Samuel R. Delany’s novels include Nova (Doubleday, 1968), Dhalgren (Bantam Books, 1975), Hogg (Black Ice Books, 1994), The Mad Man (Masquerade Books, 1994), the Stonewall Award-winning Dark Reflections (Carroll & Graf , 2007), and—most recently—Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders (Magnus, 2012). Delany’s stories are collected in Aye and Gomorrah and other stories and Atlantis: Three Tales (Vintage, 2003). His non-fiction collections include the autobiography The Motion of Light in Water (Arbor House/W. Morrow, 1988), Times Square Red/ Times Square Blue (New York University Press, 1999) and Silent Interviews, Longer Views, Shorter Views (Wesleyan, 2011). Delany was a judge for the 2010 National Book Awards as well as the subject of a 2007 documentary, The Polymath. His interview in the Paris Review’s “Art of Fiction” series appeared in spring 2012. He lives in New York City and teaches creative writing at Temple University. Marissa Perel is an artist, poet, critic and independent curator whose work spans performance, video and text-based installation. Her installations and performances have been presented internationally, including Dance Theater Workshop (NYC) and The Chocolate Factory Theater (NYC), The D.I.V.O Institute (Prague, C.R.), Medium Gallery (Bratislava, Slovakia), The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and have been commissioned for the Chicago Cultural Center. Prior to her reading at the Poetry Project, she will have completed performing at the Jazzwerkstadt Festival in Switzerland with the 12 piece noise drum band, Drummers Corpse. She recently served as Curatorial Fellow of performance at Vox Populi gallery in Philadelphia. Her contemporary art and performance criticism have been widely published. Perel orginiated the column, “Gimme Shelter: Performance Now” for the Art21 blog. She served as co-editor of Critical Correspondence, an on-line journal of Movement Research, for which she co-curated events at Judson Memorial Church and New Museum. She received her B.A. in Writing and Literature from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, and her M.F.A in Studio and Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.