Basim Alansar Reading at Public Fiction

18th Street Arts Center and Public Fiction are please to co-host an evening reading event with poets and writers Basim Alansar, Diana Arterian and Travis Diehl. Basim al-Ansar is currently a Visiting Artist in Residence at 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica.

Alansar is a poet and writer, born in Baghdad he has lived in Denmark since 1998. Alansar has published three books; a collection of plays titled; Man of Willow, 1997, a collection of short stories titled; Life for us and Death for Home, 2003 and a collection of poems titled; The Hymns of Sons of Adam, 2007. He is included in an anthology of new Arab writers titled, Beirut 39. His upcoming work is a collection of poems titled; A Life Surrounded by Trees. He will read poems in Arabic and English translation will follow.

Diana Arterian resides in Los Angeles where she is pursuing her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. Arterian is the Managing Editor of Ricochet, a publisher of poetry and prose chapbooks. Her own chapbook Death Centos is shortly forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Press.

Arterian will give a brief introduction to contemporary Afghani poet Nadia Anjuman’s work who died in 2005. For the past two years Arterian has been working with Marina Omar to translate Anjuman’s poetry, written in the Farsi dialect Persian-Dari. She will read some of the poems.

Travis Diehl lives in Los Angeles. His personal appearances include Walk Thru Walls at Human Resources, the Five Points Reading Series, and Liz Glynn’s Black Box as part of Sneaky Snake. His fiction appears in P&Co., Public Fiction, and Night Papers. He contributes regularly to Artforum. He edits the artist-run arts journal Prism of Reality.

Diehl will read from his neo-Reaganite short story “To Sip an Ocean,” as well as a selection of poems.