a central question in this fiercely won, wildly original, and ultimately beautiful meditation. – Nick Flynn