President- Charles Dee Mitchell

Immediate Past President, Governance Committee Chair.

Secretary- Jean Lambertyt.

Co-Treasurer- Stanley W. Thomas

Co-Treasurer- Ben Yip

Chair, Communications Committee- Sharon Bailey

Chair, Resource Committee- Venus Opal Reese

Chair, New Media- Steve Paul

Martha Heimberg
Roderick Goudy, also known as Rock Baby
Sanderia Smith

Board Program Committee:

Program Director- Karen X Minzer aka Karen X, Farid Matuk

President
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. Read Dee’s Blog at www.potatoweather.blogspot.com

Immediate Past President
Adrienne Cox Trammell is a co-founder of WordSpace. She has worked in nonprofit administration for 20 years in fund development, program coordination, management consulting services, database administration and office management. Currently Adrienne Trammell is Governance Committee Chair.

Secretary
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 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.

Co-Treasurer
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.

Co-Treasurer
Ben Yip holds a BA in Anthropology and is working on his MBA at SMU.

Chair, Communications Committee
Sharon Bailey is a former board president and a 20 year veteran of nonprofit sector, and works as a consultant for nonprofit management.

Chair, Resource Committee
Venus Opal Reese, BFA, MA, MFA, Ph.D., is an award winning performer, playwright, director, choreographer and poet. She has performed at the Sorborne under the auspices of the W.E.B. Dubois Institute at Harvard University, La Mama Umbria International, Spoleto, Italy, Universita di Padova, the L.A. Women’s Festival and the Hip-Hop Theatre Festival, NYC. Dr. Reese’s research links Africa, the Middle Passage, Antebellum Slavery, minstrelsy and popular culture. She offers and designs courses in Spoken Word, Arts and Performance, Acting, Performativity, Cultural Studies, Womanism/Feminism, Queer Theory, Literary Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Identity and Media. She is a tenured professor of Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Chair, New Media
Steve Paul is an award-winning audio and video engineer with over 16 years’ experience in the recording industry. Passionate about music and art, he has developed a dedicated client base and has a proven production track record. After opening his third recording studio, He began studying photography and videography. Pursuing his interest in art, sound and design he opened Steve Paul Productions.

Martha Heimberg is associate professor of English at Northwood University in Cedar Hill, Texas, creative writing instructor at Richland College and arts critic for Theater Jones and Turtle Creek News. 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.

Roderick Goudy, also known as Rock Baby, is a graduate of University of North Texas with a Bachelor’s of Applied Arts and Science with an emphasis in education. In 1993, he began his career as an educator with P.A.C.E. Head Start in Mississippi. In 1999, Roderick began his career as a poet where he has become a nationally known performance poet performing across North America including television appearances. In 1998, Roderick Goudy began substituting teaching with Dallas Independent School District and from 1999-2002 held the position of PTA President. Roderick began organizing poetry competitions as the City of Dallas Slam Master for Dallas Poetry Slam in 2003. As a Slam Master, he has combined his love for art and education to organize and implement area writing and performance workshops, mentor young artists, guest lecture for community colleges and universities throughout the DFW Metroplex and nationally. Roderick has served as an art instructor with Junior Players Guild for over 3 years providing instruction in dance, writing, and theatre while addressing issues of bullying, self-esteem, and healthy conflict resolution. He is a frequent guest speaker for area schools addressing bullying, communication and other life skills critical to student success. Since 1988, he has held positions in the U.S. Army as a communications specialist, a pre-school, after-school and substitute teacher, committee member with WordSpace, a literary non-profit, board member with Family Care Connections, a social service non-profit with emphasis on healthy families and fatherhood initiatives, and Slam Master of Dallas Poetry Slam.

Sanderia Smith holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Arizona State University and a B.S. in Accounting from University of Arkansas. She has taught Creative Writing at Florida Community College, Central Texas College, Mesa Community College, Arizona State University and Andre House Homeless Shelter in Phoenix, Arizona. She is the recipient of a Writers In Paradise Scholarship and Vermont Studio Center, Writers Residency.

Board Program Committee:

Program Director Karen X Minzer aka Karen X is a writer/poet/gypsy, published by the Austin Sun in the 70s, Paris Records in the 80s and Wowapi, 90s to present. In 1976 she discovered WordSpace founder, Robert Trammell, reading his poetry at Old City Park across the street from her home at the historic (grundgy) Ambassador Hotel. She is a former student and special friend to Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, studied in poetics apprenticeship with Allen Ginsberg and assisted him with transcribing his diary notebooks to manuscript. She has also studied with Robert Creeley, Quincey Troupe, Ed Sanders, Galway Kinnell, Gary Snyder, Anne Waldman, Jack Myers, Larry Fagin. With alot of help from alot of friends, she has curated thousands of writers for over 30 years–including Literary Festivals for SMU and Eastfield College, readings for Paperbacks Plus, Writers Garret, WordSpace, Dial A Poet Television in Dallas and Boulder, Starck Club, Caravan of Dreams, and Morrison Street for Paris Records. Ms. X is a veteran performer/warm up shouter for songwriter-poets such as Frank Black, John Cale, Bad Brains, et al. Dharma Broad and student of Michelle Andrie, Angela Farmer and Victor Van Kooten in Eftalou, Greece, Karen has also taught creative writing at Brookhaven College and as a Writer-in-the-Schools and teaches yoga at Tranquilo Studio

Farid Matuk is the author of This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Letter Machine Editions, 2010) and the chapbooks Is it the King? (Effing Press, 2006), and Riverside, forthcoming from Longhouse Press. His poems have appeared most recently in 6X6, Barrelhouse,The Boston Review, Big Bridge, Cannibal, and Mandorla among others. His essays and reviews have appeared in Sentence, Cross-Cultural Poetics, and The Poetry Project Newsletter. Matuk has published translations from Spanish in Kadar Koli, Bombay Gin, Translation Review, and Harvard Review. Currently he serves as poetry editor for FENCE Magazine. The reciplient of Ford and Fulbright Fellowships, Matuk holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin. He lives in Dallas with the poet Susan Briante. Farid Matuk has served on the WordSpace Board of Directors as Program Chair and continues to serve on the WordSpace Programming Committee, coordinating the Greenhill School partnership with our Members Salon.

Martha Heimberg is assistant professor of English at Northwood University in Cedar Hill, Texas, creative writing instructor at Richland College and arts critic for Turtle Creek News and Theater Jones.
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.

Texas’s most celebrated performance artist Laney Yarber brings her charismatic and free associative magnetism to the Tyler-Davis Arts District’s 2nd Saturday Festivals. Laney Yarber is an artist whose work and influence has had a important impact on the state’s cultural life. Her work is part history (personal-area-occult), part installation, often multi-media, with great mastery of the craft of theater, sculpture, spoken word, and visual special effects.She is the recipient of  many awards and grants, studied with Robert Wilson, and is the sister of painter Robert Yarber, Laney leaves her fans and even her diva-to-diva antagonists crying for more. Never enough. Never enough.

When: Tuesday, May 22, 7 pm
Where:  WordSpace, 415 North Tyler Street (Map)

photo by J. R. Compton, courtesy Dallas Arts Revue

Michael Helsem is a Dallas writer, intellectual, painter, and author with multi-disciplinary knowledge and intersections of  philosophy and imagination in art.  He has kindly agreed to share his rich talents in a focus on Sylvia Plath. This is a  an intimate salon setting at our WordSpace programs room. Space is limited. WordSpace Members Free. Non-Members, $5.

RSVP: WordSpace 214-838-3554

Ben Fountain reads from his soon-to-be released new novel, “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” published by Ecco/HarperCollins. Ben is the author of “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 and  past WordSpace Board President.

Members Free! Non-Members $5

Dallas Poetry Slam heats up the hour every hour on the hour at Deep Ellum Outdoor Market. Visit the festival of arts and vendors created by Brandon Castillo for this special urban rejuvenation project benefitting the historic Deep Ellum District.

Community is where it’s at: Visit and shop the Deep Ellum Outdoor Market! Beginning at noon and every hour on the hour, the Dallas Poetry Slam performs, bringing the best solo performances around.

From noon-3, every hour on the hour, poets from the Dallas Poetry Slam pump up the jam Deep Ellum Outdoor Market with a 15 minute performance between music sets.

5 years in the making, commissioned by the Fort Worth Arts Council, Tammy Gomez has created a poem made of 125 blocks, one word per block and engages the community to assemble it the whole block long.

As a Mexican-American Texas-born writer, performance artist, and media producer, Tammy Gomez has over 20 years of experience in producing, directing, and hosting literary performance events for the stage and live audiences, and has worked with over 300 artist/writers in collaborative contexts. She curated the Poetry Tent readings for the Texas Book Festival at the State Capitol for six years.

Tammy has studied poetics with renowned award-winning writers Arthur Sze, Ann Waldman, Allen Ginsberg, and Lorna Dee Cervantes. During the 1990s, her spoken word band “La Palabra” enjoyed wide acclaim, as they took poetry to pubs, art galleries, and South by Southwest. Tammy has also been a performing member of such collectives as the Red Salmon Poets, the Blue Plate Poets, Dharma Broads, WOW (Women of Words), and Yoniverse (the latter which she founded and published).

Her audiences and sites of production have ranged from social justice and women’s advocacy organizations (Texas Association against Sexual Assault and the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center) to media production centers (WATER House, KO.OP Radio, and Austin Free-Net). For KO.OP Radio, Tammy produced the weekly women’s magazine “Notes from a Broad” for five years. Her work often touches on themes of ecofeminism, spiritual strength in the face of adversity, and cross-cultural hybridity.

WordSpace is proud to partner with Deep Ellum Open Market and the Better Block Project in sponsoring literary events. Deep Ellum Open Market, Directed by Brandon Castillo, is the 2010 winner of a Dallas Observer’s Best of Dallas award. Located on the corner of Elm St. and Malcom X Blvd, with over 40 vendors and live music, beginning at 8am in the morning.

For more information about and a visual mock up of the Better Block Project of Deep Ellum, visitwww.deepellummarket.com