Month: January 2021

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic on Zoom Featuring Michael Dylan Welch February 11, 2021

January 17, 2021

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic

Hosted by Christopher Luna and Morgan Paige

Featuring Michael Dylan Welch

7 pm

Thursday, February 11

On Zoom

$5 Suggested donation

LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, PRO-SCIENCE, ANTI-FASCIST,

ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004

Please support Niche Wine Bar, whose owner, Leah Jackson, has provided a home for the reading series since 2015: https://nichewinebar.com

Michael Dylan Welch served two years as poet laureate of Redmond, Washington, where he is also president of the Redmond Association of Spokenword, director of the Poets in the Park Festival, and curator (since 2006) of SoulFood Poetry Night. He has published dozens of books, most recently Dance into the World, and his poetry has appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies in more than 20 languages. Michael was keynote speaker for the 2013 Haiku International Association conference in Tokyo, is cofounder of the biennial Haiku North America conference (1991), the American Haiku Archives (1996), and the Seabeck Haiku Getaway (2008). He also founded the Tanka Society of America (2000) and National Haiku Writing Month (2010), the latter held every February, the shortest month for the shortest genre of poetry (learn more at http://www.nahaiwrimo.com). His personal website, devoted mostly to poetry (not just haiku), including hundreds of essays and reviews, is www.graceguts.com. Lately, Michael has been traveling the world, via Zoom, giving poetry readings, workshops, and presentations in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, India, England, Canada, and around the United States—a silver lining amid our pandemic lockdown.

NOTE: Due to circumstances beyond everyone’s control, this month’s reading will take place over Zoom. Email christopherjluna@gmail.com by no later than 3 pm on February 11 to indicate your interest in participating. In the subject line, let us know if you are “Reading” or “Just Listening.” You will receive instructions for how to join the meeting. Open mic readers are invited to share one poem for three minutes or less. 

If you are willing to donate to support the series, please use Christopher Luna’s PayPal account (christopherjluna@gmail.com) or contact him to make other arrangements. Include a memo stating that the money is for Ghost Town Poetry. The suggested donation is five dollars.

Rime of the Angry Metalhead by Jason Luna now available from Printed Matter Vancouver

January 14, 2021

Printed Matter Vancouver is proud to present Rime of the Angry Metalhead, the debut novel by Jason Luna.

Long Island, 1988. Mikey Pellegrino and his nihilistic metalhead friends, The Ridge Boys, are thirsty for revenge against the classmate they deem responsible for the car crash that took their best friend’s life on New Year’s Eve. The teens construct a shrine at their hangout spot in the woods in honor of their fallen friend, Cliff, whose nickname resulted from the young man’s striking resemblance to Cliff Burton, the heavy metal legend who was killed in a bus crash two years earlier. As “Angry Mike” steps into 1989 ready to settle the score for Cliffy’s untimely death, his confusion and rage lead him down a path of self-destruction that forces him to enter a residential rehab facility. There he meets Cheyenne, who surprises both with her peculiar method of romantic pursuit and the information she holds about the night Cliffy died, an insight that will forever change the way Mikey sees the event that took his friend away. Rime of the Angry Metalhead is Mikey’s tale of loss and love, metal and mayhem.

Inspired by his own experiences as a teenage metalhead on Eastern Long Island in the late 1980s, author Jason Luna uses the backdrop of the end of the Cold War and the suburban heavy metal subculture in order to tell the story of a cynical, chaotic young man whose worst enemy is himself.

Jason Luna is a high school English teacher and former Correctional Educator in New York City. He lives in the Hudson Valley, New York with his wife Mary. His debut novel Rime of the Angry Metalhead is available on Amazon through Printed Matter Vancouver.

Nuclear Holocaust, the Cold War and a looming sense of dread were a regular part of a teenager’s life in the 1980s. The sense of isolation, the crazy backwoods parties and most importantly the music we listened to were all reactions to the very real fear we felt. Rime of the Angry Metalhead will take you back to those dark, delicious times when parents, politicians and polite society were terrified of metal, and fun consisted of wild nights of drinking and smoking while jamming tunes on a beat-up boom box. If you were a metalhead in the 1980s or if want to know what it was like to be one during that unique and memorable era, give this book a read.

 —Chris Pervelis, guitarist for Internal Bleeding and metalhead from Long Island

Luna’s nostalgic look at some of heavy metal’s golden years brought me back. I loved the mention of the Metallica concert and the girl in the Slayer shirt. The “soundtrack” had me racing to listen to songs and bands that I know so well and remember fondly. —Rick Ernst, director of Get Thrashed: the Story of Thrash Metal (2008)

Join us at 8pm ET/ 5pm PT for a virtual book launch event on Zoom featuring the author. RSVP to printedmattervancouver@gmail.com to receive a Zoom invitation to this event.

Rime of the Angry Metalhead

By Jason Luna

Printed Matter Vancouver

January 2021

Paperback ($16.99): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08SZ1HY83?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

EBook ($4.99): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08T197DRY/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=