#CreativeAtTheCannery is back for our most hygge installation yet - a deep winter Prose Reading and Open Mic complete with handmade cocktails and craft beer is exactly what we all need right now. Curated as always by local writers Christine Kendall and Matt Jakubowski, this upcoming reading features four incredibly talented Philadelphia-based writers including Carlos Jose Perez Samano, Lori Tharps, Audra J. Wolfe and Simone Zelitch.

CARLOS JOSE PEREZ SAMANO

Carlos José Pérez Sámano is a Mexican literary fiction and non-fiction author, teacher of Creative Writing Workshops in Mexico, U.S.A., Kenya and Cuba. With four published books, and recently hosted in the anthology Who Will Speak for America?, his work has been featured in more than 20 international magazines like Rio Grande Review, Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review, Errr Magazine, Quinqué, Poetry in Common, Forum, Cultura Colectiva, among others.

LORI THARPS

Lori L. Tharps is an associate professor of journalism at Temple University, an award-winning author, freelance journalist and popular speaker. A graduate of Smith College and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Tharps is a recognized voice in the areas of race, pop culture, identity politics and African American history and culture. 

After graduation from Columbia University, Tharps was a staff reporter at Vibe magazine and then a correspondent for Entertainment Weekly. She has written for magazines including, Ms., Glamour, Suede, Vogue Black, xoJane.com and Essence. She has also written for The Columbia Journalism Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. She is the author of three critically acclaimed nonfiction books, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America (St. Martin’s Press) Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love & Spain (Atria) and Same Family, Different Colors: Confronting Colorism in America’s Diverse Families (Beacon).Tharps' latest book, Proud: My Unlikely Fight for an American Dream (Hachette) was a collaboration with Muslim-American, Olympic fencer, Ibtihaj Muhammad.She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and three children. She blogs at MyAmericanMeltingpot.com. 

AUDRA W. WOLFE

Audra J. Wolfe, Ph.D. is a Philadelphia-based writer, editor, and historian. She is the author of Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science (2018) and Competing with the Soviets: Science, Technology, and the State in Cold War America (2013). Her articles have appeared in both scholarly and more popular venues, including the Washington Post, The Atlantic.com, Slate, and the popular podcast American History Tellers. 

Wolfe holds a Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania (2002). Previously, she studied biochemistry and chemistry at Purdue University (B.S., 1997). She has taught courses on Cold War science as well as science and the media at the University of Pennsylvania. As a publishing professional, Wolfe has worked at the University of Pennsylvania Press, Rutgers University Press, and the Chemical Heritage Foundation, where she additionally served as executive producer for an award-winning podcast, Distillations. Her editorial and publishing consulting company, The Outside Reader, supports the work of scholars and scholarly publishers. 

Additional information is available on Wolfe’s website, http://audrajwolfe.com. She tweets @ColdWarScience.

SIMONE ZELITCH

Simone Zelitch is the author of five novels, most recently Judenstaat, an alternative history about a Jewish state established in Germany in 1948 which will appear in paperback in Fall 2019. A National Endowment for the Arts recipient, her work as appeared in Art Papers and The Forward, Lilith Magazine, and National Public Radio’s The Best of Channukah Lights,  and she chronicled a 2015 trip to Jerusalem, Hebron and Jaffa in a series of articles in Jewish Currents. A former Peace Corps volunteer, she has taught at Community College of Philadelphia for over twenty years where she established their creative writing program.

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