Wordspace Calendar of Upcoming Events
Alex Lemon, Christopher Carmona, Scooter Smith, Ichat: Janaka Stucky
The WordSpace Reading Series at the Kessler X+ Art Gallery is held in partnership with The Kessler Theater in Oak Cliff. Originally built by Gene Autry, then destroyed by tornado, The Kessler has been beautifully resurrected as an arts/music complex. The new ambience maximizes our exciting presentations of both emerging and experienced writers, and mixes it up with our innovative use of web-cam-technology to broadcast live readings via Ichat/Skype, inter-connecting with writers from around the world. The events are held 2nd Wednesdays, as part of The Kessler’s Residency Nights of music. Begin the evening with Community Happy Hour, join us upstairs for the readings and check out their website to see who will be performing those nights!
Special Thanks to our friends –Owner, Edwin Cabiniss and Artistic Director, Jeffrey Liles.
Alex Lemon was born in Iowa, and lives in Ft. Worth, Texas. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Mosquito (Tin House Books) and Hallelujah Blackout (Milkweed Editions), and is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His memoir, Happy, was published by Scribner in 2009.
Christopher Carmona hails from the Rio Grande Valley in Deep South Texas. He is beat poet following in the tradition of beat poets like Jack Kerouac, Bob Kaufman, and Raul Salinas. Much of his work works to redefine what it means to be ‘beat’ as a poet and scholar. He is currently pursuing his PhD at Texas A&M University. He has had poems published in the Writers’ Block and Beatlick Art & News. Currently he is working on his first book of poetry simply titled beat and is editing an anthology of Beat Texas writings for UT Press with Chuck Taylor and Rob Johnson.
Scooter Smith is the art director and webmaster of Moonlady News, web illustrator and animator, videographer including in many video festivals. He will be sharing his moving video honoring those who died senselessly during the events of 9-11–”Our Live Like Rain”.
Janaka Stucky is the founder and managing editor of Black Ocean, and publishes the magazine Handsome. He likes his whiskey neat and his music dirty. Since receiving his BFA from Emerson and an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College in 2003, he remains rooted in Boston—spending his life traveling, writing, and caring for the dead. Some of his poems appear or are forthcoming in: Denver Quarterly, North American Review, Redivider, and VOLT.
Hosted by Karen X
Matt Bondurant and Venus Opal Reese
Matt Bondurant was born and raised in Alexandria, Virginia. His short fiction has appeared in The New England Review, Gulf Coast Review, The Hawaii Review, Prairie Schooner, and Glimmer Train, among others. He has also published poems in such journals as The Notre Dame Review and Ninth Letterr among others. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed novels The Wettest County in the World (Scribner) and THE THIRD TRANSLATION (Hyperion). He currently teaches literature and writing at University of Texas at Dallas and lives in Dallas.
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.
James “4 Real” Walker
James “4Real” Walker has embraced his gifts since adolescence. He is a performance poet, actor, songwriter, rapper, and has grown into an astonishing artist whose words can resurrect the dead in spirit; giving those who witness his gifts, the motivation they need to seek the kingdom of heaven. He has had the opportunity to share his gifts on radio stations and television shows, and has even performed on a national level. Currently he is the president of a Christian ministry called J.U.D.A.H. Outreach (Jesus’ United Disciples At Hand). He is using his gifts in effort to lead souls to Christ, and continues to make a contribution to his community and to the world, by expanding his creativity and encouraging the leaders of J.U.D.A.H. to do likewise.
Hosted by Rock Baby and Alexandra Marie
Carlos Salas Giselle Ichat: Scott Pierce
Carlos Salas, poet/painter/ father/husband/friend/ co-proprietor of Oak Cliff’s best bookstore Cliff Notes Prolonged Media. He is also, co-host of monthly open mic reading held at Mighty Fine Arts Gallery, also located in Oak Cliff. Locally, Carlos has been involved in the humanities in one form or another from literature, art, film, theatre, and music. He is a seeker of all things, harmonious, believer of all things, impermanent, believer of all things, interdependent.
RockCityPoet,Giselle–For this native of St. Thomas Virgin Islands, words became the comfort and color of her life when she was too ill to even leave her home. She moved to Ft. Worth seeking healthcare for her son two years ago and performs her soul all over the metroplex.
Scott Pierce was born in 1975 and lives for the moment in Austin with his partner, the poet Cindy St. John. He is the author of TV Poems (BlazeVox 2004) and Some Bridges Migrate (Small Fires Press 2009). He edits the publications of Effing Press which include the Effing Chapbook Series, full-length poetry collections, and the lit/viz art journal effing magazine.
Hosted by Karen X
Victory
Victory is a performance poet, writer, singer, artist, graphic designer, stupid romantic, mother, daughter, daydream believer, introvert with severe social anxiety (and yet possessed by a masochistic urge to make a spectacle of herself).
She has been performing poetry on stage and competing in poetry slams since 2001 and has been on several slam teams that have gone to compete in the National Poetry Slam, including the 2004 Dallas Slam Poetry team that took 3rd place nationally.
She currently is the editor, head writer, photographer and oversees layout for two north Texas community newspapers (names withheld to protect the innocent).
Victory is available to perform at birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, Quinceañeras, funerals and office Christmas parties. Probably not the best choice for a wedding. These have been unlucky so far.
Fans, potential employers, former boyfriends, stalkers and other interested parties can contact her at coffeepup@gmail.com. She dares ya.
Hosted by Rock Baby and Alexandra Marie
Rosalyn Story, Will Clarke, Roderick “RockBaby” Goudy, William Virgil Davis
Rosalyn Story is a Dallas resident who has published both fiction and nonfiction, including “And So I Sing: African American Divas of Opera and Concert” (Warner), which was adapted for the PBS program “Aida’s Brothers and Sisters: A History of Blacks in Opera.” Story is also a long-time violinist with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Her first novel, “More Than You Know” (Agate Publishing), earned critical acclaim, and her new novel, “Wading Home” (Agate Publishing) is set in post-Katrina Louisiana.
Rock Baby has appeared twice on HBO’s Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam and has won several local, regional and national performance poetry competitions. He is viewed as a natural performer who also does comedy and theater. He organizes the Dallas Poetry Slam that host local performance poetry competition and coaches a team that competes nationally. He teaches creative writing for after school programs in DISD, RISD and Desoto ISD. He also is an active member on the African American Impact Committee (AAIC).” and curates the WordSpace/Dallas Slam Featured Reader Series.
Will Clarke is an American novelist who is the author of Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles: A Spy Novel (sort of) and The Worthy: A Ghost’s Story.
A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, Clarke originally self-published both books via the Internet and independent books stores like Book Soup in Los Angeles, BookPeople in Austin, and Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle. Clarke’s books eventually became underground hits in the early part of the 2000s. He later republished the books in hardback with Simon & Schuster and sold the movie rights to Hollywood. Both books have been selected as The New York Times Editors’ Choice while Clarke was named the “Hot Pop Prophet” by Rolling Stone magazine in 2006. He is also the author of the controversial essay, ”How to Kill A Boy That Nobody Likes” which was published in the Free Press Anthology, When I Was a Loser: True Stories of (Barely) Surviving High School.
Will Clarke is known for using the supernatural (a psychic dot-com millionaire and the ghost of a dead frat boy) to trick the cynical eye into seeing the madness of the mundane.
William Virgil Davis has published poems in many magazines. His books of poetry are: One Way to Reconstruct the Scene, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets award; The Dark Hours, which won the Calliope Press Chapbook Prize; and Winter Light. He has also published short stories and several books of literary criticism. He is an English Professor at Baylor University. His latest collection recently won the Texas Institute of Letters Best Poetry Collection.
Curated and Hosted by Dr. Martha Heimberg
LGB
LGB is a spokenword artist that was born and raised in New Orleans. He burst on the open mic scene in the year 2000 performing at one of New Orleans most historic open mic venues, Ebony Square. As other venues opened up in the New Olreans area such as True Brew Cafe, Rhythmn City and The Hard Rock Cafe, LGB routinely performed at different locations around the city. His hardcore gritty street style with a mixture of comedy and clever metaphors quickly made LGB a household name. He went on to win several talent shows and open mic competitions with in the same year.
In 2001, 2002 and 2003, he was a member of the first ever New Orleans National Slam Team which competed in Seattle, Minnesota, Memphis and Chicago. In 2003, he was ranked 34th in the Nation and helped the slam team rank in the top 10 at the National Poetry Slam. LGB a.k.a. Beezy also was given the nickname Ghetto Poet for his raw, hold no punches, street style poetry.
In 2005 after Hurricane Katrina, he relocated to Dallas Tx. After getting situated in the Dallas area, he graced a few open mic spots before a two year lay off. Beezy then re-emerged on the open mic scene in the summer of 2008 performing at Sankofa’s Arts Cafe, Brooklyn’s Jazz Cafe and many other venues in the Dallas area. Since his return he has won several slams and talent competitions quietly making a name for his self in the DFW. LGB is currently working on his 4th poetry/spokenword cd after recently releasing his 3rd album titled Poetic Thoughts of LGB. He has shared the stage with many of poetry’s powerhouses such as Sunni Patterson and Talaam Acey just to name a few.
Hosted by Rock Baby and Alexandra Marie
Jolee Davis, Amy Weaver, Josh Lewis, Ichat: Tom Peters
Jolee Davis–Creator/Editor of Death List Five magazine (voice of the lunatic fringe). An art and literary magazine based in Dallas. Has hosted and been featured in numerous venues. She also has a rebellious hairdo. Her latest chapbook, “self righteous c**t”, is a love child of Iceberg Slim and Oprah.
Amy Weaver…Infamous in the Dallas poetry scene. 8 teams, 3 NPS final stages, and 2001 Dallas Slam Team champion in Seattle. Amy is currently working on a new book of poetry and her first novel, “Casket Girls” (historical fiction based on the mythology and violent denizens of New Orleans).
She has a fondness for bourbon and has been known to hump a few legs.
Josh Lewis is a designer/animator/illustrator/photographer/musician, and writer living in Los Angeles, former co-host of Bill’s Records Open Mic Readings in Dallas.
Thomas Peters is poet, owner and proprietor of Boulder’s legendary Beat Book Shop. He is host of the longest continuous Open Mic and Reading Series in Boulder, a special Friend of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and Naropa University graduate. Author of 100 missed train stations, Scene Svengali, open door to the arts, music and film community who knows no strangers.
Hosted by Karen X
Chuck Taylor and Hedwig Gorski
Chuck Taylor’s two most recent books are poetry–Heterosexual: A Love Story (Panther Creek) and Li-Po Laughing at the Lonely Moon (Pecan Grove). Taylor has also published novels and collections of short stories. For the last twenty-one years he has taught at Texas A&M University, serving a term as Coordinator of Creative Writing. Before that he was a bit of a wanderer, and taught creative writing at the Universities of Texas at El Paso, Tyler, and Austin. He worked in the Texas Writers-in-the-Schools Programs in San Antonio, Victoria, and Beaumont. He also worked at Paperbacks Plus in San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas, and ran a creative writing workshop out of the old Lakewood Paperbacks Plus. He has worked for environmentalist causes with Earth First! and the Sierra Club. As a writer he’s open to any subject if it inspires him, but he often writes about working people and about fatherhood. Currently he is working on a memoir about the time he lived in a tent along Barton Creek near Austin to avoid working jobs for pay. During that time he worked one day and lived on forty dollars a week. Since 1973, despite periods of poverty and instability, Taylor has operated Slough Press. On his press he published the first book by former Dallas writer Sheryl St. Germain, and Pat Littledog’s book set in Dallas, Afoot in a Field of Men, later republished by Atlantic Monthly. Currently one of his former students has a book on a New York Times Bestseller List.
Hedwig Gorski is an American poet, scholar, and artist who received awards for media works in poetry and drama. She coined the term “performance poetry” in early 1980 to describe her poems written only for oral performance and recorded performance poems with composed music. The best collected during live radio broadcasts were re-mastered and released on a CD Send in the Clown (2009). She published three books of poetry and released many audio collections including a collector’s edition chapbook with vinyl record titled Polish Gypsy with Ghost. Intoxication: Heathcliff on Powell Street (Slough Press) 2007, 2009, is a memoir/archive about her 1978 experimental verse theater in Austin. Her BFA degree from NSCAD, a world famous radical art school in Nova Scotia, is in painting. Her doctorate in creative writing is from University of Louisiana. She received a Louisiana Artist’s Fellowship (2002), and a Fulbright to lecture in Poland (2003). Some of her poems have been translated into Polish and published in Okolica. Excerpts from her 1978 neo-verse drama Booby, Mama! appear in Karawane (2009), and the transcript of a television interview with Robert Creeley is in JAST, a Turkish journal. She appeared at the Jozi Spoken Word Festival 2009 in Johannesburg, South Africa, for the U. S. State Dept. A podcast (2009) of audio for “Mexico Solo” is out on IndieFeed. A micro book titled Poetique (2010) features the performance poem text of audio featured on Send in the Clown.
Fluid Imagery
Fluid Imagery is a poet, orator, songstress, edifier, spoken word artist mother and realist. It is her belief that words can be used to heal, hurt, soothe, relate, edify and uplift. She uses the gifts that she has been blessed with to bring an awareness of issues that all people face. She believes that life and death lies in the power of the tongue and that you have to speak good things into existence. She also believes that if you dont know the past, it can haunt your present and distort your future. Her style of poetry blends song with prose to tell stories of injustice, love, pain, desires, and life. It has been branded transparent poetry as she often puts a face to the pain people go through but dare not mention. She writes snippets of her life in every piece that is penned. It is her desire to be a blessing to others through poetry, prose and psalms. Fluid Imagery… I speak……… therefore.. .I AM!!!.
Hosted by Rock Baby and Alexandra Marie
Corey Marks and Farid Matuk
Sponsored by Ricardo Avila’s MEXTOPIA
WordSpace is proud to have this reading sponsored by one of our favorite neighborhood must-meet-up-regularly-at Eateries, Mextopia, with the freshest delicious Mexican food, gorgeous ambience and most welcoming owners and staff: Mextopia is located at 2104 Greenville. Join us there after the reading! Special Thanks to Ricardo Avila and his partner, Michelle Andrie.
Corey Marks teaches at the University of North Texas and serves, with Bruce Bond, as Poetry Editor of American Literary Review. He is winner the Natalie Ornish prize, Texas Institiute for Letters, the Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review. a National Poetry Series winner for his book, Renunciation and a National Endowment for the Arts recipient.
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.
Hosted by Karen X
Ongoing Programs at Wordspace
Dallas Slam Featured Reader Series
WordSpace Non-Board Programming Committee Member RockBaby, award winning poet, teacher, HBO Def Jam poet and Host of the Dallas Poetry Slam Slam curates a monthly Dallas Slam Featured Reader Series for WordSpace.
Special Events at Paperbacks Plus
WordSpace is proud to recognize Paperbacks Plus among our original collaborators, friends and supporters. They’ve been enigmatic open doors to poets, artists, and musicians for over 30 years. Special Thanks to John Tilton and Marquetta Herring. To further investigate Paperbacks Plus, check out their website, www.luckydogbooks.com or go by and visit their store at 6115 in Old East Dallas.
Members Salons
Held in private homes throughout the year, these private, members-only events allow Wordspace supporters to meet local and national writers and artists in an intimate setting for conversation, readings and panel discussions. Our hosts are located in all areas of the city: From Downtown and Lakewood to Oak Cliff and South Dallas, from Oak Lawn to North Dallas.
Reading Series @ The Kessler X+ Art Gallery
Held in partnership with The Kessler Theater. Special Thanks to our friends at this newly renovated music/arts center–Owner, Edwin Cabiniss and Artistic Director, Jeffrey Liles. This series mixes and maximizing our presentation of exciting emerging and experienced voices with our innovative web cam technology use of ICHAT/Skype to broadcast and inter-connect with writers from around the world. The events are held 2nd Wednesdays, as part of The Kessler’s Residency Nights of music. Begin the evening with Community Happy Hour, join us upstairs for the readings and check out their website to see who will be performing those nights! www.thekessler.org
Please see above for the latest listings.
Northwood Literary Festival
WordSpace proudly co-sponsors this dynamic gathering of poets and fiction writers that takes place on the campus of Northwood University every fall. and is curated by Board Member and Northwood University’s Assistant Professor of English Dr. Martha Heimberg.
Lambert Commons on the Northwood University’s 400-acre campus, located at 1114 West FM 1382, Cedar Hill Texas - about 25 minutes from downtown Dallas, just off Highway 67 South — the Joe Pool Lake exit.
Southwest Shootout Regional Poetry Slam Competition
The Southwest Shootout is a regional poetry competition held every year in a different city in the Southwestern United States, ranging from Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. Teams of poets compete against each other in a 4 round preliminary bout. The top four teams move on to the Final Poetry Slam on the 12th. Over the past 7 years, these teams have consistently placed in the finals at the National Poetry Slam. A number of Russell Simmon’s HBO “Def Poetry Jam” poets will be participate in this competition..
Next On Deck at Paperbacks Plus
Each year we feature the best in area college student work curated by our Board members who work in Education at Paperbacks Plus. Paperbacks Plus co-owners John Tilton and Marquetta Herring have been an open door to the arts, music and literary community for over 30 years, are a de-facto Old East Dallas Community Center They often host additional Special and/or Booksigning Events for WordSpace. Check out their website at www.luckydogbooks.com for more information on this historic independently-owned book store.
Conspiracy at Paperbacks Plus
We also offer a focus on the work of area High School students. They bring with them not only the enrichment of their dedicated teachers, but often the most innovative and interdisciplinary collaborations of writing in this promising preview of the future. For more information on our friends at Paperbacks Plus at 6115 La Vista in Old East Dallas, www.luckydogbooks.com
Writing Workshops
On occasion visiting writers with a national profile will hold small, one-day classes usually focusing on both aspects of the writing craft and on the business of writing. Past instructors have included the novelists James Kelman, Janice Galloway, Ben Fountain and David Searcy. Students submitted manuscripts up to twenty pages in length for reading/comment by instructors, and all manuscripts were discussed and analyzed in class. Instructors led discussions on the business of fiction from getting an agent to selling books. Please see our above for upcoming offerings.
