Editor Shelly Reed presents a collection of writing on economic status, featuring readings by contributors Michele Carlo, Caitlin Doyle, Monica A. Hand, Sonya Huber, Emmy Hunter, Leslie Jamison, and Rebecca Keith. A portion the book's proceeds benefit the Robin Hood Foundation.

About American Creative Writers on Class:

At a time when economic inequality is on all of our minds, this collection focuses on intimate moments, personal relationships, and common daily experiences at the intersection of people of different economic status. Edited by long-time, anti-poverty advocate Shelly Reed, American Creative Writers on Class gives us some peaceful thoughts to help calm the ideological war in our minds.

Nonfiction and poetry contributors include: Oliver de la Paz, Rebecca Keith, Matthea Harvey, Colleen McKee, Carolyne Wright, Emmy Hunter, Dorianne Laux, Monica A. Hand, Michele Carlo, Leslie Jamison, Caitlin Doyle, Christina Olson, Laura McCullough, Theresa Rodopoulos, and Sonya Huber.

About the readers:

Michele Carlo is a writer/performer who has lived in four of the five boroughs of NYC and remembers when a slice of pizza cost fifty cents. She has been published in Mr. Beller's Neighborhood's Lost & Found: Stories From New York, Chicken Soup For The Latino Soul, and SMITH magazine, and has told her stories everywhere a person can tell stories in NYC—including the MOTH's GrandSlams and Mainstage, among many others. Her memoir Fish Out Of Agua: My Life on Neither Side of the (Subway) Tracks was published by Citadel Press in August 2010. www.michelecarlo.com.

Monica A. Hand is a poet and book artist who is investigating a nomadic lifestyle as a strategy for economic, political, spiritual and artistic survival. Her manuscript, "me and Nina," received a 2010 Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books, and her poems have appeared in numerous publications including Naugatuck River Review, The Sow's Ear, Drunken Boat, and Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade. She holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, and is a founding member of Poets for Ayiti.

Sonya Huber is the author of Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir and Opa Nobody, a hybrid work about her German socialist grandfather and her own labor activism. She has also written The Backwards Research Guide for Writers: Using Your Life for Reflection, Connection, and Inspiration, and is working on a big, unwieldy project about social class. She teaches creative writing at Fairfield University and in the Low-Residency MFA program at Ashland.

Emmy Hunter's poetry has been published in many literary journals, including Fence, American Poetry Review, Witness, and languageandculture.net. A chapbook of her poetry and prose titled No View of the Boat was published by Linear Arts Press. She has been a semi-finalist for the Walt Whitman Award and the Center for Book Arts Chapbook Prize, and has had residencies at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. She teaches creative writing at Hunter College.

Leslie Jamison is the author of the novel, The Gin Closet, as well as stories and essays that have appeared in places like A Public Space, The Believer, The L Magazine, Bellevue Review, Salt Hill, and Tin House. She's worked as a baker, an innkeeper, a juice barista, and a medical actor. She's currently a PhD candidate in American Literature at Yale University. You can find her at www.lesliejamison.com.

Rebecca Keith's poems and other writing have appeared in Best New Poets (2009), The Laurel Review, The Rumpus, The Awl, BOMBlog, Dossier, Storyscape, The Millions, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, was a semi-finalist for the 2010 "Discovery"/Boston Review poetry contest, and has received honors from the Atlantic Monthly and BOMB Magazine. A native of downtown New York, Rebecca is a founder, curator, and host of Mixer Reading and Music series. She also sings and plays guitar and keyboards in the Roulettes and Butchers & Bakers.

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