(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Novelists Emma Smith-Stevens and Jessie Chaffee and essayist Mark Allen will read from their works at Spotty Dog Books & Ale on Saturday, June 10, at 7pm, as part of Volume, the free monthly reading and music series every second Saturday of the month. The readings will be followed by book-signing and a DJ set by Holly Watson.

Jessie Chaffee is the author of the debut novel “Florence in Ecstasy” (Unnamed Press, May 2017). She was awarded a Fulbright grant to Italy to complete the novel and was the writer-in-residence at Florence University of the Arts. Her writing has been published in The Rumpus, Slice, Bluestem, Global City Review, Big Bridge, and The Sigh Press, and she has been granted fellowships by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Ox-Bow Artists’ Residency, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She received her MFA from the City College of New York and lives in New York City, where she is an editor at Words Without Borders.

 

Emma Smith-Stevens is the author of the novel “The Australian” (Dzanc Books) and a forthcoming short story collection, “Greyhounds” (Dzanc Books). She is currently writing a memoir entitled “Future Ghost,” which begins on the day she dropped out of junior high school and chronicles her battles with severe mental illness, cycling in and out of hospitals, and running wild in New York City during the 1990s.

Smith-Stevens’s work has appeared in BOMB magazine, Subtropics, Conjunctions, SmokeLong Quarterly, Joyland, Day One, Lucky Peach, The Hairpin, and elsewhere. Her short story “An August in the Early 2000’s,” published in Wigleaf, received a Special Mention in The Pushcart Prize XL: Best of the Small Presses (2016), and her work was selected for inclusion in Wigleaf ‘s Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions in 2013 and 2012. Her essay, “The Sun,” will be published in the anthology Not That Bad: Dispatches From Rape Culture, edited by Roxane Gay and Ashley C. Ford (Harper Perennial). She is a graduate of Bard College and the University of Florida’s MFA program in creative writing. She teaches fiction writing with the Bard Prison Initiative and lives in Hudson, N.Y.

Mark Allen’s stories and essays have been published in the New York Times, NPR’s All Things Considered, Towleroad, FourTwoNine, The Awl, and Vice, and his tweets have been mocked on Breitbart.com. As a comedian and storyteller he’s performed at Upright Citizen’s Brigade, The Cutting Room, and 92Y Tribeca. In the oughts he hosted his own experimental radio show at freeform station WFMU. As an “immersive” journalist, Mark has lived for a week with a Japanese home-robot, gone bull riding, been “cured” by an ex-gay church in front of a live audience, and alienated comedian Eric Andre. His first stab at feature filmmaking, Sock Job, is still in production. A year ago he created and hosted a live monthly show at Dixon Place called Pitch! where writers pitched ideas to editors live on stage. He also used to famously dance in his underwear for a living in NYC, and once helped wrap a giant condom over Jesse Helms’ house.

 

Volume is hosted and curated by Hallie Goodman and Dani Grammerstorf French.