Download Poet Jason Braun’s Free, Digital, Literary Mixtape – Look-Listen – February 2012 – St. Louis MO

From St. Louis Magazine by STEFENE RUSSELL
DOWNLOAD POET JASON BRAUN’S FREE, DIGITAL, LITERARY MIXTAPE

Ask any poet, novelist or playwright about the Association of Writing Programs Conference—AWP for short—and you’ll get one of two responses. Either their eyes’ll shine like fairy boot buttons or they’ll stick a finger down their throat in the universal gesture for “it makes me gag.” Then they’ll either tell you that it’s the only place they see certain writer friends, or that it’s a self-indulgent cluster#$&@.

As this writer has never been to AWP, I can’t say who is right from the point of view of an individual writer. I do know that AWP (which kicks off today in Chicago) has become crucial in helping little magazines and university presses connect with the reading public. St. Louis poet Jason Braun will be holding down table G5 at AWP’s Book Fair as the editor of Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville’s Sou’wester.

If you were not one of the 9,500 writers who scored tickets to AWP before it sold out, Braun is offering a free digital mixtape so that you can soak up the AWP experience through osmosis. Made This For You: The Mix Tape as Literature features songs like Is The Book Dead, Al Katkowsky? and is downloadable at jasonandthebeast.bandcamp.com. It’s a name-your-own-price download, which means you can listen to it for free, though if you do have the extra scratch, we hope you’ll pay, or even overpay, for it, in the spirit of supporting local literature. If you find yourself in Chicago this weekend, Braun will be hanging out afterhours at the Hilton Chicago or The Green Mill bar. You can always stop off and offer to buy him a couple of rounds. After a day in a book booth trafficked by nearly 10,000 people, we reckon he might need it.

On March 27, Braun appears on the creative writing panel, “Thinking About Space,” as part of SIUE’s College of Arts and Sciences Colloquium. On March 29 at 7pm, he’ll read his work at the SIUE bookstore as part of the school’s Graduate Writers Read series. And on March 31 at 7pm, the St. Louis Writers’ Guild brings him to Kirkwood Train Station for a night of poetry and music.

Download Poet Jason Braun's Free, Digital, Literary Mixtape – Look-Listen – February 2012 – St. Louis MO.