RONALDO WILSON AT WORDSPACE SALON — AT LAST

Posted on by
Reply

I became involved with WordSpace over three years ago, and I remember that multiple-wilson_ronaldoaward-winning poet Ronaldo Wilson was a name bruited about as a possible reader. So I guess you could say that his appearance at a WordSpace Salon on February 1, is an event three years in the making.

The “multiple-award-winning” description seems to fit most of the writers we bring in for these events. Wilson still stands out, however, in this category, winning a Cave Canem award in 2007, and both the Thom Gunn Award and the Asian American Literary Award in Poetry in 2010. Congratulations, Mr. Wilson. He appears regularly in magazines and online venues, and this year he will add to his list of published books with Farther Traveler: Poetry, Prose, Other, coming from Counterpoint Press.

You can find Wilson’s work online. Here is a selection from The Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the While Man with the unbeatable title, “Brad Pitt, Kevin Bacon, and the Brown Boy’s Mother.” (Mature audiences only please.)

Since Salons are held in private homes we only give out the address when re receive RSVP’s. Full Details of Wilson’s reading this Friday can be found on the WordSpace website.

Enjoy this short reading by Wilson and we hope to see you Friday, February 1.

TRIPLE FEATURE READING WITH DINING AND SHOPPING SUGGESTIONS

Posted on by
Reply

On Friday, January 25, WordSpace presents three poets with Dallas roots and national russell swensenreputations — Rauan Klassnik, Farid Matuk, and Russell Swensen. Read about these poets on the events page of the WordSpace website.

The reading begins at 8 PM at the Oak Cliff location of Lucky Dog Books, 633 West Davis Street. If you have just begun to explore Oak Cliff and know only the Bishop Arts District, this gives you a chance to drive a few blocks west for another version of the burgeoning Oak Cliff experience.

Lucky Dog Books is the new — or by now, the newish — incarnation of Paperbacks Plus. luckydogThey have been a long time supporter of WordSpace while at their now closed Lakewood location. Spend some time shopping their selection of used books in their new digs before the reading.

While enjoying the same parking space you found for the bookstore, you can wander across Davis Street, looking both ways before crossing, for a snack or dinner at Bolsa Mercado, the casual offshoot — with food by the same chefs — from the restaurant a few blocks to the east. Bolsa Mercado serves  as both a market and an excellent “to go” option for local cliff dwellers. But they have snack, wine, and dinner options you can enjoy on the bolsa mercadospot .

Make it an Oak Cliff evening with food, wine, shopping, and poetry.

NEXT OFFWORLD MEETING DECEMBER 11

Posted on by
Reply

The next gathering of OffWorlders will be at 7:00 PM on December 11, at the WordSpace World Headquarters, 415 North Tyler Street.

Author Neal Stephenson continues to be our focus, but any one interested in science fiction is invited. This session we will watch a couple of short interviews with Stephenson and discuss, among other things,  his concern that science fiction has abandoned optimism for increasingly dystopian visions of the future. We will also take a few passages from his novel Anathem as starting points for discussion.

Yes, Anathem is a 900 page novel, but don’t be put off. You will not be the only person in the room to have not read it, or for that matter to have not even opened it. But a single sentence from the book could keep us immersed for the entire session. As Mr. Stephenson says, “Science Fiction is idea porn.”

Let us know if you plan to attend by going to the OffWorld event listing on the WordSpace Facebook page. Or just show up around 7:00 on Dec 11th.

For a preview, here is the video of Stephenson on Optimism

 

Here is

Jerry Kelley Discusses William Blake at WordSpace Salon

Posted on by
Reply

William Blake attracts us for many reasons. He is an iconoclast, raging at the powers that be. His observations on the human condition seem prescient of modern psychology. He seems sexually modern, a spirit free of traditional restraints. He is a defender of the poor and an indefatigable opponent of privilege and authority. His is a plea for imagination and spirituality in a materialistic age.

He is a gifted lyricist, a sharp satirist, and a creator of profoundly symbolic and dense prophetic poetry. He is a strong visual artist in addition to being a poet, equally well known in the visual arts community and in the literary community. Each of his poems was produced as a complete work of art reminiscent of a medieval illuminated manuscript.

Adding to the romance, his work was virtually ignored in his own time, and he was thought to be at the least extremely eccentric, if not outright mad. Yet he has continued to inspire some of our best known poets and artists, from Rossetti to Yeats to Alan Ginsburg, as well as rock bands from the Doors to U2. His poem “Jerusalem” has become the national hymn of GB.

For these and other reasons Blake typically has been considered an anomaly, standing outside of and separate from the mainstream tradition of English letters. Whether viewed as a defender of Emotion and Imagination in the face of Rationalist Materialism or even as an arcane Hermeneutic scholar, Blake has resisted categorization and seems to stand outside the contexts of his own era.

Now however, in the last 20 years or so, scholarly efforts have created a historical context for Blake as a man of the 18th century, who echoed and reinvented many of his contemporaries’ voices from within the forgotten underclasses of English society.

From within this historical context Blake’s individual genius shines forth with renewed energy.

Mr. Kelley’s presentation includes numerous slides of Blake’s graphic images.

The discussion begins Thursday, November 29, at 7 PM. Come to the WordSpace headquarters at 415 North Tyler. Admission: FREE to members, $10 to others.

NOVELIST MATT BONDURANT TO READ AT WORDSPACE SALON

Posted on by
Reply

Matt Bondurant, a professor of creative writing at the University of Texas, Dallas, is the author of

Matt Bondurant at his Hollywood premiere

three novels. The Third Translation (2006), The Wettest County in the World (2009), and The Night Swimmer (2012). I have read only The Wettest County, and to do so I had to overcome my natural inclination to avoid novels promoted as “Based on a True Story.” But Bondurant had one hell of a true story to base his novel on. HIs family were active Kentucky moonshiners during Prohibition, and the Bondurant Boys were known as both smart business men and people you just didn’t want to mess with. My favorite moment in the story involved on of the Bondurants who, after having his throat slashed in a speakeasy parking lot, pinches the wound together and survives a several mile drive over country roads to the nearest hospital. These were tough people. Matt also manages to work in author Sherwood Anderson as a character, a man out of his depths in the Kentucky hill country and struggling to re-establish his fading career as a significant American author. (In this past year, Wettest County was turned into the film Lawless with an impressive cast including Gary Oldham, Shia LeBeouf, and Jessica Chastain, NIck Cave wrote the screenplay and John Hillcoat, maker of The Road and The Proposition, directed.

Scene from Lawless

The Night Swimmer racked up good reviews, including this particularly evocative one from Bookpage,

“When Bondurant explores what it is like to push yourself to the brink, whether with physical activity, drugs and alcohol, or lust, he captures an intensity of experience the reader won’t soon forget.”
Learn more about Matt on his webpage.
His reading is November 15 at 7 PM. Since the event is in a private home, WordSpace asks that your RSVP for the location at either  wordspace@wordspace.us or 214-838-3554. Admission is free for WordSpace members and $10 for non members.
 

TAKE A SECOND STEP OFF WORLD

Posted on by
Reply

“Science Fiction is idea porn.” Neal Stephenson

Off World, the science fiction reading group sponsored by WordSpace, will hold its second session on Tuesday, November 13, at the WordSpace world headquarters, 415 North Tyler Street, Dallas, Texas 75208.

Author Neal Stephenson remains our topic of discussion, and I am certain that in the month that has passed since our initial meeting all participants have read at least one of his 1000 page novels.

Or not.

Some Offworlders have already read several of his books, some of us are reading them now, and other attendees have as much as said they have no intention of reading one but want to come back for the conversation and the pizza.

Yes, pizza.

Last month, along with Phillip Washington’s introduction to Stephenson, we watched a short video of Neal reflecting on why Americans have lost the ability to “think big;” we ranked film adaptations of Philip K Dick novels from best to worst; we got off on the role of architecture in science fiction; and, we said mostly disparaging things about the Santiago Calatrava bridge and the Trinity River Project. It was fun.

So don’t stay away because you think you will be “behind” on anything. On Tuesday, November 13, those who have read or are in the midst of reading Stephenson will have a chance to weigh in on what they are reading . So far my favorite quote from Snow Crash:

Hiro puts his head in his hands…”This Snow Crash thing– is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?”

Juanita shrugs. “What’s the difference?”

And we encourage attendees to read this interview Neal Stephenson gave the website Slashdot in 2004. (Slashdot appears to be a website aimed at serious computer geeks which may account for its being one of the ugliest sites I’ve encountered since 1997.) But conversation will be wide-ranging, lively, and over by 9:00 PM. And it is free.

Here is the video we watched last month

 

 

 

LITERARY AWARDS YOUR SHOULD KNOW (2): THE BBC INTERNATIONAL SHORT STORY AWARD

Posted on by
Reply

We like it when our friends do well.

Miroslav Penkov, Assistant Prorfessor of Creative Writing at the University of North Texas, has done very well indeed. He is this year’s recipient of the BBC Interntational Short Story Award for his story “East of the West” from his anthology of the same title.The award carries with it a hefty British sterling 15,000. (Sorry, I don’t know how to make the symbol on this blog program.)  That’s real money.

Miro, who read at a WordSpace Salon in March, 2012, is no stranger to awards and recognition. He was born in Bulgaria in 1982 and attended the first English language high school in Sofia. In 2001 he came to the United States and attended the University of Arkansas. I suppose culture shock is good for aspiring writers. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing after receiving his B.A. in Psychology. HIs earliest short stories appeared in many anthologies, including Best American Short Stories 2008. He won a Eudora Welty Award and in this past year was included in the PEN/O’Henry anthology. 

“East of the West” was the unanimous choice of the BBC panel of judges. In writing about the award, committe chair Michele Roberts said

‘The judges were unanimous in their choice of Miro’s story ‘East of the West’, as the winner, as it so ambitiously and successfully united personal and political life, joining inner and outer worlds through its deployment of different kinds of realism: social and magical and folkloric. The narrator’s voice is unforgettable, his bleak vision redeemed by a strength of feeling that is unusual and unfashionable in modern fiction.’

 

Your can read more about the BBC International Short Story Award here 

A reading of Miro’s prizewinning story has been taken off the BBC radio site, but you can read his story “Makedonija” online at FiveChapters.com. And of course his book East of the West is available at all finer book stores in hardback, paperback, and electronic formats.

Congratulations again to Miroslav Penkov, HIs reading at the WordSpace Salon was one of the most enjoyable evenings we have had in the past year. We wish him the best of luck and continued success.

KILLER SHAKESPEARE — COMING SOON, NOVEMBER 1

Posted on by
Reply

Kevin Curran’s presentation on famous murders in Shakespeare is November 1, at 7:00 PM.

One episode he will focus on is Macbeth’s tortured waffling before the murder of Duncan. You can almost hear the groundlings chanting, “Do it! Do it!.”

Here are two versions of the famous monologue. The first is performed by a very young, pre-Gandalf Ian McKellen I love him rolling up his sleeve at the end.

 

 

 

This scene of Jon Finch struggling to act with some really dopey special effects might remind you why the only thing you remember about Roman Polanski’s Macbeth are the nude scenes.

WordSpace salons are free for WordSpace members, $10 for non-members. Since events are in private homes, we ask that you RSVP at 214-838-3554. You will receive the address with your confirmation.

For more on this and all upcoming WordSpace events, visit the WordSpace website

KILLER SHAKESPEARE — A MEMBERS SALON ON NOVEMBER 1

Posted on by
Reply

A lot of people get bumped off in Shakespeare’s plays. Kings, queens, children, innocent wives — no one is safe. They are murdered in their beds, in the Roman forum, in forests, and back alleys. (I hope I didn’t make that one up about the back alleys.)

In Killer Shakespeare, Kevin Curran, associate professor of English at the University of North Texas, will examine three famous, bloody incidents in Shakespeare to explore how the bard used murder to “think through other, larger topics.” The incidents include the exuberant bloodbath that concludes Hamlet, the assassination scene from Julius Caesar, and Macbeth’s moment of conscience before the killing of Duncan.

Follow those links above to read up before the event, and mark your calendar for November 1 at 7:00pm. Since salons are held in private homes, we do not publish the address, but ask that your RSVP at  214-838-3554.

Salons are free to WordSpace members and $10 for non members. (Join now, it pays in the long run. Visit our website for membership information.

LITERARY AWARDS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IT (1): THE SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD

Posted on by
Reply

At WordSpace we are excited that Ben Fountain’s novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk has been nominated for the National Book Award. Ben is a past president of the WordSpace Board of Directors and a longtime friend of the organization. He read from Billy Lynn at a WordSpace Salon just as it was being published.

The National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Hemmingway Foundation/Penn Award (which by the way Ben Fountain has also won) get a lot of national attention. But there are many awards out there, prestigious in their own fields, that most of us never hear about.

I thought a good ongoing feature for the WordSpace blog might be to periodically highlight one of these awards. And first up is The Shirley Jackson Award. 

Most people know Jackson as the author of the short story “The Lottery,” the story that causes the most discussion in whatever eighth-grade English class encounters it. But she was a distinguished American writer who has her own volume in the Library of America.  Since 2007, the award named in her honor acknowledges “…outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic”

Looking over the list of winners and nominees for the Jackson award points up how diverse the field of horror writing has become. One of this year’s nominees was Donald Ray Pollack’s The Devil All the Time. I read Pollack’s book shortly after it was published, and it never crossed my mind that I was reading a horror novel — although come to think about it something pretty horrible happened every dozen pages or so. Robert Jackson Bennett is a past winner of the award. He is an Austin author who will be reading for WordSpace in 2013.

This link to the official site will give you some  background on the award and the list of winners. There is even a video of the 2011 ceremony. You can also find out more about Jackson winners on Worlds Without End. They feature only winners and nominees in the novel category, but you get synopses, in some cases excerpts, and links to online reviews.

Check it out. There is still time to choose something spooky to read before Halloween. And the jurors for the Jackson Award are both picky and creative about what they consider.

.