Join us for our next live F-bomb on Friday July 15 at 6:00 PM in the Roxy on Broadway (downstairs in the speakeasy space). Our host and featured reader will be K.B. Jensen, celebrating the release of her latest book, Love and Other Monsters in the Dark. Plus 5-minute open mic spots. Please join us if you can!
A long-time fan of the F-Bomb, Award-winning Author K.B. Jensen’s new cross-genre collection of short stories, Love and Other Monsters in the Dark, is out. She has two novels, Painting With Fire, an artistic murder mystery, and A Storm of Stories, which veers literary and handles love, craziness and impossibility. Painting With Fire has been downloaded over 75,000 times. K.B. lives in Littleton, CO., with her family. She teaches skiing and writes poetry. A former journalist, K.B. is a senior publishing consultant and writing camp director for My Word Publishing. Her work has appeared in Cherry Magazine, Progenitor and other publications. For more, visit www.kbjensenauthor.com.
Calling all Artistic Alices, all White Rabbit writers, calling all Cheshire Cat scribes, all March Hare bards, calling all Doormouse wordsmiths, all Mad Hatter authors, all Smoking Caterpillar poets!
This June 21st at 7 PM, the Fbomb Flash Fiction Reading Series is gathering to cheer everyone’s UNbirthday at a virtual UNbirthday party in Wonderland! Join host Lynn Brewer and feature readers Kit Tara Eret and Yrik-Max Valentonis for a Zoom reading on the summer solstice and spend the longest day of the year celebrating all our unbirthdays with a trip to the Wonderland of our writing.
Tell us the story about your first trip to Wonderland. Share the memoir chapter of your favorite encounter with Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Write a poem about the time you hung out at a sushi bar with the Walrus and the Carpenter, or a flash fiction story that settles the ultimate question – who stole the Queen of Heart’s tarts?
The open mic awaits you in 3-4 minutes spots with signups available beginning at 6:45pm.
Featured Reader Kit Tara Eret writes fiction and poetry of the fantastic and sensual imagination. She caught the writing bug after reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series when she was 12. Since then, she’s been published in several magazines including The Quantum Muse, Aoife’s Kiss, Drabbler, Scifiakuest, Circlet Press, and Cliterature Journal. She even has self-published erotica. To improve her craft, Kit has graduated from the writing workshops Taos Toolbox and Paradise Lost. When not writing, Kit binges on sci-fi shows she swore she’d hate, reads not enough sci-fi novels, and gets fur on her dresses when she cuddles with her two cats.
Yrik-Max Valentonis wanders through the urban landscape seeking out fairy circles. He makes puppets so other people can see his imaginary friends. He steals apples to justify his philosophy. He is Baba Yaga’s favorite grandson. His works appeared frequently in Cliterature. Through editorial correspondences Max and Lynn discovered that not only were they both Naropa Alum, they were also twins. He is the author of 120 Days of Gomorrah and Cranium Theatre and the chapbooks, iDEAL and this is visual poetry. He earned a BA in English & American Literature from the University of South Florida and a MFA in Poetry & Prose from Naropa University.
Welcome to the second ever Fbomb Prom! This year’s theme: Even Bigger Hair. Come listen to featured readers Selah Saterstrom and SETH! Read a short piece of your own on the open mic (prom theme a plus!). Our reining Prom King and Queen will crown new royalty–everyone is in the running! There may be bad power ballads: Don’t forget your corsages and hairspray!
Wednesday, May 18
7:30-10 pm
The Roxy on Broadway: 554 S Broadway, Denver, CO 80209
FEATURING SETH! Performance Poet SETH, formerly known as Zits Galore, never got to attend his high school prom. While others danced and/or lost their virginity, Zits would pen maudlin poetry, then rearrange the letters so no one would suspect his hetero-erotic fantasies regarding the English language. Since discovering Clearasil, SETH has gone on to author A Black Odyssey, his poetic memoir, and The Perfect Stranger an absurdist satirical novel and winner of two dubious awards for excellence in literary friction. Not content to restrict his literary masturbation between the covers of books, SETH also hosts the Jam Before the Slam every Sunday night at the Mercury Café. With his musical-poetic ensemble, Art Compost & the Word Mechanics, he performs and invites others to perform spoken word to live, improvised music. The weekly jams are streamed on Facebook, with highlights posted on YouTube, both at SETH & Art Compost. Learn more at http://www.wagingart.com.
HOST NANCY STOHLMAN is an award-winning author, performer, and all-around rabble-rouser. Her book Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction (2020), won a 2021 Reader Views Gold Award and was re-released as an audiobook in 2022. Her other books include After the Rapture, (forthcoming 2023), Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities (2018), and The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories (2014), among others. Her work has been anthologized widely, appearing in the Norton anthology New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction and The Best Small Fictions 2019, as well as adapted for both the stage and screen. She teaches at the University of Colorado Boulder and around the world.
The F-Bomb returns to a live venue for the first time in 2022! Join us at The Roxy on Broadway on Friday April 22 from 6-9 PM. Our host will be Meg Tuite, with featured readers Nancy Stohlman, Kona Morris, and Robert Vaughan. 4-minute open mic spots will also be available for others to share their flash fiction with the crowd. Join us in the Speakeasy space, downstairs at The Roxy!
HOST MEG TUITE’s latest collection is ‘WHITE VAN”. She is author of five story collections and five chapbooks. She won the Twin Antlers Poetry award for her poetry collection, Bare Bulbs Swinging and is included in Best of Small Press 2021. She teaches writing retreats and online classes hosted by Bending Genres. She is also the fiction editor of Bending Genres and associate editor at Narrative Magazine.
FEATURED WRITER KONA MORRIS received her moral guidance from Kermit the Frog. She is from the foggy redwood hub of Humboldt County, Northern California, and she has since lived everywhere from Boston to a remote village in northern Alaska. She was co-founder and editor of Fast Forward Press, as well as the founder and writer of a satirical comic book company called Godless Comics. She has been featured as a writer and editor at literary events and conferences across the country, and her stories, prose poems, and essays have appeared in a variety of publications. Kona teaches letter regurgitation to college students in Denver.
Please join us on Thursday March 10 at 7:30 PM MST on Zoom for the March F-Bomb! Our host will be Christopher Bowen and our featured readers will be Ben Tanzer and Michelle Reale. Plus, our 4-5 minute open mic spots will be available to any who want to share their own flash fiction. Please join us, and feel free to invite any friends who might enjoy our reading series!
Christopher Bowen is the author of the chapbook We Were Giants, the novella When I Return to You, I Will Be Unfed, and the non-fiction Debt. He was a semi-finalist in the 2017 Faulkner-Wisdom Novella Competition and honorable mention in the 45th New Millennium Writing Awards in the non-fiction category. He blogs from Burning River (http://www.burningriver.info.)
Ben Tanzer is a Pushcart and storySouth nominee, and author of the somewhat recently re-released short story collection UPSTATE, as well as numerous other award-winning books, including the science fiction novel Orphans and the essay collections Lost in Space: A Father’s Journey There and Back Again and Be Cool – a memoir (sort of). Ben is also an Emmy-award winng PSA writer, coach, creative strategist, podcaster, writer, teacher, and social worker who has been helping nonprofits, publishers, authors, small businesses, and career changers tell their stories for 20 plus years; and lover of all things run, book, Gin and street art. You can check out Ben’s website at tanzerben.com.
Look, I know there has been some dispute lately of the actual age of the FBomb Flash Fiction reading. As far as we knew last year was the 100th Anniversary. As of then our earliest photographic evidence was of Nancy Stohlman hosting the event in 1921 at the Overlook Hotel. How could she appear in a photo from that long ago without any apparent aging, you ask? I don’t know, man, I guess she’s just a ghost or something, or in some kind of timewarp, or it’s just like a metaphor for history repeating itself.
But that doesn’t matter anymore, cuz just within the last twelve months Archeologists have uncovered evidence of Fbombs from as far back as 10,000 years ago. And not just one ancient Fbomb, but a continuous line of them cross-culturally throughout the centuries. If you thought the flash fiction genre was something that hadta be invented because of our waning attention spans in the modern age, you’re totally wrong. These findings prove that people have pretty much always wanted stories that were really really short.
This February we will celebrate the ten millennia… (what’s that? oh right, yeah, there is a fringe group who believes the FBomb was only started 9 years ago, but we can just ignore those anti-Archeology conspiracy theorists.) So yes, we will celebrate 10,000 years of FBomb this month. We are still venue homeless, and must once again do the event virtually, but you can take heart in the fact that we now know several whole eras of the FBomb were actually done solely on Zoom. Genghis Khan did them online. So did Queen Victoria. It’s a cyclical thing.
So join us with your stories of what the FBomb was like in all these different eras, or share anything you’ve written about an earlier time period. The feature this month will be History itself.
The F-Bomb Reading Series is back from our winter hiatus! Please join us on Tuesday January 18 at 7:30 PM MST on Zoom. Our featured readers will be long-time F-Bombers Carol Covington and Lynn Brewer, hosted by another long-time F-Bomber Nick Morris.
The theme for January is “New Beginnings,” but as always the theme is optional. 5-minute open mic spots are available to all who wish to read their flash fiction (or poetry/memoir/whatever!). You can contact Nick through the Facebook event page or arrive to the Zoom room around 7:15 PM on January 18. Please join us if you can, and feel free to share this event with everyone! We love getting new F-Bombers from around the world!
HOST Nick Morris is the curator of the F-Bomb Reading Series, as well as a professor of humanities at Community College of Denver, a musician, the author of the short story collections Tapeworm and The Boy in the Well, the Dungeon Master for the D&D real-play podcast We Slay Things, an expatriate of the Deep South, a graduate of Arkansas Tech University and Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, a former editor of the literary journals Nebo and Bombay Gin, a resident of Denver, and utterly incapable of winning his fantasy football league.
FEATURED READER Carol Covington is a recent graduate of MSU Denver, earning an IDP in Healing Trauma through Creative Self-Expression. She has spent the last six decades waiting for this time in her life to be the only thing she has ever wanted to be, a Poetry-writing storyteller. Of that which she is most proud of included poems and short stories written in the last four years while pursuing her BA. A former freelance journalist with MSU’s RED Magazine, a contributing writer with the Veteran’s Writing Group anthology “Still Coming Home,” Carol is currently compiling a collection of her work for submission this year.
FEATURED READER Lynn Brewer is a writer living near Denver. Her first novel was so blasphemous she had to self-publish “She Bears a King,” the story of one ordinary woman who gets impregnated by Jesus Christ—only this Christ is a gay celebrity living the elite life in Hollywood. In 2006, Lynn founded Cliterature Journal and went on to edit and publish more than fifty issues over 14 years. The bastard literary child of Sylvia Plath and Jack Kerouac, her writing oscillates from the hilarious to the tragic, often in the same sentence.
Due to circumstances beyond our control, we must regretfully cancel the November 13 FBomb reading. Unfortunately, that means no more FBombs for 2021; we are regrouping for next year’s series.
As many of you know, our long-time venue Mercury Café recently changed ownership, and the FBomb would need to become a ticketed event in order to continue at The Merc. The FBomb has always been a free event and we want to maintain that, so we thank The Merc for its many years of support and wish them the best.
So what does that mean for the future of the FBomb? Well, in the short term it means that we will be returning to Zoom for our events. We’ve had some fun ZoomBombs, and it has allowed a number of participants from around the US (and elsewhere!) to share their work with our unique audience. In the long-term, we’re looking for other venues that can host us. Suggestions are welcome; stage and alcohol service preferred! (Thanks to those of you who have suggested potential venues already—I’ll be reaching out in the coming weeks to follow up on those recommendations.)
As your faithful curator, I have tried to leave the choice of holding a live or virtual FBomb reading up to each individual host. Given that we don’t have a steady venue at the moment, that will continue into 2022. Some folks have suggested a year of trying out different venues—a sort of FBomb Tryout Tour. That means that our regularly scheduled third Tuesday of the month timeline could change, so please watch this space and our FBomb social media space for updates. The FBomb is hibernating for the rest of 2021, but we’ll be back soon with another batch of great readings in 2022. Stay tuned!
F-Bomb is going back online for October! We’ll be hosting NYC-based performer, Gia K Trenchard, and Denver-local Jessica Lawson. Join us Tuesday, October 19 at 7 pm MDT, when Stina French hosts these two powerhouses who never flinch from going there. Whether “there” is all the way in, or so far out we must conceive new galaxies. Plus, 5-minute open mic slots for all others interested in sharing their flash pieces (fiction or non-fiction) or poetry on stage.
The theme is Innerspace/Outerspace, as our features both like to re-purpose their guts into poems, and both also have some incredible work involving space themes (Jeff Bezos’s space mission and the Mandalorian as allegory). The theme is obviously optional, as always.
Host Stina French is a college instructor and performer who specializes in vulnerable and graphic representations of sexuality, repression, and the healing process. She writes erotic mystery, magic-realist flash memoir, and poetry. She’s featured in many Colorado venues, and her work has appeared in Jen Pastiloff’s Manifest Station, Heavy Feather Review, South Broadway Ghost Society, Punch Drunk Press, among others. She leads monthly generative writing workshops and hosts the event, “listen to your skin: an erotic open-mic series” (last Sunday of each month). She wears welts from the Bible Belt, and is currently editing Take The Fruit, Flood The Desert: A Religious Trauma Abuse Anthology. She’s working on a manuscript, Also Arc, Also Offering, a Southern-queerdo memoir. Find her on IG at sister_rainbow_scream or visit her website, sisterrainbowscream.com.
Featured Reader Jessica Lawson (she/her/hers) is Denver-based writer, teacher, and queer single parent. Her debut book of poetry, Gash Atlas (forthcoming 2022), was selected by judge Erica Hunt for the Kore Press Institute Poetry Prize, and her chapbook Rot Contracts was published in 2020 (Trouble Department). A Pushcart-nominated poet, her writing has appeared in The Rumpus; Entropy; Dreginald; Yes, Poetry; The Wanderer; Cosmonauts Avenue; and elsewhere. She is currently at work on her second book project.
Featured Reader Gia Kagan-Trenchard is a writer, theater artist, and attorney. Her work has been featured on HBO’s Def Poetry, TEDx, and at the Public Theater. Her first play, In Spite of Everything, toured internationally as part of the Hip-Hop Theater Festival. Her first collection of poems, Murder Stay Murder, is available on Penmanship Books. She received her Juris Doctorate from Hofstra School of Law in 2014. She was awarded the Charles H. Revson Law Student Public Interest Fellowship, the Bergstrom Child Welfare Law Fellowship, and is a recipient of awards from both the Equal Justice Works and the Public Justice Foundation. She was also awarded a Postgraduate Fellowship to serve LGBTQ asylum seekers and help train law students in the Hofstra Asylum Clinic. Gia is currently an Adjunct Professor at New York Law School’s Asylum Clinic and hosts a weekly creative writing workshop/support group for trauma workers, These Rooms Don’t Know Our Names.
Join host Roseanna with feature guests Marilyn Megenity, Nancy Stohlman, and Nick Morris for this Saturday night LIVE edition, in the Jungle Room at Mercury Cafe. Celebrating Change Agents everywhere. As always, sign up sheet goes out at 7 for open mic spots (4min max). Event begins at 7:30. We will NOT likely be streaming live, although video clips will likely be posted. This is a FREE event. All are welcome. Bring your planetary change honoring selves. And words!
Please remember that COVID safety protocols are still going strong because of the Delta variant, so be ready mask up regardless of vaccination status. The only way to fully return to regular live readings is to stop the spread of infection, so your cooperation is key to maintaining our literary community.
Host Roseanna Frechette is a change agent and longtime member of Denver’s independent arts community. Spoken word performer and host as well as dancer and yogi, her multi genre work has featured at art galleries, rock stages, and festivals including Poetry Rodeo, Boulder Fringe, and Arise as well as indie publications including Stain’d, Lummox, Semicolon, and Suspect Press. With equal respect for edgy urban culture and purely natural landscape, Roseanna creates on whatever ground she happens to be standing. Former publisher of Rosebud Forum magazine, and one of Westword‘s Colorado Creatives, she holds great passion for the power of small press and the beauty of literary originality, delivered live!
Featured Reader Marilyn Megenity is a creative community force in Denver’s bohemian underground. She is well known as the original chef/owner of Mercury Cafe, having sustained its current location since 1990. But many don’t know that she’s also a poet, playwright,and spoken word performance art activist of diverse talent. It’s not all that often folks have a chance to catch Marilyn’s on-stage presence. Fbomb is completely jazzed to welcome her as we bring our event to the Merc’s Jungle Room stage for September’s live-on-site FBomb!
Featured Reader Nancy Stohlman has been writing, publishing, and teaching Flash Fiction for nearly 15 years. Her latest book, Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction, was a 2021 Reader Views Gold Award winner and was a Next Generation Indie Book Award and an International Book Award Finalist. Her other books include Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities, The Monster Opera, Searching for Suzi: a Flash novel, and The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories. Her work has been anthologized widely, appearing in the W.W. Norton anthology New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction, Macmillan’s The Practice of Fiction, and The Best Small Fictions 2019, as well adapted for both the stage and screen. She teaches at the University of Colorado Boulder and around the world. www.nancystohlman.com
Featured Reader Nick Morris is a writer, musician, and teacher in Denver, CO. He has been involved with the F-Bomb Reading Series since the beginning and serves as its curator. His work has appeared in Cliterature, Connotation Press, Danse Macabre Online, Nebo, and elsewhere. He also serves as the Dungeon Master for the real-play podcast We Slay Things. He teaches Humanities, Literature, and English and the Community College of Denver, and lives with his partner Alyssa in the lovely Mile High City.
fbombdenver.com 