Crosshatxh is a monthly reading showcasing poets of tremendous talent, regardless of style, publications, or degree status, generational affiliation or profession or original language. It shakes out boundaries between academy and community in favor of artistic integrity. In addition to the best performance poets, laureates, and sonneteers, it features ghosts of dead writers who rise to laud and poets who've just finished serving time, and whose work demands lauding. And it rocks. Join us at the X.

May 6th: Mark Kraushaar, Darlin Nikki, and Lisa Kundrat!

Mark Kraushaar has been been widely published and anthologized with new work in the Hudson Review, Ploughshares, Alaska Review, Gettysburg Review, as well as Best American Poetry, and the web site Poetry Daily. He has been featured in the Missouri Review as well as Michigan Quarterly and has been a recipient of Poetry Northwest’s Richard Hugo Award.  A full length collection, Falling Brick Kills Local Man, in earlier editions a finalist for the May Swenson Prize, the Walt Whitman Award, and the Juniper Prize was published by University of Wisconsin Press, as winner of the 2009 Felix Pollak Prize. He has been the recipient of two Wisconsin Arts Boards grants and most recently a Wisconsin Arts Board fellowship.





“Darlin” Nikki Janzen is a poet, artist, and mentor. Described by many as the Janis Joplin of Spoken word, she teaches creative writing as therapy that also bridges gaps between cultures. She has won various poetry Slam titles, including Haiku Slam Champion in 2008, and Milwaukee’s Grand Slam Champion in 2011 & 2007. She has competed on four Milwaukee Slam teams, performs in a variety of shows, facilitates writing workshops, and teaches 8th grade. She has published two chapbooks, has been published in multiple magazines and anthologies, and her poetry CD, Unstitch the Sun, is now available.


Lisa Kundrat has lived in Minnesota, Montana, Washington, Ecuador and Wisconsin in the last 9 years with traveling in between. She now lives near Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. After vagabonding around, she's trying a new experiment called staying and thinks she found a good place for it. LK received her MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She currently works at Thomson Reuters as a blog writer, and she is also a freelance editor for the Veterans Book Project.