Dia de los Muertos @ Tyler-Davis Arts District
Dia de los Muertos @ Tyler-Davis Arts District
When: Wednesday November 2nd, 2011
Where: WordSpace, 415 N. Tyler St.
WordSpace is honored to host Teatro Dallas for a special performance in the block long celebration of life and death, as we join our block in throwing down the candy, grins, tears, art and ambience. Regular neighborhoold playas, Incense and Peppermints, Oil and Cotton and CoCo Andre are all in the mix, as well as To The Ends of The Earth and Gallery Bomb.
Alexandra Marie and M.H. Clay
The Robert Trammell Reading Series
When: Wednesday November 9th, 2011
Where: The Kessler Theater, 1230 W. Davis
Hosted by Karen X, Videotaped by Jeff Liles
Alexandra Marie
In the spring of 2005, Los Angeles native Alexandra Marie returned to the poetry scene after a three-year hiatus. She resumed writing and became a regular at various open mic venues in the Los Angeles area. A month after her return, she had her first featured performance at “Les Trois Vies.” She continued to attend local open mics, and featured at many special events and poetry venues. Alexandra Marie hosted her own open mic venue, “Connected Through Art,” from 2006 to 2007, and assisted the 2006 Los Angeles Slam Team at the National Poetry Slam in Austin, Texas. She has published two chapbooks: Love in Bits and Pieces in June of 2007, and You Are Between the Vowels and Consonants in My Every Sentence in November of 2007.
In April of 2008, Alexandra Marie moved to Dallas, and started her poetic career all over again. By the end of the year, she had made her mark in her new city, and brought in 2009 featuring at a New Year’s Eve party held in the Downtown Westin. This was followed by performances at the Arlington Martin Luther King Day Celebration and First Tuesdays at Brooklyn Jazz Café. Alexandra Marie continues to frequent Dallas open mics and can now be found co-hosting the Dallas Poetry Slam open mic with Rock Baby.
M. H. Clay is a poet and playwright residing in Dallas, TX. His profession has taken him around the world to see much and meet many. He has heard raw wisdom from young, Caribbean Rastas, “Live fast and quit!” and pondered the deep questions with Chinese businessmen, “What do we do with all the garbage?” He writes to maintain a semblance of sanity and throws his words out to see what kindred spirits will catch and throw back. Michael is the co-editor of Mad Swirl with Johnny Olson.
B. H. Fairchild and Renee Rosse @ Mighty Fine Arts
B. H. Fairchild and Renee Rosse
When: Saturday November 12th, 2011
Where: Mighty Fine Arts, 419 North Tyler Street
B. H. Fairchild and Renee Rosse @ Mighty Fine Arts
It’s Tyler-Davis Arts District 2nd Saturday Block Party Time and again!
We are please to partner with Mighty Fine Arts to host these two distinguished writers:
B.H. Fairchild (born 1942) is an award-winning American poet and former college professor. His most recent book is Usher (W.W. Norton, 2009), and his poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Southern Review, Poetry, TriQuarterly, The Hudson Review, Salmagundi, The Sewanee Review. His third poetry collection, The Art of the Lathe, winner of the 1997 Beatrice Hawley Award (Alice James Books, 1998), brought Fairchild’s work to national prominence, garnering him a large number of awards and fellowships including the William Carlos Williams Award, Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, California Book Award, Natalie Ornish Poetry Award, PEN Center USA West Poetry Award, National Book Award (finalist), Capricorn Poetry Award, and Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships. The book ultimately gave him international prominence, as The Way Weiser Press in England published the U.K. edition of the book. The Los Angeles Times wrote that “The Art of the Lathe by B.H. Fairchild has become a contemporary classic—a passionate example of the plain style, so finely crafted and perfectly pitched…workhorse narratives suffused with tenderness and elegiac music.”He was born in Houston, Texas, and grew up in small towns in the oil fields of Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas, later working through high school and college for his father, a lathe machinist. He taught English and Creative Writing at California State University, San Bernardino and Claremont Graduate University. He lives in Denton with his wife and dog, Minnie, and teaches at The University of North Texas. B. H. Fairchild is the 2011 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry.
Renée Rossi’s chapbook Still Life won the 2009 Gertrude Chapbook Competition for Poetry. Her recent chapbook is entitled Third Worlds. She lives with her family in Dallas and dreams about returning to Italy.
A.I.
A.I.
When: Friday November 18th, 2011
Where: Heroes, 7402 Greenville
A remarkable poet, emcee, photographer and leader in the community, A.I is only beginning to make her mark. Not even twenty-one years old, A.I. has already accomplished a great deal. A few of these achievements include qualifying for the 2011 Dallas Poetry Slam Team, becoming the 2011 Austin They Speak Youth Slam Champ, performing at the 6th Annual Minority Mentorship Symposium (Texas Relays), releasing her first spoken word CD entitled “Antisocial Butterfly” in February 2011, and her first mixtape, “intricate misfit.” in August of 2011.
[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157629402303053″]
A.I. was born Aisha Tiara White, on August 8, 1991 in Dallas, Texas. A.I. has had it rough; growing up in the inner city with a wrongfully imprisoned father, a mother struggling to make ends meet, and siblings who were rarely there for her. The impact this has made on her is great. She describes her struggle in this quote, saying “I’m from nothing, so from it I made something.” Though A.I has faced many hardships during her childhood and adolescence, mentors such as Natasha Carrizosa, Ebony Stewart, and Juliann Faucette have been able to help her through and rise above her circumstances.
While attending David W. Carter High School, A.I. was introduced to Creative Solution’s Literary Society (LIT), which would become an outlet to develop her passion for writing. LIT is a program founded by Darius Frasure aiming to promote visual and performing arts at Carter High as well as the surrounding community. This would prove to be extremely powerful and influential. The program introduced A.I. to the under 21 open mic at Daverse Lounge; this is where she found her love for performing. In addition to exploring poetic endeavors, A.I.’s pursuit of music in conjunction with Small Time Losers Entertainment (STL) started here. STL’s aim was to artistically generate a monumental impact on the world while maintaining small time humility. Using her own experiences as well as musical influences ranging from Marshall Mathers to Lauryn Hill, it was here that A.I began making music.
Although A.I decided to take a year off from her performance career, in order to learn more about herself and the world, her first year at the University of Texas at Austin, proved to be a very productive one. During her second year at the university, A.I started performing again. In fact, since then and most recently, she has performed, competed, and hosted at a number of venues across the state of Texas (including Dallas, Houston, and other major cities). A.I has served and performed as a member of The Cipher: Austin’s Hip Hop Project and performed and at the 14th Annual Brave New Voices International Poetry Festival in the San Francisco/Bay area, where she placed 3rd (out of 50) in the MC Olympics and her team made it to the semi-finals. The Austin They Speak team was still asked to showcase a poem, conceptualized and co-written by A.I. on final stage. Additionally, A.I. became the founder of LiveLife Entertainment. LiveLife is a production company working to utilize abilities in the arts to produce, promote, and inspire creativity and positive outlets especially for inner-city youth. LiveLife also aspires to promote individuality, integrity and to combat the destructive aspects of society. “Define your own fresh” is the company’s signature motto.
Currently, A.I. is keeping herself busy working as a freelance photographer as well as completing new music and poetry projects, to follow up Antisocial Butterfly and Intricate. She is now studying Mass Communications and Theatre at Prairie View A&M University. Not only is she a full time student, but A.I continues her career as a spoken word artist and emcee to spread truth and light to her community and the world.
Co-Hosted by Alexandra Marie and RockBaby
Rodzilla
Rodzilla
When: Friday Dec 2nd 2011
Where: Heroes, 7402 Greenville Avenue
Rodzilla is an internationally known spoken word artist, carrying the torch lit long ago by ancestor griots and members of the Black Arts Movement. Heralded as the Blackademic, this scholar represents the hip hop intellectual at its finest with his brand of edutainment… He has performed in every noteworthy poetry den in the US, and has graced stages in Africa, South America, Europe, and Asia… representing a special brand of lyricism called that NorthernCaliformulaSacramentoIzm, Rodzilla is one of the most unique artists around. A seasoned performer for the National Association of College Activities (NACA) Mr. Freeman has performed at Princeton, Brown, Harvard, and a plethora of other colleges around the United States. Nurtured in the fertile Northern California slam scene Rodzilla honed his craft as a member of the Sacramento Slam Team in 03, and 04, and has continued mentoring and coaching Sacramento’s Brave New Voices team that placed fourth in the country in 2010… with vision, depth and a deep historical grasp, this Blackademic is perfect for any setting, large or small, academic or laymen, multicultural, homosexual, and ESL… Come see about him.
Hosted by Rock Baby and Alexandra Marie
WordSpace Critics Circle: UNT’s David Holdeman on Yeats
UNT’s David Holdeman on Yeats
When: Wednesday February 29th, 7pm
Where: Contact WordSpace at 214-838-3554
Leap Day! We are honored to host David Holdeman, in programming partnership with University of Texas English Department to present an in-depth investigative experience of W. B. Yeats..
[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157629489354891″]
David Holdemanis a Professor of English at University of North Texas. Dr. David Holdeman specializes in twentieth-century Irish literature and culture (especially W. B. Yeats); modern British and American poetry and drama; and the theory and practice of scholarly editing. His most recent book, W. B. Yeats in Context (Cambridge, 2010), co-edited with Ben Levitas, features thirty-nine essays by distinguished Yeatsians from around the world. His previous books include The Cambridge Introduction to W. B. Yeats (Cambridge, 2006); “In the Seven Woods” and “The Green Helmet and Other Poems”: Manuscript Materials by W. B. Yeats (Cornell, 2002); and Much Labouring: The Texts and Authors of Yeats’s First Modernist Books (Michigan, 1997). Dr. Holdeman is an active member of the Society for Textual Scholarship and served as program chair for its 2003 conference held at New York University.
W. B. Yeats is a writer who requires, and at the same time tests the limits of, contextual study. More than perhaps any other Irish writer, he produced his own context as much as it produced him. His cultural and political activities, combined with his prolific literary output, made an impact that can only be understood by close attention to his words in relation to the times in which he lived. W. B. Yeats in Context maps Yeats’s world in concise, lively essays by distinguished critics and historians. The places, people, themes and intellectual frameworks most important to his development receive close attention, as do his artistic influences, and the production and reception of his work. As a gateway into the study of Yeats, this volume offers much new information for both students, scholars and anyone interested in the life and times of this enigmatic and influential poet.
Here are links to the poems David has chosen for the 29th.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Adam’s Curse
Easter 1916
The Second Coming
Byzantium
The Critics Circles are intimate, salon with limited seating. WordSpace Members: Free. Non-Members $5 RSVP WordSpace 214-838-3554
Sophia Dembling Book Release and Signing Party
What: Sophia Dembling Book Release and Signing Party
When: Thursday, December 6, 7pm
Where: Barnes and Noble, Lincoln Park, NW Highway, across from Northpark Mall
Purchases at Barnes & Noble benefit WordSpace Dec. 6-11. Use this number when checking out in the store or online: 10877611
Sophia Dembling is a Dallas-based writer whose career as a professional introvert started with an essay on the website World Hum, which was so enthusiastically received that it led to The Introvert’s Corner, her blog on Psychology Today, which is so popular, it led to her latest book The Introvert’s Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World, published by Perigee books.
Sophia started her writing career at The Dallas Morning News, where she wrote about music, fitness, and travel, among many other topics. As a freelance writer, she has published hundreds of articles and essays in newspapers and magazines and online. Sophia’s other books include The Yankee Chick’s Survival Guide to Texas and The Making of Dr. Phil: The Straight-Talking True Story of Everyone’s Favorite Therapist.
Sophia lives in Oak Cliff, where it’s nice and quiet.
Special Thanks to Barnes & Nobles Booksellers and their Bookfair project for nonprofit organizations. Barnes and Noble will contribute a percentage from the sale of books bought the day of Sophia Dembling’s reception and book signing through December 11, in the store and online–a great opportunity to pick up gifts for the holidays and help a great organization!
See reviews of The Introvert’s Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World. in Publisher’s Weekly and at Psych Central
Jason Cohen @ WordSpace World Headquarters
What: Jason Cohen, in conjunction with his exhibit @ Mighty Fine Arts
When: Saturday July 14th, 8pm
Where: WordSpace, 415 North Tyler St.
WordSpace is delighted to add another dimension to Jason Cohen’s exhibit,
“Facetotems”, at Mighty Fine Arts by presenting Jason’s multi-media, spoken-word work at WordSpace, next door to Mighty Fine Arts.
The exhibit opens June 9 and runs through July 29. Mighty Fine Arts will be open that evening for a final viewing of Jason’s show. Click here for more info on “Facetotems”
Jason Cohen was raised in Richardson Texas and holds a BA in fine art from UNT. For the last 20 years, he has been successfully providing fringe retail for the DFW area with Forbidden Books, Forbidden Video, Forbidden Gallery &, currently Curiosities Antiques. When not out hunting for exotic antiques across Texas, you can find him having light saber battles with his son, tea parties with his daughter, out in the garden helping his wife plant exotic succulent cacti, or painting weird pictures in his studio.
Joe Ahearn and Greg Thompson
When: Saturday August 11th, 7pm
Where: Lucky Dog Books, 633 W. Davis, 75208
Hosted by: Opalina Salas
Joe Ahearn is the author of one full-length collection of poetry, and three chapbooks, synthetic Five Fictions (Mudlark Chapbook Series) and Kyoko At Play (Harvest Publications). He earned his M.F.A. at the University of Texas, where he was a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers and served on the editorial board for Bat City Review. Ahearn co-edited the anthology, Best Texas Writing and currently curates the blog, Bat Terrier. He is also currently the guest editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry in Review.
His poetry, essays, fiction and translations have been published in leading print and Internet magazines, including American Literary Review, Big Bridge, CrossConnect, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Dog Canyon, Haight-Ashbury Literary Review, Mudlark, The Quarterly, Sentence, Sonora Review, Web Del Sol and many others. His work has been anthologized in Another Testament, CrossConnect: Writers of the Information Age, Best Texas Writing #2, An Introduction to the Prose Poem, and Eating Chocolate Ice Cream, Reading Mayakovsky.
His criticism and reviews have been published in Coldfront, Sentence, and the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry.
Ahearn is the recipient of the Web Del Sol Editor’s Choice Award and the HITBOX award for Internet literature. He has been nominated for seven Pushcart Prizes and was recently a finalist in national contests administered by the Sonora Review and the River Styx.
Ahearn has taught and lectured at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, Southern Methodist University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Texas at Dallas, WordSpace and the Writer’s Garrett. He currently teaches in the graduate writing program at Western Connecticut State University.
Greg Thompson was once nominated for the Pushcart is a graduate student of the University of Texas, Dallas, father of three children. Asked to describe his work said, “I think I write post language poetry, whatever that means.” Has studied under Joe Ahearn, Brian Clements, Brenda Hillman, Jack Gilbert, Fred Turner, etc, etc and most importantly The Three Stooges
Sanderia Smith, Jennifer Wallach and Venus Opal Reese @ Chocolate Secrets
Dr. Venus Opal Reese, Sanderia Smith, and Jennifer Wallach
When: Wednesday February 15th 7pm
Where: Chocolate Secrets, 3926 Oak Lawn Ave.
You are invited to sit, enjoy, and take in all that is Chocolate Secrets with a great event curated especially to honor African-American History Month: a special booksigning event and performance by Venus Opal Reese.
Jennifer Wallach, co-author and editor of Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and one of the book’s contributors, Sanderia Smith will be on hand to sign copies of the books and Venus Opal Reese will perform one of her beautiful signature pieces. You may remember the gliterati evening from last year’s booksigning event at Chocolate Secrets that included Rosalyn Story and her new book Wading Home. Expect another memorable evening together.
Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas, 1962-1967: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) arrived in Arkansas in October 1962 at the request of the Arkansas Council on Human Relations, the state affiliate of the Southern Regional Council. SNCC efforts began with Bill Hansen, a young white Ohioan–already an early veteran of the civil rights movement–who traveled to Little Rock in the early sixties to help stimulate student sit-in movements promoting desegregation. Thanks in large part to SNCC’s bold initiatives, most of Little Rock’s public and private facilities were desegregated by 1963, and in the years that followed many more SNCC volunteers rushed to the state to set up projects across the Arkansas Delta to help empower local people to take a stand against racial discrimination. In the five short years before it disbanded, the SNCC’s Arkansas Project played a pivotal part in transforming the state, yet this fascinating branch of the national organization has barely garnered a footnote in the history of the civil rights movement. This collection serves as a corrective by bringing articles on SNCC’s activities in Arkansas together for the first time, by providing powerful firsthand testimonies, and by collecting key historical documents from SNCC’s role in the region’s emergence from the slough of southern injustice.
Jennifer Jensen Wallach is an assistant professor of history at the University of North Texas. She is the author of Closer to the Truth than Any Fact: Memoir, Memory, and Jim Crow (2008) and Richard Wright: From Black Boy to World Citizen (2010). She is also working on an overview of U.S. food history that is to be published by Rowman & Littlefield. In 2010 History News Network named Dr. Wallach a “Top Young Historian.”
SANDERIA FAYE received an MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction from Arizona State University. She has taught Creative Writing for Arizona State University, and Freshman Composition, and Literature for The United States Navy and at Mesa Community College among many others. An excerpt from her novel Mourning Bench appeared in Mythium Literary Journal and in Jennifer Wallach and John Kirk’s book Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas, 1962-196. She moderated the grassroots panel for the Arkansas Civil Rights Symposium during the Freedom Riders 50th Anniversary, July 2011 based on the excerpt from her novel.
Her work was selected for “Best Of” honors at the 2011 Eckerd College Writers’ Conference Dennis Lehane and Sterling Watson Co-Directors, and an excerpt of her work will appear in the forthcoming SABAL Literary Journal. She received scholarships to Vermont, Writers Studio, The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow and Martha’s Vineyard Writers Residency. She expects to complete her novel this winter.
Venus Opal Reese is a tenured professor of Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, an award winning solo performer, playwright, director, choreographer and poet. She has performed nationally and internationally for over 20 years. Her solo performance work, Split Ends, was featured on the cover of the Palo Alto Weekly, showcased at the Black Repertory Theatre in Rhode Island and ran off-Broadway at La MaMa ETC. Split Ends was nominated for an AUDELCO Award. Dr. Reese was recently featured on ABC News and in Glamour Magazine and Diversity Inc., as an expert on race, beauty, and culture. Her performance with the Hip-Hop theatre play, Will Power’s The Seven, was featured in the American Theatre Magazine and won 3 Critic Choice Awards.
Venus has presented and performed internationally at the Sorbonne, Paris, France under the auspices of the W.E.B. Dubois Institute at Harvard University, La MaMa Umbria International, Spoleto, Italy, and Universita di Padova, Padova, Italy. Nationally she has performed and directed with Cultural Odyssey, AfroSolo, the LA Women’s Festival, and the Hip-Hop Theatre Festival, NYC.
As a scholar, Dr. Reese’s research links Africa, the Middle Passage, Antebellum Slavery, minstrelsy and popular culture through the stories we tell. She offers and designs courses in Spoken Word, Arts and Performance, Theatre, Movement Theatre, African Dance, Hip-Hop Dance, American Character, Acting, Performativity, Cultural Studies, Womanism/Feminism, Queer Theory, Literary Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Identity and Media. Dr. Reese’s scholarly performative writing has been published in the Women and Performance journal, the Journal for Global Transformation, as well as edited volumes like Recharting the Black Atlantic: Modern Cultures, Local Communities, Global Connections and The Politics of American Actor Training, both with Routledge. Venus serves as WordSpace board Resource Chair. She has turned her artistry as a writer and her research as a scholar into a lucrative business using uncommon strategies to help people around the world to achieve overwhelming success.
