Writer Maximillian Werner and Musician and Performance Artist Ken Critchfield will read and perform from their works at the Salt Lake Public Library Main Branch on Wednesday September 15th at 7:00. Maximilian Werner lives in Salt Lake City and teaches writing at the University of Utah. His poems, fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and interviews have appeared in several journals and magazines, including Matter Journal: Edward Abbey Edition, The North American Review, Yale Anglers' Journal, ISLE, Weber Studies, Fly Rod and Reel, Puerto del Sol, and Columbia. He is also an Academy of American Poets prize winner. Mr. Werner's book Black River Dreams won the 2008 Utah Arts Council's Original Writing Competition for Nonfiction: Book and was published in January by Barclay Creek Press. Ken Critchfield is a psychologist (Ph.D. from University of Utah in 2002), bassist, and composer. His musical work involves experimental forms developed to explore aspects of dialogue, personality, and meaning. The CD "Foundation," produced in 1997 with the help of a Utah Arts Council/NEA grant involved use of extreme structure (e.g., rigid and minimalist compositional forms) to explore how organic, human elements impose themselves as "errors" relative to expectation with just the two "voices" of drums and bass. More recent work with the group "Seraphim," has involved use of free improvisation among a group of musicians and poets, allowing structure, pattern, and meaning to emerge in a very different musical context. Some of this work has been captured on the CD titled "Hearing Voices". The focus on patterns that emerge through dialogue parallels Dr. Critchfield's specialty area in psychology which involves focus on how personality and identity emerge from relatedness with others. This will be his third time performing for City Arts across the past decade or so, itself representing an interesting meditation on possible convergences between pattern and meaning found in literary forms, and those found in human "sound-making" more generally. This particular performance will involve new material involving solo improvisation on upright bass, followed by opportunities for audience discussion about the experience. The event is free and open to the public. City Art is sponsored by the Utah Arts Council, the Salt Lake City Arts Council, Zoo, Arts, and Parks, X-Mission, and audience donations. The featured reading will be followed by an open reading. Joel Long