TIC reading November 2nd "Why We Do This"

TIC reading November 2nd
8-10 pm
The Soap Factory

Writers Paula Cisewski, Beverly Cottman, Steve Healey, Satish Jayaraj, Maggie Ryan Sandford and Kate Shuknecht collect, construct, and animate stories and poems in response to "Why We Do This," Andy DuCett's multi-media solo show about memory, work, loss and leisure.  Free admission.

There's a great and varied crop of readers and an awesome installation to inspire them.  Be sure to check out the Soap Factory's website for interviews with the artist and all manner of interesting information.

Have We Got a Feast for You: Fall 2012 Events

October 6th is Colloquium at Hamline during Homecoming/Alumni weekend.  You can hear some standout graduates from last year talk about process.  That evening, be sure to head over to the Co-Kisser Film Festival, which will be showing poetry films and having an open-mic from 5:30-6:30.  You are specially invited to come and read a poem or two and celebrate this marvelous melding of film and poetry!

October 13th we're having a Happy Hour to celebrate new faculty member John Brandon's reading on October 12th and the Rain Taxi Twin Cities Book Festival at the State Fairgrounds on the 13th.  Volunteers always wanted!  Meet us at Stout's (near the Fairgrounds on the NW part of the Snelling and Larpenteur intersection) at 6:30, and watch Facebook to help us get a head count to reserve a table.

October 20th is our Moveable Feast Launch Party (in belated honor of our name change) and Touch Football Game (and then bonfire at the lovely back yard of Sarah Hayes).  Players and spectators wanted!

November 2nd is the Faculty Appreciation Dinner at 5:30 and then the Water~Stone reading at 7.  It's our annual potluck style bash to celebrate and talk to our lovely faculty members and each other.  Watch Facebook for mouth-watering postings of who is bringing what delectable food this year.

November 14th is the long-awaited publishing panel (we sincerely hope).  A panel of publishers/editors will talk to alumni about the ins and outs of publishing in the Twin Cities and beyond.

All this on top of our monthly writers group and poetry club!  If you have an event or blog or website you would like us to post about, let us know.  And if you have an idea for something you would like to contribute to this blog to make it better for alumni (a monthly column or whatnot), get in touch with us.

Full slate this fall and full steam ahead.  Look for details here, on the Facebook page, and maybe in your actual mail box.  Hope to see you soon!

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Talking Image Connection reading August 4th

TalkingImageConnection and The Soap Factory present

"Hedge Magic Spells and Incantations: a TalkingImageConnection reading"

Writers Dennis Cass, Heid Erdrich, Jean Miriam Larson, Matt Mauch, R. Vincent Moniz, Jr., Alison Morse and Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay conjure stories and poems in response to "Hedge Magic," a show of sculpture and installations curated by the Soap Factory, that "looks at processes of transformation."
"Hedge Magic, practiced without the mediating control of a higher power, uses intuition and inspiration to gather and interpret material found in nature and culture," with an eye toward the "chaotic detail that creates the whole."

Saturday August 4th, 8pm at the Soap Factory

514 2nd Street SE Minneapolis

Free admission

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

Dennis Cass is a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones and the online journal Slate. He is the author of HEAD CASE: How I Almost Lost My Mind Trying to Understand My Brain (HarperCollins). Dennis has also worked as a literary agent, a copywriter, and adjunct professor at Carleton College, where he teaches creative nonfiction. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and son and wouldn't have it any other way.

Heid E. Erdrich has authored four books of poems. Raised in Wahpeton, North Dakota, she is Ojibwe enrolled at Turtle Mountain. She frequently teaches as a visiting author and serves as a project scholar. Heid also works with visual artists and directs an Ojibwe language press. Her current projects are a cookbook from the indigenous foods movement and a collaborative multi-disciplinary show called Artifact Traffic. Her new book is Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems. She daily enjoys the vast transhumance in view around Lake of the Isles near her home in Minnesota.

Jean Miriam Larson writes poems and creative non-fiction. Her most recent project is The Superior Life, a book of poems about Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, Lake Superior’s north shore, and all things wilderness, published by Broadcraft Press. Jean’s poems, interviews, and essays have appeared in Midway Journal, Rock, Paper, Scissors, and The Park Bugle as well as in performances with TalkingImageConnection and Three Dances. An ekphrastic essay also appears on Norton’s website, PoemsOutloud.

Matt Mauch is the author of Prayer Book (Lowbrow Press) and the forthcoming chapbook The Brilliance of the Sparrow (Mondo Bummer). His poems have appeared in Salt Hill, DIAGRAM, Willow Springs, Spinning Jenny, and elsewhere. Host of the various readings that comprise the Great Twin Cities Poetry Read (GTCPR) & Road Show, and editor of the annual anthology Poetry City, USA, Mauch teaches in the AFA program at Normandale Community College. He lives in Minneapolis.

An enrolled member of the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation of Fort Berthold North Dakota, R. Vincent Moniz Jr. is an emerging voice hailing the Philips neighborhood of south Minneapolis. Vincent has been a part of the Twin Cities artistic community for over two decades as an actor, but has only shared his poetry a handful of times. Most recently he performed as part of Equilibrium: Spoken Word at the Loft and has been working on 2 things since that evening, matching the energy of that performance and grabbing 18 dollars’ worth of quarters off of his right elbow.

Alison Morse's poems and stories have been published in Water~Stone Review, Natural Bridge, The Pedestal, Rhino, Opium Magazine, mnartists.org and other places. In 2012, she completed a collection of stories about Kenyan social justice activist Wahu Kaara for the Women PeaceMakers Program at the Joan Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. She was also the 2012 "poet in residence" for the St. Paul JCC. Alison teaches English and runs TalkingImageConnection.

Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay's work has been published by literary and scholastic journals, lifestyle magazines, almanacs, newspapers, and anthologies nationwide. She is a 2011 and 2012 Jerome Foundation/Mu Performing Arts' New Eyes Theater Fellow, winner of the 2010 Alfred C. Carey Prize in Spoken Word Poetry, recipient of a Joyce Foundation Scholarship and a Loft Literary Center scholarship. Her play, Kung Fu Zombies vs Cannibals, is in its third developmental stage with Mu Performing Arts. Get to know her at http://www.refugenius.com/.

Cracked Walnut Reading Series Prepares for Another Season

The Cracked Walnut Reading Series is preparing for another round of readings, and big things are in store.

The Cracked Walnut Reading series takes place in innovative locations througout the Twin Cities. Readers tend to address the space which adds to the unique flavor of each reading. Some examples of past locations include The Braemer Skating Arena, Local D'lish, The Midtown Global Market, and the Washburn McGreavy Hillside Funeral Chapel. For more information on the Cracked Walnut reading series visit satishjayaraj.tumblr.com/CWRS

If you wish to become involved in the Cracked Walnut Readings join the mailing list by e-mailing me at crackedwalnut@gmail.com.

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Sunday, May 20, 2012

Phalen Park1615 Phalen Dr.

St Paul, MN 55106

3:00 - 8:00 PM (reading at 4:30)

Cracked Walnut and Red Bird Chapbooks would like to invite you to our picnic fundraiser where we will celebrate the great work of the poets and artists who contributed to Red Bird's Broadside series. Featured Readers will be Kelly Hansen Maher, Donna Isaac, Jamie Lynn Buehner, Shelly Love, Chris Title, Wendy Brown-Baez, Didi Koka, Jenny McDougal, Sandy Beach.  The reading itself will start at 4:30 at the Amphitheater, and we have rented out the close by picnic shelter for the rest of the evening. We will have some simple refreshments and appetizers available and invite you to bring finger foods that you are willing to share.

This will also be a fundraising event for Cracked Walnut and Redbird, and there will be items for sale. We are planning on becoming registered a Non-profit company.  Your kind donations, either cash or check, will help us with this endeavor.

Please follow the evite for more info and to accept our invitation
http://new.evite.com/#view_invite:eid=0366NC2ZTL7RSYAS4EPBRBFNCLSGXA

'06 alum Lawrence Benson's Miras Press debut poetry collection reading May 18th

Miras Press, the brainchild of MFA '06 Alum Lawrence Benson, is presenting a publication reading of its debut poetry collection, Rainsongs: Poems of a Woman's Life by Meta Commerse.  Lawence Benson will also read selected poems. More information available at http://www.miraspress.com/ and Facebook/MirasPress.

Friday, May 18, 2012

7PM

Phillips Community Center, Multipurpose room

2323 11th Ave S; Minneapolis, MN

Graduate Readings This Spring

Please support our wonderful graduates as they read and present from their final work. All events are free and open to the public.  Be sure to check the most updated schedule at the new Hamline site.

MALS Graduate Forum
Saturday, April 28th
GLC 100E
1:00 PM

Join our MALS graduates as they present from their final capstone projects in this stimulating afternoon of craft and process conversation. This is always an amazing set of presentations, representing the breadth of interests folks in our MALS program have.  Since the MALS program is being discontinued, be sure to attend while you still can!

MFA Graduate Readings

GLC 100E

7:00 PM

March 9th Mary Kane Jenny McDougal Todd Pederson Gretchen Marquette Caitlin Thompson	March 16th Katie Halcrow Bri Sharkey Matthew Smith Susan McNerney .	March 30th Sara Dailey Elena Cisneros Tom Rohde Derek Sullivan .
April 13th Ico Erik DeLapp Naomi Haugen Judith Watters Sarah Clay	April 20th Lisa Blauersouth Libby Rasmussen Sue Sorenson Kael Wagner Steve McPherson	April 27th Gerri Buchanan Adam Johnson Alida Winternheimer Charlie Hartman .
May 4th Julia Jenson Stephanie Olson Laura Theobald Rachel Gabriel	May 11th Julie Bach Diane Embry Michael Polak Ellen Tichich

Interview with Ann Iversion on her new book (reading at Hamline 15 October)

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It's a busy month and a busy week for alumni!  Here's another reading and an interview with the reader! 

GLS alum Ann Iverson will be reading from her new poetry collection, Art Lessons, at Hamline on Oct. 15, 7:00pm, in Giddens Learning Center. Ann and I finished up our MFA programs about the same time and have been in a writer's group together for about the past 10 years. Her art and poetry has been such an inspiration to me that I wanted to talk with her a little more about this new book and share it with the readers of this blog. If you haven't had a chance to read Ann's work, you now have three great books to add to your reading list.  --Teresa Boyer
 

Teresa: What inspired this third collection of poetry?

Ann: This book comes from a personal need to burn the torch for art and poetry, which often gets overlooked in a world saturated with technologies and gloomy forecasts. During the war of which my stepson served three tours of duty (the subject of my second book, Definite Space) I needed to find what God meant and how making art and poetry helped me to define what it means to exist. I am here and I am alive. Making art and poetry help me to exist in such a confusing world. 

Teresa: It seems like such a short time since your last collection was published and I know you are creating art and working full-time, too. How do you manage to fuel and sustain such a rich body of work?

Ann: I have no idea! I have a motto: One by one I get things done, but ten by ten, I’m lost again. But really, the thought of getting messy with paints and putting on the last glazing effect keeps me energized and makes me whole. It’s a slow process, actually, depending on the situations that life offers us. I consider Van Gogh who painted over 900 masterpieces in a decade span and then consider what I’ve done in a certain way. My style at work is to keep those who follow energized with promise and acceptance, and, thus, that is returned to me. I believe in whimsy and whimsy energizes me. I have sisters and friends who believe in me and a wiener dog who keeps me laughing despite the pressures. And I don’t have small children, yet a stepson who has served three tours of duty in Iraq so the emotional strain is quite significant.

Teresa: How is this collection different from your previous ones?

Ann: This collection feels more like my first collection, Come Now to the Window, in that I did not have one topic, as I did in Definite Space. It’s a whirl of poems that came together gracefully only due to Kirsten Dierking’s extraordinary talent in vision and manuscript arrangement. But on the other hand, weaving through them are the gracious experiences of life and what it has to offer. When my second book was in publication mode, I began to write again, stretching towards a new understanding after the effects of the book Definite Space, based on my stepson’s three tours of duty in Iraq as a Military Police Officer and canine dog handler. Art offered and offers me solace. Like right now as I write, I’m thinking of my newest piece out in my makeshift garage/art studio and want to tackle it some more, but the job and life demands, this interview does not. I love it. Staying in the moment of what you love is important and I love this.  Truly I do.

Teresa: How does your practice of art inform your practice of writing and vice versa?

Ann: It’s a peculiar, amazing exchange and happens either in the moment of working in both genres or just on a crazy day of work and then I see or hear something that triggers the connection. When I paint and my mind is clear of crap, often lines come to me. Yet when I write, my mind is not often cleared of crap and so…I think visual arts is often more freeing because you don’t have to worry so much about how it will be interpreted. That could be wildly debated, but in my experience in working in both creative activities, I just get less freaked out when I show a painting or collage to the world or even friends versus a poem.

Teresa: What poets and artists are you most interested in today?

Ann: Joyce Sutphen, Arlinda Henderson, Tim Flugum, Li Young Lee, Mary Oliver and the list goes. Sometimes I am very inclined about reading a book about war. The Holocaust haunts me.

Teresa: What subjects continue to interest you as an artist?

Ann: Big wild flowers. That’s the only thing I know how to do. I’m not a trained artist but just a person who likes color and add beauty to my small world.

Teresa: What advice do you have for other Hamline alumnus who are trying to pursue publication?

Ann: Be good to people, because people are good. Be generous with your love for the world. Start small, publish in local venues first. Don’t disregard what you might think is a trite opportunity. But then go for the gusto and try to crack the glass domes of prestigious journals. Poetry and life are strange and peculiar and beautiful and magnificent, and the best yet: unpredictable. Even in this world intoxicated with technology, there is a place and need for poetry. If it makes you happy to write, keep doing it. It’s your legacy. Throw your hand-held device into the pond and write.

Teresa: Where can we find your book, Art Lessons?

Ann: Hamline bookstore, Amazon, technical devices for reading books (whatever they might be and they are cool though I am not familiar with them,) and small local bookstores as well as mainstream.  

Ann Iverson is a visual artist and poet and has worked in education for years. She holds Masters degrees in both fine arts and liberal studies from Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. Her work has appeared in several literary magazines. Ann’s poetry collections include Come Now to the Window published by Laurel Poetry Collective, Definite Space, and now the soon to be released Art Lessons published by Holy Cow! Press. A few of her poems have been featured on Garrison Keillor’s public radio segment, ‘Writer's Almanac.’ Ann's artwork was recently selected and installed in the new University of Minnesota Amplatz Children's Hospital. 


If you'd like to conduct an interview or be interviewed for the blog, contact us. 
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Come to Jean Larson's Book Release Party This Thursday

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Thursday, September 15 · 7:00pm - 10:00pm

Broadcraft Press has just published Jean's book of poems about the Boundary Waters and Lake Superior.   Please come hear a few of the poems from The Superior Life and celebrate with her!

Micawber's Books

2238 Carter Ave

St. Paul, Minnesota 55108

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Cracked Walnuts on a Rampage

Readings from Hamline alumni and others all over the Twin Cities are still  happening.  Hope you got a chance to see us On Ice or elsewhere.  Check the Cracked Walnuts Facebook page for the most updated information and additional details.  Here are a couple upcoming readings. 

Writers Honoring the Dead

Friday, August 12 · 6:30pm - 9:00pm

Join us to hear a range of literature from poetry to prose from writers who are addressing concepts of death in this very unique location.

Karen Youso hosts.  Featured readers will include Jim Rogers, Donna Isaac,  Karen Youso, Victoria Peterson-Hilleque and Didi Koka.

Doors open at 6:30; reading starts at 7 and ends at 8:30. (The chapel closes at 9 sharp.)

For more information on the Cracked Walnut Reading series click on the link at satishjayaraj.tumblr.com.

Chapel Information:
(612) 781-1999
hillside-cemetery.com

Midtown Global Market
   
Monday, August 22 · 6:00pm - 7:30pm

Midtown Global Market
920 East Lake Street

   
Join us for an international bazaar of literary readings from local Twin City writers.

The reading starts at 6:00 and ends at 7:30, but feel free to come early to mingle and explore the wonders of the Global Market.

Satish Jayaraj will be hosting.  Featured writers will be Alison Morse, Kevin Z Yang, Saymoukda Vongsay, Shannon Gibney, Satish Jayaraj, and Christian Villarroel.

For more information on the Global Market visit http://www.midtownglobalma​rket.org/ or call (612) 872-4041

For some more details on this reading series, check out the comments from this post.

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?!

Do you like adventure? Want to do a reading this summer?

Dear writers of Hamline,

Whether you are a fiction writer, essayist, poet, or CNF writer.  I am in the midst of organizing a summer reading series that will take place in as many different locations throughout the twin cities as possible. My plan is to put people into little groups of 4 and 5 where each group will perform a reading in either a local library, coffee shop, or generally any place that will welcome our art into their establishment. My goal is to make this fun and easy for all participants.

If you are interested in being a reader for this event then e-mail your name and e-mail address to me at sjayaraj01@hamlineuniversity.edu. I will later send everyone a survey that asks for more specific information so that I can sort people into groups and areas that will make this an overall convenient and enjoyable event series.

Satish Jayaraj
Hamline MFA Graduate 2009
Current Hamline MALS student

Poetry Reading with JIM COPPOC and KRIS BIGALK Wednesday!

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Wednesday, April 13

12:00pm - 1:00pm

"The Nest," located on WEST campus, lower level in the New Student Space
3300 Century Avenue North
White Bear Lake, MN

April is National Poetry Month, and Century College is going all out with a reading by Kris Bigalk and Jim Coppoc!

Kris Bigalk has recently published poetry in Water~Stone Review, The New York Quarterly, and the cream city review, and has work forthcoming in Mead: A Magazine of Literature and Libations. She serves as Director of Creative Writing at Normandale Community College, and curates the Banfill-Locke Reading Series.

Jim Coppoc ('09) is an award-winning poet and performer, a Lecturer in the English Department and the American Indian Studies program at Iowa State University, and the author of three books and three chapbooks of poetry (with a couple other genres mixed in).

For more details about these great poets, go to www.jimcoppoc.org or www.krisbigalk.wordpress.com/about.

See you at the reading!
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TIC Reading This Saturday

If you haven't been to a TIC reading, come to this one! Dress warmly and bring a blanket to keep you toasty while you look and listen to readers responding to art. There's great energy here, and I recommend bringing a notebook, so you can write as the inspiration strikes (and it will strike).

"ALL OUR BE-LONGINGS, a TalkingImageConnection reading"

Saturday, February 12 · 8:00pm - 10:00pm

The Soap Factory

514 2nd Street Southeast

Minneapolis, MN

Writers Sarah Fox, Didi Koka, Alison Morse, Andy Sturdevant, Bryan Thao Worra, and Stephanie Wilbur Ash invent poems, songs, and stories in response to Rosemary Williams' installation "Belongings" at the Soap Factory.

Free admission and hot cider. For more information call 612.623.9176 or email yackmor@talkimage.org.

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



Writer Bios:

Sarah Fox is a teacher, student, and doula. Her poetry collection Because Why was published by Coffee House Press, and her poems, essays, and reviews have been published in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies, most recently Conduit, Rain Taxi, ElevenEleven, Spout, LUNGFULL!, ActionYes, and Tammy. She's received grants and fellowships from the Bush Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board and was awarded the 2010 Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize for poetry. She lives in NE Minneapolis where, with John Colburn, she co-imagines the future Center for Visionary Poetics and nurtures a relationship with entheogenic plants.

Didi Koka is writer, Healer, Mother, recent MFA grad. Winner of the 2010 Best Poetry Thesis from Ham, she has published essay in Confluence, interviews in Water~Stone, and poetry in Minnesota Medicine and rock, paper, scissors. She has conducted poetry groups for healing professionals and has performed poetry with the Heal the Earth Collective. She is interested in the voicing of beings, sensate, imagined and inanimate, and the interplay of life and its aftermath, public and private lives, natural and human-created forms or systems. Briefly. anything and everything that defines itself in opposition.

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

Andy Sturdevant is a writer, artist, arts administrator and layabout based in South Minneapolis. His writing has appeared in mnartists.org, Rain Taxi, Mpls. St. Paul, Art Review and Preview! and Heavy Table. He is the host of Salon Saloon, a monthly live-action arts magazine held every fourth Tuesday at the Bryant-Lake Bowl. Andy also recently wrote an essay on the visual culture of the Midwest that will appear in the catalog for The Spectacular of Vernacular exhibition, opening at the Walker Art Center in January 2011. A book of his illustrations, Handsome Liberals, will be published in 2011 by Location Books.

Bryan Thao Worra is a Laotian American poet whose books include On the Other Side of the Eye, Winter Ink, My Dinner With Cluster Bombs and Touching Detonations. He has received support from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Loft Literary Center and the Playwrights Center. He holds a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature and the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans Leadership Award for excellence in the arts. His work is taught internationally and appears in over 100 publications around the world including Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, Europe and the United States. He resides in North Minneapolis.

Stephanie Wilbur Ash lives in Mankato and Minneapolis. She is the co-creator of more than 45 episodes of the Electric Arc Radio Show and PowderKeg Live!, and co-creator of the full-length musical Don't Crush our Heart! When she's not writing musical theater and scripted radio, she is writing short stories. When she is not writing short stories, she is writing a novel. When she is not writing a novel she is very sad and hard to live with. She has two boys and an X-box that they bought with their own money, which they pooled together with their friend Leo's money, so what could she say then, huh? What was she supposed to say then?

Bonfire Potluck this Saturday

West Egg Literati Autumn Potluck and Bonfire
Saturday, October 23rd at 6:00-10pm
Location: Sarah Hayes' House

Please join your fellow GLS students and alumnae/i for an autumn potluck and bonfire! Some drinks -- there was mention of mead and wine -- and finger food will be provided by our illustrious hosts, but please feel free to bring something to share.  I suggest something warm.

There will be an opportunity to read what we've been working on these past weeks, so feel free to bring something you would like to share with your fellow potluckers.  If you'd like directions, contact West Egg Literati or check out their Facebook page.

Call for Writers/Readers and Submissions

Libby Casey Irwin (MFA 1995-2000) and ArtWorks of Art St Croix want your creative writing!

What they're looking for

• any creative writing genre (including songs and novel excerpts)
• family-friendly, yet vibrant, keen, original works
• authors able to attend a rehearsal on 3 December 2010
• authors willing to read their pieces on 4 December 2010 (probably under 5 minutes, depending on participation)

If this sounds like you 

Submit up to five literary pieces

• by November 15, 2010
• by email to libbycaseyirwin@live.com or 
• via snail mail at Libby Casey Irwin; 2710 Mallard Drive; Woodbury, Minnesota  55125.

Please include

• e‑mail address
• snail mail address
• phone number 
• a brief description of yourself and your work as a writing artist.

If you have any questions, call Libby at (651) 738‑7223.   (Libby teaches creative writing and coordinates this literary event at the end of the year. She thanks you for your support of a worthy recitation.)



If you have an event or a call for submissions, we'd love to post it on the GLaaS Blog.  Get in touch with us, let us know you'd like us to post on the blog (and what you'd like to post), and we'll do our best to shine the spotlight on you!

Mark your calendars now: Donna Isaac invites you to two readings

You are invited two poetry readings by Donna Isaac.

Saturday, October 9th

Fresh Grounds

1362 W. Seventh

St. Paul

1:00 p.m.

and

Saturday, November 20th

Jerabek's New Bohemian

63 Winifred St.

St. Paul's West Side

1:00 p.m.

For more information, check out Donna's website at www.donnaisaacpoet.com.

(Do you have a reading you'd like to share about? Send it along, and GLaaS will be happy to spread the word!)

Alumni Spotlight on Laura Littleford in 2010 Minnesota Fringe Festival

"Romeo and Juliet Go to Winnipeg"
One Woman Show by Laura Littleford

Laura Littleford, MFA 1998, premieres her latest one woman show, "Romeo and Juliet Go to Winnipeg" on Friday, August 6, at 5:30 p.m. at the Playwrights' Center (2301 Franklin Avenue E, Minneapolis) as part of the 2010 Minnesota Fringe Festival (visit www.fringefestival.org for details).  Stay tuned for opening night festivities at www.lauralittleford.com.  Also, check out her event page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/edit/?id=105567592822663#!/pages/Laura-Littleford/105567592822663.

This autobiographical work features "misadventured, piteous overthrows" by two teens who try to escape bickering Baptist families in bucolic Burnsville.  Old dogma breaks into new insanity in 1969, while Romeo and Juliet make out for 491 miles on a high school choir tour to Winnipeg.

"Romeo and Juliet Go to Winnipeg" plays at the Playwrights' Center at the following dates and times:
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Friday, August 6 at 5:30 p.m.
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Sunday, August 8 at 4 p.m.
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Wednesday, August 11 at 7 p.m.
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Saturday, August 14 at 10 p.m.
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Sunday, August 15 at 1 p.m.

It sounds hilarious, so we hope to see a lot of you turning out to support your fellow alumni and enjoying  gobs of all-around artistic talent at the Fringe Festival.  This year, the Minnesota Fringe Festival runs August 5th-15th.

TalkingImageConnection (TIC) reading June 17th

Fitting the Profile
a reading presented by TIC and the Tychman Shapira Gallery

Thursday June 17th @ 7PM
Sabes Jewish Community Center
4330 S. Cedar Lake Road
Minneapolis, MN

writers
Naomi Cohn * Geoff Herbach * Rebecca Kanner * Judith Katz * Alison Morse * Margie Newman

respond to 

the exhibit "Profiling: Exploring The Faces of Diversity Within The Jewish Community"

For more information, email yackmor@talkimage.org.

These performances are always a blast and usually have at least one of your fellow alumni.  Be sure to experience a reading this summer, and remember that TIC is always looking for new participants.   Email TIC a story or piece of creative non-fiction or three poems, along with a description of your past experience as a reader and your interest in visual art.

Are you doing a reading or performance in the Twin Cities area?

Share the details with us; we're all ears!

Email us the info and any links (and your name and grad year), and we'll post a blog entry about them.