Friday, July 22, 2011

Check out Alison Holland's blog: Not Your Church Cookbook

Name of your blog: Not Your Church Cookbook

What your blog is about: It's a journal of food and faith by a vegetarian with somewhat Unitarian Universalist views living in a rural Minnesota town with few vegetarians and perhaps even fewer Unitarians.

Your name (if you're not blogging anonymously): Alison Anderson Holland

Years you were in the program (year you graduated from Hamline): 2006-2009 ('09)

When you started blogging: May 2011

Why you blog: I started blogging to get myself writing again.  Since the completion of my MALS degree, I haven't found/made the time to write much.  This was my solution.

Who your intended audience is: Those interested in reading about vegetarian cooking, a faith journey, and its relation to raising kids and relating to family and friends in a rural Minnesota town.  While I often talk about my family, I don't aim to be a "mommy blogger."  When I mention my kids, I relate it back to food and/or faith. 

Blogs you like to read: I read a lot of blogs.  That's one reason I was prompted to do this.  The Chaos Chronicles, On BeingSpousonomics, and Dinner: A Love Story are a few of my favorites.

Advice to or question for bloggers: Don't be shy about sharing your work with friends.  They'll no doubt encourage you.  I am a true introverted Minnesotan, but once I got up the courage to begin posting links on my Facebook page, I was amazed by the positive response my friends expressed.

PS: I also began writing a blog for work (December 2010) on the latest news, events, and issues in (rural) regional healthcare: http://staffblog.healthcare-allianceorg/

Thank you for this opportunity to share my new blog(s)!

Friday, July 8, 2011

TIC Reading July 9th: check this line-up out!

Saturday July 9th
8pm
the Soap Factory

TalkingImageConnection and The Soap Factory present

"Erasers and Other Memories, a TalkingImageConnection reading"

Writers Lightsey Darst, Sarah Hayes, John Jodzio, Katie Leo, Alison Morse, G.E. Patterson, and Annette Schiebout spin poems, stories and more in response to "The Erasers," an international exhibit of artists curated by Corinna Kirsch. According to Kirsch, "The works in this exhibition are all ‘erasers’: both objects imagined as something more important and mysterious than their physical shape might suggest and objects which contain the action to efface, censure, and delete the past."

at the Soap Factory
514 2nd Street SE Minneapolis

free admission

For more information contact 612.623.9176 or email yackmor@talkimage.org. TalkingImageConnection brings together writers, contemporary art and new audiences in art galleries around the Twin Cities.  For more information call 612.623.9176 or email yackmor@talkimage.org.

Writer Bios:

Originally from Tallahassee, Lightsey Darst writes, dances, writes about dance, and teaches in Minneapolis. Her Find the Girl, published by Coffee House Press in 2010, was selected for a Minnesota Book Award. Her other awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Minnesota State Arts Board. She hosts the writing salon “The Works”.

Sarah Hayes is a writer and visual artist, working in the forms of poetry, creative non-fiction and photography.  Her recent writing focuses on the coalescence of science and emotion, physics and attraction, relationships and mathematics, and other such juxtapositions. Her work has appeared in Zenith City Arts, The Muse, and Dust & Fire.

John Jodzio is a winner of the Loft-McKnight Fellowship. His stories have appeared in One Story, Barrelhouse, Opium, The Florida Review and various other places in print and online. His short story collection, If You Lived Here You’d Already Be Home, was recently published by Replacement Press. He lives in Minneapolis. Find out more at www.johnjodzio.net.

Katie Hae Leo is a playwright, poet, and essayist. Her work is published or forthcoming in Water~Stone Review, Kartika Review, Midway Journal, Asian American Poetry & Writing, and Asian American Plays for a New Generation, among others. Her latest play Four Destinies will premiere at Mixed Blood Theater in October.

Alison Morse’s poetry and prose have been published in Water~Stone Review, Natural Bridge, Rhino, Opium Magazine, and The Pedestal, among other places.  She also runs TalkingImageConnection when she's not teaching or tutoring English or writing about the arts for mnartists.org.

A featured poet-performer in New York’s Panasonic Village Jazz Fest, G.E. Patterson is the author of two books of poems.  His work has garnered a Minnesota Book Award and fellowships from the Jerome Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board.  Last year, he was honored by New York City’s Fund for Poetry.  His writing can be found in several magazines and anthologies, including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, Blues Poems, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Poetry 180, Isn’t It Romantic, American Letters and Commentary, nocturnes: (re)view of the arts, Open City, Provincetown Arts, Seneca Review, Swerve, Xcp: Cross Cultural Poetics, and St. Mark’s Poetry Project’s Poets and Poems.

Annette Schiebout writes and performs with TalkingImageConnection, Spiked Coffee, Urban Hillbilly, Story Slam and is published in rps.  She is a 2009 SASE Writer to Writer mentee. She received her MFA from Hamline University where she served as the president of the student organization West Egg Literati.  She teaches writing and communications classes at the University of Wisconsin – River Falls.

How could you miss it?!