About
Founded in 1994, WordSpace has presented programs and workshops with many writers and songwriters, including Robert Creeley, Gerald Burns, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Townes Van Zandt, Jeff Liles, Booker Prize winner James Kelman, Isabel Nathaniel, Terry and JoHarvey Allen, Cristina Henriquez, David Searcy, O. Henry Prize Winner Ben Fountain, Ed Sanders and NPR correspondent, poet, and novelist Andrei Codrescu.
Board of Directors
WordSpace’s board is comprised of working writers, critics, musicians and artists.
Susan Briante is the author of Pioneers in the Study of Motion (Ahsahta Press 2007). Recent poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Court Green, and POOL. A translator and essayist, Briante lived in Mexico City from 1991-1997 working for the magazines Artes de Mexico and Mandorla. She has received awards from the Atlantic Monthly, MacDowell Colony, The Academy of American Poets, & the Djerassi Foundation. Currently, she is translating the work of Uruguayan writer Marosa di Giorgio, as well as writing about industrial ruins and abandoned buildings in American cities. Briante holds an MFA from Florida International University and a PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas. She is an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Ben Fountain is a past president of the board of directors of WordSpace. He is the author of the short story collection Brief Encounters with Che Guevara (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2006), which received the 2007 PEN/Hemingway Award and the 2006 Barnes & Noble Discover Award. His fiction has appeared in Harper’s, Zoetrope: All-Story, and the Paris Review, among other magazines, and has received an O.Henry Award, two Pushcart Prizes, two short story awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, and the McGinnis Ritchie Prize for Fiction. His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times Magazine and New Letters. From 2004-2006 he served as fiction editor of the Southwest Review.
Dr. Martha Heimberg is assistant professor of English at Northwood University in Cedar Hill, Texas, creative writing instructor at Richland College and arts critic for Dallas Weekly. Five-time winner of Dallas Press Club’s Katie Award for arts criticism, community affairs and business writing, she has also won the Texas Historic Commission Griffin Award and the Sierra Club Award for writing. She has written over 200 features and reviews on live theater, visual and literary arts, and community affairs for Texas publications, including D Magazine, Texas Monthly, Lone Star Book Review and others. She originated DART’s Poetry in Motion program, a national project placing contemporary and classic poems on buses and trains, and is a founding member of the Dallas-Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum.
Jean Lamberty has been an educator in a variety of roles for the past 17 years. Her publications include An Extreme Risk, Illya’s Honey, and the next issue of The Sentence. She has also been a juried poet in the Houston Poetry Festival and received an honorable mention in the Poetic Friends of The Bridge poetry contest.
Karen X Minzer aka Karen X is a writer/ poet, published by Paris Records and Wowapi, a student and special friend to Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, including a Poetics Apprenticeship with Allen Ginsberg. She has curated and administrated literary events for over 30 years, is the former producer of Dial A Poet Television, a veteran performer, dharma broad, yoga instructor and adventuress.
Charles Dee Mitchell is a freelance writer based in Dallas. Locally he has been a contributor to The Dallas Observer and The Dallas Morning News, and he is a frequent contributor to Art in America. He has written essays for exhibitions at The Dallas Museum of Art, The Columbus (Ohio) Museum of Art, The UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, and many other commercial and non-profit exhibition spaces. In 2008 he retired from Half Price Books, Records, and Magazines, where he was Executive Vice President of New Media Purchases and Proprietary Publishing.
Catherine Mitchell has received various awards for her fiction and poetry, including the
Editor’s Choice Awardfrom WriteCorner Press and the Mississippi Review’s Emerging
Voices Award. She has taught writing, journalism, and communications courses at UT-
Dallas, SMU, Stephen F. Austin State University, and the University of Wisconsin-
Marshfield. In her career as a professional communicator, she served as director of
communications for the Denver Chamber of Commerce, marketing manager for Gerber
Technologies, and regional marketing director for Alexander O’Neill Haas & Martin, a
philanthropic consulting firm. She is a past member of the WordSpace board and has
volunteered at the Dallas Zoo, the Dallas International Association of Business
Communicators, and the Tejas Girl Scout Council. Currently, she is working on a retail
marketing start-up campaign and revising a novel.
Johnny Olson-Hailing originally from Chicago, Johnny Olson moved to the Dallas area in 1998. Intending to stay only a year or two, he has since made D/FW his permanent home. Since coming to Dallas, he has performed his work at various venues around the metroplex, including a series of readings in Arlington hosted by Paul Sexton, and he served as host and reader at the 2007 Deep Ellum Arts Festival readings. The reading for which he is best known, however, and the one that is his own personal passion, is held at the Absinthe Bar on Lamar Street the first Wednesday of every month.
Both host and founder, Johnny has been leading the Mad Swirl Open Mic night since October 2004. Mad Swirl serves up generous helpings of local literary talent and drawing contributions from poets from all parts and from all walks of life. The Swirl encompasses not only the spoken word, but extends further into the printed and electronic word through the madswirl.com website and the companion Mad Swirl ‘zine.
Both continue the Mad Swirl tradition of promoting D/FW literary and artistic talent and feature contributions from local visual artists in addition to the poetry. The Mad Swirl ‘zine was the first manifestation of Johnny’s vision for the Swirl, making its appearance in 1999 and still going strong today.
Johnny is the co-Webmaster of madswirl.com as well as a painter, illustrator, and writer. He currently works as a graphic and web designer.
Sarah Riehm has been active in the Dallas-area nonprofit community as a writer, educator and leader for a number of years. A published author, she has written four nonfiction books, several national magazine articles and three produced plays. Her last book, 50 Great Business Ideas for Teens was published by Simon & Schuster/Arco and translated into several languages. Liberty, a stage play about Patrick Henry and his wife Sarah, won two national awards and was produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Her nonprofit arts management experience includes founding and managing the Playwrights Project, a regional play development organization, and also serving as the Executive Director of the Composers Forum. Riehm served four years on the Richardson Commission for the Arts and as a grants panelist for the Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs. She has also been a Board officer for two international nonprofits, Radio for Peace in Costa Rica and the Institute for Global Education, a United Nations NGO. She also serves on the Arts and Humanities Advisory Board at UTD.
Christopher Soden holds Vermont College’s MFA in Poetry. He writes film & literary critique, essay, performance pieces and dramaturgy. Honors and positions: Poetry Editor: Espejo. President Emeritus: The Dallas Poets Community, The Poetry Society of America’s Poetry in Motion Series, Fourth Unity’s Annual Unity Fest and The Dallas Public Library’s Distinguished Poets of Dallas. Publication: Gertrude, Windy City Times, The Chiron Review, Sentence, Borderlands, New Texas 2002, The James White Review and Best of Texas Writing 2.
Michael Stanford is a consumer rather than a producer of literature.
Bill Swart, is an attorney with K&L Gates, LLP, having practiced in the corporate and finance areas for thirty years. He has written three novels, as well as numerous short stories and plays. An excerpt from his first novel was read at the “Texas Bound” series of Arts & Letters Live. One of his plays was produced at a play festival sponsored by the Playwrights’ Project. His legal nonfiction has been published in Texas Banker and Texas Bar Journal.
Stanley W. Thomas graduated from the University of North Texas with a BBA in accounting after spending two years as a music major in the jazz program at UNT. Currently an Accounting Supervisor for a subsidiary of JPMorgan / Chase in Lewisville , TX . He has worked in accounting in the financial services industry for the last 30 years. For several years he also taught as an Adjunct Instructor in business at the Community College level.
Adrienne Cox Trammell is a co-founder of WordSpace and is the Board President. She has worked in nonprofit administration for 20 years in fund development, program coordination, management consulting services, database administration and office management.
Non-Board Committee Members
Farid Matuk is the author of Is it the King? (Effing, 2006). New poems are forthcoming in Typesetter, Barrelhouse, and The Boston Review, among others. His translations of Spanish language poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Bombay Gin and Translation Review. His essays and reviews have appeared in The Poetry Project Newsletter, Sentence, and Cross Cultural Poetics (XCP), among others.
David Parry is an assistant professor of Emerging Media and Communications at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research focuses on analyzing how literacy and knowledge changes as we move from analog to digital presentations. He has published and presented on areas ranging from digital games to Wikipedia and microblogging. He can be found online at OutsidetheText or Academhack or on Twitter.
Rock Baby, a native of Hattiesburg, Miss., is a natural per-former beginning with his television debut presentation on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. His charismatic performances tap into the emotions of audiences. His honors and titles include Dallas Poetry Team Slam Master, Grand Slam Spoken Word City Champion 2003, and HBO Def Poet in 2003 and 2005
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