THE GRAY HAIR READING SERIES

Mick Cochrane—born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota—is Writer-in-Residence and Professor of English at Canisius College in Buffalo. His short stories have appeared in Minnesota Monthly, Northwest Review, and Kansas Quarterly. His first novel, Flesh Wounds (Penguin Books, 1999) was named a finalist in Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers competition. His second novel, Sport—originally published by Dunne Books in 2001—was republished in 2003 by University of Minnesota Press.

Reviews of Sport:
"Some people should never get married, and when they do, it generally makes for a good story. Mick Cochrane knows this, bless him, and the broken family he gives us in his new novel, Sport, yields both familiar and fresh heartbreak in generous portions. It's also a very funny book."—Richard Russo, author of Nobody's Fool and Straight Man

"Harlan 'Sport' Hawkins is a boy whose love for baseball and innate sense of goodness fuel an American Dream while he lives in a household that is anything but. A modern-day Huck Finn—honest, faithful, and wise beyond his years—Sport will steal your heart only to break and reassemble it in a way you'll never forget. Mick Cochrane is a writer of immense talent and Sport is a grand slam."—Jill McCorkle, author of The Cheerleader and Carolina Moon

"What I can tell you about Sport is that it is damn wonderful. There isn't a line in it that doesn't shimmer with truth. Sport teaches us, broadens us, pushes our horizons back and allows us to take in what our hearts already know but won't often admit—that there is human misery behind every door, all of it unique, all of it deserving of our care and compassion and understanding. Cochrane writes with a sympathetic but unsparing eye and in a style that is economical, energetic, and brilliantly luminous. The characters jump off the page, fully realized and unforgettable. What the hell more can a reader ask of a book?"—Duff Brenna, author of Too Cool and The Book of Mamie


Judith Kerman is a poet, performer, and artist with broad cultural and scholarly interests. She has published eight books or chapbooks of poetry, most recently Galvanic Response (March Street Press, 2005) and the bilingual collection Plane Surfaces/Plano de Incidencia (Santo Domingo, CCLEH, 2002). Her book of translations A Woman in Her Garden: Selected Poems of Dulce Mar’a Loynaz (Cuban, Cervantes Prize laureate, 1992) was published by White Pine Press in 2002. Kerman was a Fulbright Senior Scholar to the Dominican Republic in 2002, translating the poetry and fiction of contemporary Dominican women. In addition to published translations of Dominican poetry and fiction, her video documentary and photographic exhibit, Carnaval in the Dominican Republic, has had several conference, public library, and gallery showings.

Kerman edited the well-known scholarly anthology Retrofitting Blade Runner: Issues in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Popular Press). Her scholarly research has often touched on the ontology and moral significance of the fantastic. In addition to several papers on Blade Runner, she has presented and published papers on virtual reality in film; uses of masks, puppets, and clowning in folk tradition, religion, and film; anthropology in science fiction; apocalyptic metafiction; computer art; and technology as an aspect of culture.

The first edition of her book-length prose poem Mothering received Honorable Mention for poetry in the 1978 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award competition, a national first books competition. A second edition of Mothering, including the related play Dream of Rain, was published by Ridgeway Press in 1996, and an expanded hypertext version of Mothering appeared in Eastgate Quarterly 2:2, in summer 1996.

Kerman has published poems and translations in Calyx, The MacGuffin, Circumference, Chelsea, Visions International, The Hiram Poetry Review, House Organ, Oxalis, Black Bear Review, The Bridge, Snowy Egret, Michigan Quarterly Review, Earth's Daughters, Pudding, Moving Out, and other publications. Her poem "Tree Frog Ghazal" won the Abbie M. Copps Prize. She founded Mayapple Press in 1980 (50 titles to date), and Earth's Daughters—the oldest feminist literary magazine still publishing in the United States—in 1971.

Continuing publication of Earth's Daughters magazine is made possible by a Decentralization grant from the Arts Council in Buffalo & Erie County, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. The Gray Hair Series is co-sponsored by Hallwalls, Just Buffalo Literary Center, & Talking Leaves...Books.

Some publications related to this event:
October, 2007 - 2007