Genesee Reading Series: Christian Wessels and Jennifer Maloney

Christian Wessels and Jennifer Maloney

The Genesee Reading Series is a smorgasbord for your literary palate. Come every month on the second Tuesday, and by the end of the year you will have feasted on the work of 24 regional authors (some prominent, some emerging; writers of fiction, poetry, essay, creative nonfiction, memoir). It’s up close and personal in the intimate performance space upstairs— stay afterward and talk to the authors while eating cookies. 

Christian Wessels is a poet and critic from New York. His work has recently appeared in AGNI Online, KROnline, and Gettysburg Review. He received his MFA from Boston University, where he was awarded the Hurley Prize and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship. He has also been the recipient of a fellowship from the Stadler Center for Poetry.

Jennifer Maloney has lived in Rochester, NY since 1985, after growing up in more rural environs. She writes from a place of addiction and recovery, from a bone-deep knowledge of poverty, from the wilds of mental illness, and with gratitude for the love she has given and received. Jennifer’s work has been published in several online literary journals including Aaduna.org, Memoryhouse Magazine, and The Pangolin Review. Her poetry has been anthologized in Volumes 4 and 5 of the Poets Speak…While We Still Can anthology, in Missing Persons: Reflections on Alzheimer’s Disease, and in Volume 7 of ImageOutWrite, a collection of poetry and stories of the lived experience of the LGBTQ+A community and allies. She is proud of the first short story she’s written since high school having recently been published in A Flash of Dark, Volume 2, a journal of speculative flash fiction and poetry.