Please join us on Thursday, November 10th at 7pm for a special reading and discussion with Tupelo authors Stephen Massimilla and Myra Kornfeld to celebrate their new book Cooking with the Muse: A Sumptuous Gathering of Seasonal Reciples, Culinary Poetry, and Literary Fare. They will be accompanied by Tupelo poets Annie Guthrie, author of The Good Dark, and Suzanne Parker, author of Feed,  and by Columbia poet BK Fischer, author of Mutiny Gallery and St. Rage’s Vault  A brief Q & A will follow, and wine and delectable edibles will be served.

The new book by co-authors Stephen Massimilla and Myra Kornfeld, entitled Cooking With the Muse: A Sumptuous Gathering of Seasonal Recipes, Culinary Poetry, and Literary Fare, was recently released by Tupelo Press. This 500-page “coffee table book” comprises a complete collection of new food poems and pieces by Massimilla; a wide-ranging anthology of culinary poems; a complete cookbook of 150 exciting international recipes; a guide to healthy, sustainable eating; and 200 color photos. Poet Ellen Bass remarks, “I don’t know when a cookbook has been such a good read! … I want to give this book to every cook and poet I know.”

Stephen Massimilla is a poet, scholar, professor, and painter/photographer. Acclaim for his books includes a Stephen F. Austin University Press Prize for The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat; the Bordighera/CUNY Poetry Prize for Forty Floors from Yesterday; the Grolier Poetry Prize for Later on Aiaia; and a Van Rensselaer Award, selected by Kenneth Koch, among others. He has recent work in hundreds of publications from AGNI to Verse Daily. A founding member of The Urban Range Poets collective, Massimilla holds an M.F.A. and a Ph.D. from Columbia University and has taught extensively in the Columbia Core and the Department of English and Comparative Literature, as well as at Barnard College, The New School, and elsewhere. For more info: Stephenmassimilla.com and cookingwiththemuse.com

Myra Kornfeld is a chef, educator, and nutrition instructor, and the author of three previous cookbooks, The Healthy Hedonist: More Than 200 Delectable Flexitaroian Recipes for Relaxed Daily feasts; The Healthy Hedonist Holidays; and The Voluptuous Vegan. She teaches in the Graduate Nutrition program at the Maryland University of Integrative Health and at the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York, and she is head chef for the website myfoodmyhealth.com. She specializes in cooking parties and team-building events. For more info: Myrakornfeld.com and cookingwiththemuse.com

Annie Guthrie, author of The Good Dark (Tupelo, 2015), is a writer and jeweler living in Tucson. She has a metalsmithing studio at Splinter Brothers Warehouse and can be found through her website, www.annieguthrie.net. She teaches at the University of Arizona Poetry Center and also mentors select students wishing to apprentice in poetry or to further their art projects through her courses in “Oracular Writing.”

BK Fischer is the author of three poetry collections, Mutiny Gallery, St. Rage’s Vault, and My Lover’s Discourse (forthcoming from Tinderbox), as well as a book of criticism, Museum Mediations: Reframing Ekphrasis in Contemporary American Poetry. Her poems have appeared in FIELD, The Paris Review, Barrow Street, Literary Mama, WSQ, The Hopkins Review, Ninth Letter, Posit, Blackbird and other journals.A finalist for the 2014 Balakian Citation in Reviewing from the National Books Critics Circle, she teaches in the School of the Arts at Columbia University and is poetry editor at Boston Review.

Suzanne Parker is a winner of the Kinereth Gensler Book Award from Alice James Books.  Her book Viral was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry has appeared in Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Hunger Mountain, Drunken Boat, and numerous other journals.  She is a winner of the Alice M. Sellars Award from the Academy of American Poets and was a Poetry Fellow at the Prague Summer Seminars. Suzanne’s creative non-fiction is published in the travel anthology Something to Declare. Suzanne is the managing  editor at MEAD: A Magazine of Literature and Libations.