Poet Meg Johnson To Read at Magers & Quinn Booksellers, Today

Award-winning Iowa poet Meg Johnson will read at the Minneapolis bookstore Magers & Quinn Bookseller on Wednesday, September 9, 2015, at 7 p.m. The popular annual poetry reading event, sponsored by the Midwestern Gothic journal, invites to Minneapolis some of the most avant-garde, cutting-edge poets from across the Midwest.

Johnson is the author of poetry collection Inappropriate Sleepover (The National Poetry Review Press, 2014). She is a 2015 winner of the Vignette Collection Award and her second book, The Crimes of Clara Turlington (Vine Leaves Press), will appear in December of this year.

Johnson will read from both collections and from new work.

Poems by author Meg Johnson have appeared in a number of the nation's newest and most cutting-edge literary journals, including Midwestern Gothic, Hobart, Nashville Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Puritan, Sugar House Review, Verse Daily, and other cutting-edge poetry journals in the United States.

Midwestern Gothic, organizer of the Minneapolis event, is a national quarterly print journal that collects the very best in new Midwestern writing. In the poem "The Unfortunate Charisma" which appears in Meg Johnson's book Inappropriate Sleepover and in Midwestern Gothic's sixth issue, she writes, "my father as a young boy carves / Born To Be Wild in the boards / of the corn crib // he didn't have to tell me this / I can feel my DNA like a razor". Johnson's poem "Traveling Woman" also appears in the journals Issue 6.

The Crimes of Clara Turnlington

Here is a selection of the advanced praise from fellow poets for Meg Johnson's newest book, The Crimes of Clara Turlington:

"Meg Johnson's new book is a furry pink pillow full of blood and teeth. Slyly brilliant, funny, and scary all at the same time, its effect can only be achieved through a careful attention to craft and unwavering clarity. Her psychological portraits of women and our subconscious-of our indefatigable rage and imagination-of our struggle for power and independence-had me laughing and gasping at the same time." Jennifer L. Knox, Iowa State University

"At once fierce and fragile, the heroines of Meg Johnson's vignettes invite readers to peer through keyholes and riffle pages. Secrets stain characters' careful lives, lending mystery to lyrical poetic fragments. In precise, musical language, Johnson invites us to study the stories behind quotidian thoughts and feelings. The Crimes of Clara Turlington reads like a thought police blotter: every nuanced emotion called in and cuffed." Carol Guess, Western Washington University

"Clara Turlington's [Meg Johnson's] girl gang teaches you how to make yourself unavailable, even when your body remains in the room. These girls know how to get things done. They attract the gaze and pin it to the ugly consequences of its greed. They're so visible as to be invisible. They laugh until we get the joke. They need naps and dirt naps. They make an uneasy alliance with other creatures who can anticipate a blowhorses, small children, some of usand when they're lucky, feint." Danielle Pafunda, University of Wyoming.

Magers & Quinn Booksellers is the largest independent bookstore in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The bookstore has been at its 3038 Hennepin Avenue address in the Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis since 1994 and hosts that region's premiere literary events and author signings throughout the year. Magers & Quinn is also the sponsor of the Twin Cities' biggest book club, Books & Bars.

About Meg Johnson

Poems by author Meg Johnson have appeared in Hobart, Nashville Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Puritan, Sugar House Review, Verse Daily, and other cutting-edge poetry journals in the United States.

Johnson, the editor of Dressing Room Poetry Journal, was a trained professional dancer before entering the prestigious, three-year NEOMFA graduate program in Ohio, a creative writing consortium formed in 2005 by four Ohio campuses: Cleveland State University, Kent State University, the University of Akron, and Youngstown State University. Johnson has taught creative writing at the University of Akron and at Iowa State University in Ames IA. Johnson is represented by literary agent Thomas Goff.

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