A new reading series is launching this Thursday (March 15) at the Dock Street Cannery + Lounge (705 S. 50th St), and this is a great chance to meet some talented Philadelphia-based writers.

The event is hosted by West Philly authors Matt Jakubowski and Christine Kendall and showcases writers Ru Freeman, Emma Copley Eisenberg and Marc Anthony Richardson who will be reading from their work. Doors will open at 5 p.m. for drinks and snacks; the readings start at 7 p.m. Come early to secure a seat! Books will be available for sale during the event, provided by Bindlestiff Books.

Here’s some more information about the writers from the event organizers:

Ru Freeman is the author of the novels A Disobedient Girl and On Sal Mal Lane, a New York Times Editor’s Choice Book. She is the editor of the ground-breaking anthology, Extraordinary Rendition: American Writers on Palestine. Her writing appears internationally in the UK Guardian, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe. She blogs for The Huffington Post on literature and politics, is a contributing editorial board member of the Asian American Literary Review, and is the recipient of many fellowships including from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Lannan Foundation. Ru teaches creative writing at Columbia University. 

Emma Copley Eisenberg is a writer of fiction and nonfiction based in West Philadelphia. She is the author of The Third Rainbow Girl, forthcoming from Hachette Books. Her work has appeared in Granta, American Short Fiction, AGNI, The Los Angeles Review of Books, ZZVZZYA, The New Republic, Salon, Slate, VICE and others.

Marc Anthony Richardson received his MFA from Mills College. He is an artist and writer from Philadelphia. Year of the Rat, his debut novel, was the winner of the 2015 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize and, in 2017, it was awarded an American Book Award. He is also the recipient of fellowships from the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation and the Vermont Studio Center. Currently, he is writing a work of speculative fiction that takes place in an alternative America, where you can take on the capital punishment of a relative, a derivative of the Native American blood law.