The Writer’s Center welcomes Michael Gushue and Kim Roberts to celebrate the release of their collaborative poetry collection, Q&A for the End of the World. Book signing to follow.
FREE & open to the public. RSVP below.
Michael Gushue has been published in journals such as the Indiana Review, Third Coast, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Gargoyle, and American Letters and Commentary. His books of poetry are: Sympathy for the Monster (Alien Buddha Press, 2023), Gather Down Women: Poems and Translations (Souvenir Spoon Books, 2023), Pachinko Mouth (Plan B Press, 2013), Conrad (Souvenir Spoon, 2010), and—in collaboration with CL Bledsoe—The Judy Poems (Ghoti Press, 2021), and I Never Promised You A Sea Monkey (Pretzelcoatl Books, 2017). He co-founded Poetry Mutual Press with Dan Vera, and co-ran a poetry reading series in Brookland and on Capitol Hill, and the series Poetry at the Watergate. He and CL Bledsoe run a column of very bad advice on Medium.com called How To Even. He lives in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington DC.
Kim Roberts is the author of the popular guidebook, A Literary Guide to Washington, DC: Walking in the Footsteps of American Writers from Francis Scott Key to Zora Neale Hurston (University of Virginia Press, 2018), and editor of two anthologies, By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of our Nation’s Capital (University of Virginia Press, 2020, selected by the DC Public Library and East Coast Centers for the Book for the 2021 Route 1 Reads program), and Full Moon On K Street: Poems About Washington DC (Plan B Press, 2010). She is the author of seven books of poems, including, most recently, another collaboration: Corona/Crown, a cross-disciplinary chapbook created with photographer Robert Revere (WordTech Editions, 2023). Kim co-curates DC Pride Poem-a-Day each June with Jon Gann.
Q&A for the End of the World is a series of poems about science fiction movies from the 1950s and 60s written by Michael Gushue and Kim Roberts. The poems in this collaboration interrogate pop culture references, their assumptions about race and gender, and their use of special effects and fake science. As the authors alternate poems about classic movies such as “Godzilla” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” they balance the surreal humor and kitsch of the movies with deeper cultural concerns about safety and the dehumanizing effects of technology. The book is available from WordTech Editions.
If you need an accommodation for this event, please contact us at access@writer.org. We will attempt to fulfill all requests, but advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility services.
Enjoying our free events? Help us offer more programs to support writers with a $10 donation »