First Floor Walk Up Reading Series - Monday, April 21st

Mark and I will be reading fiction at the First Floor Walk Up Reading Series on Monday, April 21st at 7pm at One and One LES (76 E 1st Street, New York, NY 10009)

All the deets below:

First Floor Walk Up Presents Bi-Weekly Readings of
Poetry and Prose at

One and One
76 E. 1st St. @ 1st Ave
F Train to 2nd Ave Station

FREE 

Monday, April 21st, 7 PM
FB event link

Featured writers/poets/creatives’ bios below: 

MEGHAN GRUPPOSO

Originally from the gorgeous woods of southern New Hampshire, Meghan Grupposo holds a BFA in Dance from The Juilliard School. She is a co-founder, former COO and co-editor of NeuroNautic Institute Presents and Press. Meghan’s work can be found in her handbound chapbook, Bouquet (NeuroNautic Press), & in various anthologies, including NYC From the Inside (Blue Light Press), arriving at a shoreline and Escape Wheel (great weather for MEDIA), the Dada Journal Maintenant, Issues 14-17 (Three Rooms Press), Love Love Magazine, Polarity, & Rucksack a Global Poetry Patchwork’s multimedia project, Hair in the Wind. She’s a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee. Meghan happily resides in New York City with her two cats.

ANDREA DeANGELIS

Andrea DeAngelis is at times a poet, writer, shutterbug and musician living in New York City. Her writing has recently appeared in Carmina Magazine, Corvus Review, HauntedMTL and Bowery Gothic. Andrea also sings and plays guitar in the indie rock band MAKAR (www.makarmusic.com)  who are currently recording their fourth album, Exit Earth. She tries not to disturb her neighbors by putting her guitar amp in the closet.

MARK PURNELL

Mark Purnell is a writer, investor and musician living in New York City. His writing has recently appeared in The Molotov Cocktail and he is currently working on his debut novel. Mark sings, writes and plays piano in the indie rock band MAKAR (www.makarmusic.com).


JEFFERY BERG

Jeffery Berg is a writer who lives in Jersey City. He received an MFA from NYU. His poetry has appeared in various journals, including most recently in Pine Hills Review. His film criticism can be found at Film-Forward. His debut poetry collection, RE-ANIMATOR, is forthcoming in 2026 from Indolent Books.


VIRGINIA RANDALL

Virginia Randall grew up on the Lower East Side and her work has appeared in Narratively, Italian-Americana, Straus Newspapers and various blogs. She is a freelance culture writer and former UPI reporter.  This reading takes place where she bought her comics as a kid.

Please note that we’re not necessarily reading in the above order and that the event starts promptly at 7pm and ends around 8pm.

I’m also going to be uploading the past reading we did to YouTube here in the next week or so.

Hope to see you there!

Good Dirt I published in Corvus Review July 2, 2023

Good Dirt I was published in Corvus Review Issue 20 Spring/Summer 2023 on July 2nd. My story starts on page 63.

July 2nd was also my mom’s birthday and this story is dedicated to her and hopefully has a little of her magic.

Good Dirt II appeared in Molotov Cocktail’s Flash Feast Contest, coming in fifth. II is a weird horror companion piece.

Good Dirt was inspired by my paternal grandmother declaring that my parents needed good dirt trucked in.

me and my mom looking alike, velour, baby

Issue 20 PDF copy

Hallowzine publishes The Hag

So thrilled to be in the third issue of Hallowzine!

Flip to page 18 for The Hag.

Love art next to my piece. Candy corn will kill us all :)

Honestly, happening across this cool sugary spooky zine in the interweb just made me happy and my short flash getting accepted and the kind words of the editors, Laura & Lindsay, sent me spinning.

”We loved the pace of this, and you are so right, Hags are criminally underrated. You manage to do a lot in a short piece, and every line is really well constructed and pushed us along so fast to the next line-- I had to read it a few times because I was so excited I just kept breezing through, and I wanted to savor it a little more.”

Every acceptance just keeps me going. The Hag was inspired by a vivid South Carolina Sea Island myth I read about in Raw Head, Bloody Bones by Mary E. Lyons. I like to imagine the monster’s perspective. Especially if the monster is female.

Hallowzine, founded in the belly of a pandemic, is an annual digital zine focused on Halloween.

What a great way to celebrate Halloween!

My flash fiction piece, Good Dirt II, was published in Molotov Cocktail

My story Good Dirt II was published in Molotov Cocktail’s Flash Feast Contest. I got #5 out of 10!

A little taste

“I don’t know what I was before I was born into slow flesh, flawed and corrupting, but I know I will find the answers grubbing in the dirt”

My other submission Good Dirt I got a close-but-no-cigar shortlist shout-outs! Pretty cool and it eggs me on because sometimes writing is a lonely pursuit and you get covered in dirt.

Very excited that Good Dirt II will be included in a future Molotov Cocktail’s Prize Winners Anthology print issue.

Please sink your teeth into the entire Flash Feast issue!

And congrats to all the winners!

PS: a friend of mine said that this story “treads the fertile uncertain line between horror and sci-fi”. So I feel cool now

Archive Copy

Morforwyn published in The Wild Hunt - Is it safe? Issue # 2

My flash fiction piece, Morforwyn, was published in The Wild Hunt - Is it safe? Issue # 2 on July 28, 2020.

Look at the fantastic art below. Have to ask the editor who the visual artist is.

The Wild Hunt posted on twitter the following sentiment which I think sums up my reason for writing this story.

Mermaids are not usually thought of as dangerous. Nor is it in the universal folklore that humankind did terrible things to them but of course we did. (That’s if they existed).

I was especially inspired by this cryptozoology I came across about Welsh mermaids. (I am a quarter Welsh and would love someday to visit Wales but who knows now. Some mermaids started out as giants, they diminished as everything seems to do when encountering certain elements of humanity.

My flash fiction piece, Detached, was published in Molotov Cocktail on January 31, 2020

My piece Detached was published in Molotov Cocktail on January 31, 2020 in Volume 10, Issue 12. What a way to start the new year!

The cover art for Volume 10, Issue 12 of Molotov Cocktail

I actually wrote this story and submitted it to Molotov’s Flash Monster 2019 contest but it did not make it into their Top 10. But I did receive a "Close But No Cigar" shout-out on the site.

I never would have written this story without that contest. I always wanted to write about the penanggalan but Molotov gave me the push.

I discovered the penanggalan through D&D. Its illustration was always one of more grotesque ones. But it also haunted me. And then I found the Fiend Folio at my childhood home.

None of the origin stories I read completely satisfied me. I fixated on the fact that a penanggalan will remain unnaturally beautiful throughout her life.

I’ve always wondered what made a woman choose to become a penanggalan (and if it was a choice). I examined the physical price of beauty and the extremes some go to attain that irreproachable veneer.

Hope you enjoy!