Dear Readers, Writers and Friends:
There is much to enjoy this week in our local literary world!
If you haven’t yet bought your tickets for Friday’s benefit reading at the Crocker, get them now! This benefit for the Squaw Valley Community of Writers poetry scholarship fund features a ridiculously awesome lineup: Kazim Ali, Robert Hass, Sharon Olds, Claudia Rankine, and C.D. Wright. This event was fabulous last year (I drove four hours total to attend it, as I had to come back from an out-of-town training, and it was so worth it!) *and* it sold out. Let’s do the same this year, to ensure emerging poets will get the funding they need and to keep great events like this coming to Sacramento! Details below
You can continue your literary journey Friday evening by attending a truly world class reading of Homer’s Odyssey at Fairytale Town. This reading is presented in partnership with the Readers of Homer, an organization-in-residence at Bard College in New York. The Readers of Homer is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit literary event company that produces all-day or all-night audience-participation readings of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” in the United States and internationally.
Complete your writing adventure by submitting a poem or two to Tule Review, brought to you by Sacramento Poetry Center. The publication deadline for the fall 2012 issue is July 1, and Tule wants YOU! to submit poetry. Full details at http://www.sacramentopoetrycenter.com/publications/the-tule-review/.
In addition, some other celebrations to note:
Christian Kiefer celebrates the launch of his first novel, The Infinite Tides, which I’ve read and which you should read. Watch out for my interview of Christian coming soon to the Stories on Stage blog (and excerpt of the novel will be performed at July’s Stories on Stage).
In addition, Jodi Angel’s second collection of short stories was bought this week by Tin House and will be in print in 2013. Congrats to Jodi! (And, if you’re a fiction writer and want a chance to work with Jodi, I hear she still has space in her summer fiction intensive, which starts *this* Saturday, June 23. $200 for the multi-session class. For details and to register, contact writeleft2@yahoo.com.)
Rae Gouirand and Memoir Journal celebrate receipt of an $80,000 grant from the James Irvine Foundation to offer writing workshops that culminate in an anthology as part of the journal’s ongoing (In)Visible Memoirs project. I happen to LOVE this journal, and know it well—I read for Memoir—and I can’t tell you how excited I am to help Rae celebrate this exciting next chapter in her work at Memoir Journal! For full details, visit http://www.memoirjournal.net/invisible_memoirs/.
Happy reading, writing and listening! ~Kate
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Buy your tickets NOW!
Squaw Valley Community of Writers Poetry Benefit 2012
Friday, June 22 7:00pm @ Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento
On Friday, June 22, 2012 at 7:00 p.m., Kazim Ali, Robert Hass, Sharon Olds, Claudia Rankine, and C.D. Wright will read their poetry in Setzer Auditorium of the Crocker Museum in Sacramento (216 “O” Street). This benefit reading will raise money for the Poetry Scholarship Fund at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.
This year marks the event’s 21st anniversary and its second year in Sacramento. All proceeds will benefit the Poetry Workshop Scholarship Fund, enabling talented writers to attend the week-long poetry writing workshop held each year in Squaw Valley, California. It is the goal of this program to support both established and emerging writers of talent who would benefit from working with their peers at the Poetry Week at Squaw Valley.
Books donated by the poets and their publishers will be available for purchase (cash or check only) before and after the reading. The poets will be available to sign books after the reading.
Buy Tickets Now: www.brownpapertickets.com
DETAILS: The Crocker Art Museum is located at 216 “O” Street in Sacramento. This venue is wheelchair accessible. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. and seating is unassigned.
Tickets are $20 general admission and $15 for students (with current student ID). Group discounts are available. Tickets are available online at www.brownpapertickets.com. For more information, call: 877-537-8073 or email squawpoet@ureach.com.
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THURSDAY NIGHT: POETRY IN DAVE PRESENTS MICHELLE BITTING
Andy Jones writes:
“Dear Friends of Poetry,
I hope you can join us in downtown Davis tomorrow evening for another edition of The Poetry Night Reading Series, this one featuring the award-winning poet Michelle Bitting. She will be reading Thursday, June 21st at 8 P.M. at the John Natsoulas Gallery at 521 1st Street in Davis.
Michelle Bitting holds an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University, Oregon, and is the author of two full-length poetry collections. Her has work published in The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Narrative, Nimrod, Rattle, River Styx, Crab Orchard Review, Passages North, Linebreak, The L.A. Weekly, and others.
In 2007, Thomas Lux chose Michelle Bitting’s full-length manuscript, Good Friday Kiss, as the winner of the DeNovo First Book Award, and C & R Press published it in 2008. Her 2012 book, Notes to the Beloved, won the Sacramento Poetry Center Award. She has also been the recipient of the Beyond Baroque Foundation Award, Rock & Sling Virginia Brendemuehl Award, and Glimmer Train Poetry Open. Bitting has taught poetry in the U.C.L.A. Extension Writers Program, at Twin Towers prison with a grant from Poets & Writers Magazine, and is proud to be an active California Poet in the Schools. You can find out more about Michelle at http://www.michellebitting.com.”
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ALSO THURSDAY NIGHT:
Time Tested Books and The Sacramento Poetry Center welcome poet Brendan Constantine, reading with Sacramento’s own Trina Drotar on Thursday, June 21st, at 7:00pm.
Mr. Constantine will be reading from his newly-released third collection of poems, Calamity Joe.
He is currently poet in residence at the Windward School in West Los Angeles and the Idyllwild Arts Summer Youth Writing Program in Idyllwild, California. He holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Mr. Constantine’s work has appeared in numerous journals, most notably Ploughshares, The Los Angeles Review, The Cortland Review, RUNES, and LA Times Bestseller The Underground Guide to Los Angeles. New work can be found in the spring editions of Ninth Letter and The Boxcar Poetry Review, as well as the anthology Bright Wings, forthcoming from Columbia University Press and edited by Billy Collins.
This event is FREE and all are invited. Copies of Calamity Joe and Letters to Guns are currently available at TTB.
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FRIDAY NIGHT: HOMER’S ODYSSEY AT FAIRTALE TOWN
From dusk till dawn, 200 individuals—including children, veterans, poets and teachers—will take to Fairytale Town’s outdoor Mother Goose Stage to present an all-night, nonstop reading of Homer’s great epic, “The Odyssey.” The park will open at 6:30 p.m., and the reading will start at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Jun. 22 and conclude around 7 a.m. on Saturday, Jun. 23. Participants will read aloud pre-assigned passages drawn from a translation by Robert Fagles.
This reading is presented in partnership with the Readers of Homer, an organization-in-residence at Bard College in New York. The Readers of Homer is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit literary event company that produces all-day or all-night audience-participation readings of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” in the United States and internationally.
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*To all my fellow AWA writers, and all writers of poetry—check out this contest!*
The Second Annual Pat Schneider Poetry Contest
sponsored by
Amherst Writers and Artists
First Prize: $1,000 and publication of winning poems in Peregrine
http://www.amherstwriters.com/awa-press/peregrine/pat-schneider-poetry-contest.html
Please note: The entry fee of $18.00 must accompany each submission.
Winners will be invited to participate in a reading at the Jones Library in Amherst, MA.
One first place winner and up to three honorable mentions will be published in Peregrine XXVIII.
CONTEST RULES:
1. Up to five poems per person will be accepted for consideration. No poem should be more than two manuscript pages. Since the poems will be judged anonymously,sheets which contain the poems should not have the poet’s name on them; instead a separate sheet should list the poet’s name, mailing address, phone number, email address and the titles of the poems. Poems cannot be returned.
2. A check or money order for $18.00 payable to Amherst Writers and Artists must accompany submission (in the memo section of the check please write “Poetry Contest”).
3. Please write: Poetry Contest on the front of the envelope containing your poems.
4. Only unpublished poems may be submitted to the Contest.
5. Deadline: July 1, 2012 (postmark).
6. Winners will be announced upon receiving the chief judge Pat Schneider’s results, in fall 2012.
7. Contest entrants are asked not to contact AWA in reference to the Contest. Winners will be notified by mail.
Winners’ names will also appear on our website and in press releases.
Send poems to:
Pat Schneider Poetry Contest
c/o Amherst Writers & Artists
P.O. Box 1076
Amherst, MA 01004
Employees and board members of AWA are not eligible to submit to the contest.