SPD Presents: Steve Benson & Eddie Hopely

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SPD PRESENTS is a bi-monthly reading series with the aim of fostering relationships between emerging writers and readers in our national small press community.

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Steve Benson has written in various modes and media under the sign of poetry, most often orally and textually, since 1966. In most of the 1970s and 80s he worked at Pellucidar, Pendragon and Pegasus Bookstores in the East Bay. He wrote and transcribed (from orally improvised performances) the material in Blindspots (1981), Blue Book (1988), Open Clothes (2005), and other books. What This Is, comprised of three long poems, is forthcoming from Chax Press. Benson co-authored the Grand Piano series of autobiographical essays (2006-10) with nine old friends. He and Suzanne Stein partnered in a series of 36 improvised on-line streaming chat messaging performances in 2011 and 2012, appearing as a book this month from Gauss.pdf as DO YOUR OWN DAMN LAUNDRY. They also created a half-hour film, NOW, for the Third Annual Festival of Poets Theater in December 2017. Benson shares links to work products on-line through http://www.stevebensonasis.com/.

Eddie Hopely is a poet living in Sydney, Australia with strong links to the Philly and New York writing scenes. He has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Temple University and currently works as a freelance editor, research assistant, and independent scholar.