We invite you to the second reading of our new series, Non-Standard Lit, to celebrate the release of White Stag, a biannual journal, with four readers: Clare FitzPatrick, Keith McCleary, Hanna Tawater, and Mark Wallace.

Formed in 2013 by Saint Mary’s College MFA alumni Courtney Jameson and KT Gutting, White Stag is a biannual journal containing poetry and prose from well-known and new writers.

The journal offers the literary community a distinct taste for dark comedy, phantasmagoric imagery, complete dishonesty, and love poems that are to die for.

Four of the contributing authors who lead us through the journey of Volume I, Issue I will be reading their work:

Clare FitzPatrick hails from the San Francisco Bay Area and specializes in short story. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and has a penchant for burritos, Halo, the Lion King, and expensive bourbon. She currently lives in a tiny apartment with an awful dog and works for Google.

Keith McCleary is a writer and graphic artist from New York. He is the author of two graphic novels, Killing Tree Quarterly and Top of the Heap, and his visuals and prose have appeared in such places as Heavy Metal, theNewerYork, Flash, Weave, and Pseudopod. His serial narrative The Gothickers, co-written with Sophia Starmack, was featured the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography's audio series Podcast Dreadful. In addition to finishing his MFA degree and teaching on comics at UCSD, he is currently trying to be the best Shadowrun GM he can be.

Hanna Tawater is an MFA candidate at UC San Diego. She is in the processes of completing her first book of poetry ‒ an attempt to unite, among other things, cartography, serpent mythology, quantum physics, and Jay-Z. She performs and works with other writers in the larger San Diego community as often as San Diego lets her. Her current publications can be found in The Radvocate, New Delta Review, and White Stag.

Mark Wallace is the author and editor of more than fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and essays. Most recently he has published a book-length prose poem, Notes from the Center on Public Policy, and a novel, The Quarry and The Lot. He lives in San Diego, California, and teaches at California State University San Marcos.