Please join Les Figues Press and editors Christine Wertheim & Matias Viegener, to celebrate The noulipian Analects, an alphabetical survey of constrained writing by some of today’s most innovative writers.

Hosted by: Robert Fitterman

With readings by contributors: Christian Bök, Vanessa Place, Brian Kim Stefans, Rodrigo Toscano, Matias Viegener, and Christine Wertheim

Thursday, January 31, 2008
7:00 p.m.
The Mercantile Library Center for Fiction
17 East 47th Street
New York, NY 10017

For more info see:
http://www.lesfigues.com
http://www.mercantilelibrary.org/events/readings.php

About the book, in the words of Charles Bernstein
[The noulipian Analects is] An Alpha Bestiary of Exogenously Exotic Essays and Dazzlingly Delectable Design, Complexly Charismatic Constraints and Occasional Oulipian Outrages, Thoughtful Theoretical Threads and Ludicrously Ludic Limits, Gutsy Gender Gaiety and Dantesque destinies Detourned, Quixotic Queneau Quests and Cocky Combinatorial Collisions, Real Rubber Roses & Radiantly Removed R’s…What We Wanton Woeful Whimsical Wanderers Willingly Want.

About the People Performing

Robert Fitterman is the author of 9 books of poetry; 3 of which constitute his ongoing poem Metropolis. Metropolis 1-15 was awarded the Sun & Moon New American Poetry Award (1997), and Metropolis 16-29 (Coach House Books, 2002) received the Small Press Traffic Book of the Year Award in 2003. A new collection of various writings, rob the plagiarist, is forthcoming in Fall 2008 (Roof Books). Fitterman is on the writing faculty at NYU and at Bard College. He lives in New York City with his wife, poet Kim Rosenfield and their daughter Coco.

Christian Bök is the author not only of Crystallography (Coach House Press, 1994), a pataphysical encyclopedia nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, but also of Eunoia (Coach House Books, 2001), a bestselling work of experimental literature, which has gone on to win the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence. Bök has created artificial languages for two television shows: Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict and Peter Benchley’s Amazon. Bök has also earned many accolades for his virtuoso performances of sound poetry (particularly the Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters). His conceptual artworks (which include books built out of Rubik’s cubes and Lego bricks) have appeared at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York City as part of the exhibit Poetry Plastique. Bök is currently a Professor of English at the University of Calgary.

Vanessa Place is a writer and lawyer, and a co-director of Les Figues Press. She is the author of Dies: A Sentence, a 50,000-word, one-sentence novel, and a chapbook, Figure from The Gates of Paradise. Her nonfiction book The Guilt Project: Rape and Morality is forthcoming from Other Press; her novel La Medusa will be published in Fall 2008 from Fiction Collective 2.

Brian Kim Stefans is the author of Free Space Comix (Roof Books, 1998), Gulf (Object Editions, 1998, downloadable at ubu.com), Angry Penguins (Harry Tankoos Books, 2000) and What Does It Matter? (Barque Press, 2003). Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics (Atelos Press), a collection of essays, poetry and interviews, appeared in 2003. His newest books are What Is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers (Factory School, 2006), collecting over six years of poetry, and Before Starting Over (Reconstruction S.) (Salt Publishing, 2006). He is the editor of the /ubu (”slash ubu”) series of e-books at www.ubu.com/ubu and the creator of arras.net, devoted to new media poetry and poetics.

Rodrigo Toscano latest book is Collapsible Poetics Theater, which was a National Poetry Series 2007 selection. Toscano’s experimental poetics plays, body movement poems, polyvocalic pieces have recently been performed at the Disney Redcat Theater in Los Angeles, Ontological-Hysteric Poet’s Theater Festival, Yockadot Poetics Theater Festival (Alexandria, Virginia). Toscano is originally from the Borderlands of California. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Matias Viegener is a professor at the California Institute for the Arts, and a member of the art collective Fallen Fruit. His criticism appears in the collections Queer Looks: Lesbian & Gay Experimental Media (Routledge), and Camp Grounds: Gay & Lesbian Style (U Mass). He is the editor and co-translator of Georges Batailles’ The Trial of Gilles de Rais. He has published in Bomb, Artforum, Artweek, Afterimage, Cargo, Critical Quarterly, Framework, Oversight, American Book Review, Fiction International, Paragraph, Semiotext(e), Men on Men 3, Sundays at Seven, Dear World, Abject and Discontents and X-tra.

Christine Wertheim is a former painter with a PhD in literature and semiotics from Middlesex University, (UK). She teaches at the California Institute for the Arts and co-organizes an annual conference: Séance (2004), Noulipo (2005), Impunities (2006), Feminaissance (2007), ArtText (2008). Her writings on aesthetics include essays in Art History vs Aesthetics, Xtra and Open Letter. Her poetry has appeared in various journals, including La Petite Zine and Five Fingers Review, and her book of poetics +|’me’S-pace is published by Les Figues Press, 2007.