Upcoming events
We no longer hold any events at our historical home on 4th Ave. Please double check the venue before the event!
We no longer hold any events at our historical home on 4th Ave. Please double check the venue before the event!
UP NEXT:
The Fair Weather Reading Series Presents...
El Roy Red and Saretta Morgan Sunday, March 17th Doors at 6:00pm Performances at 6:30pm The Jewish History Museum (564 S Stone Ave) $5-$15 suggested donation Accessibility info below bios El Roy Red works in the space btwn hope & efficacy until they reach actualization. Galvanized in Black/ Brown queer liberation, Red utilizes writing, movement, ritual & performance to facilitate healing, growth, & alternative futures. #postafrofuturism They have shared work in print w apogee journal, handjob zine, & femmescapes zine. IRL She has performed in Amsterdam & Berlin.... Stateside @ the Bronx museum, Printed Matter, & the Poetry Project, & the Segue Reading to name a few. & most recently, she has spoken @ the Brooklyn Museum as a part of the Trans Oral History Project. *** Saretta Morgan uses text and objects to consider relationships between privacy and narrative forms. She is the author of the chapbooks, Feeling Upon Arrival (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2018) and room for a counter interior (Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs, 2017) as well as a forthcoming full length collection Plan Upon Arrival (Selva Oscura/Three Count Pour). She was a 2016-2017 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Resident and her work has received support from the Jerome Foundation, Arizona Commission on the Arts and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, among others. Saretta received a B.A. in writing from Columbia University and an MFA from Pratt Institute. She teaches creative writing at Arizona State University. The Jewish History Museum is a wheelchair accessible space. Street parking is available, and we are working to cone off space near a curb cut for wheelchair parking. |
PAST EVENTS:
The Fair Weather Reading Series Presents...
Chaun Webster and Enrique García Naranjo Saturday, February 23rd 7:00pm Kore Press (325 W 2nd St, Room 201) $5-$15 suggested donation Accessibility information to come Poet and graphic designer Chaun Webster draws from an interest in the work of sign in graffiti, the layering of collage, and the visuality of text. These methods are used in Webster’s work to investigate race – specifically the instability of blackness and black subjectivities, geography, memory, and the body. Correspondingly much of these investigations engage the question of absence, how to archive what is missing from the landscape particularly as a number of communities watch in real time, neighborhoods once populated with familiar presences, dissolve in the vernacular of redevelopment and its attendant colonial logic. Webster’s debut book, GeNtry!fication: or the scene of the crime, was published by Noemi Press April 2018. * Enrique García Naranjo (also known as Q) is a poet, DJ & teaching artist from Tucson, Arizona. They are a staff member of Spoken Futures INC , a youth-centered arts & community engagement organization based in Tucson ; they are a resident DJ for El Tambó , a tropical dance party held at the Historic Hotel Congress; & they are a founding member of Ojalá Systems , a collective of artists & creators working to secure liberator & radical empowerment for marginalized young artists. Q’s work is centered on Frontera identity & the language of resistance. In 2017, they published a zine of poetry, These Colliding Things, through Ojalá Zine Press. Q’s work has been published by & included in the Los Angeles Times, The Acentos Review, The New Engagement, Cunjuh Magazine & more. Between reading, performing and teaching, Q can be found crate digging for vinyl & spinning at a house party. |
Casa Libre and Kore Press present...
Something else to be: Zines & Other Forms of Knowledge a workshop led by Chaun Webster Saturday, February 23rd 9:00am-12:00pm Kore Pres (325 W 2nd St, Room 201) $25-$75 sliding scale email casakeepers@casalibre.org to sign up, or use the PayPal button below Workshop description: Production is a zine workshop examining how this assertion of some other way of being from This Bridge Called My Back can be read as a “new subject position” as Jodi Melamed puts it and in the context of what Alexis Pauline Gumbs describes as the “Black feminist literary production that occurred between 1970 and 1990 as the experimental creation of a rival economy and temporality in which Black women and children would be generators of an alternative destiny”? In this workshop we will look over several texts to discuss the possible meanings of this “something else”ness as it relates to alternative knowledge production in zines and will participate in the making of a collective zine to document the discussion. Facilitator Bio: Poet and graphic designer Chaun Webster draws from an interest in the work of sign in graffiti, the layering of collage, and the visuality of text. These methods are used in Webster’s work to investigate race – specifically the instability of blackness and black subjectivities, geography, memory, and the body. Correspondingly much of these investigations engage the question of absence, how to archive what is missing from the landscape particularly as a number of communities watch in real time, neighborhoods once populated with familiar presences, dissolve in the vernacular of redevelopment and its attendant colonial logic. Webster’s debut book, GeNtry!fication: or the scene of the crime, was published by Noemi Press April 2018. |
The Fair Weather Reading Series Presents...
Vi Khi Nao and Kimberly Alidio Sunday, January 20th Doors at 6:30pm Performances at 7:00pm The Royal Room (450 N. 6th Ave) $5-$15 suggested donation Accessibility info below bios Vi Khi Nao is the author of Sheep Machine (Black Sun Lit, 2018) and Umbilical Hospital (Press 1913, 2017), and of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture, which won FC2’s Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize in 2016, the novel, Fish in Exile (Coffee House Press, 2016), and the poetry collection, The Old Philosopher, which won the Nightboat Books Prize for Poetry in 2014. Her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. Her stories, poems, and drawings have appeared in NOON, Ploughshares, Black Warrior Review and BOMB, among others. She holds an MFA in fiction from Brown University, where she received the John Hawkes and Feldman Prizes in fiction and the Kim Ann Arstark Memorial Award in poetry. *** Kimberly Alidio wrote After projects the resound (Black Radish, 2016) and The Sky Forever (Writ Large/ The Accomplices, forthcoming). She received a doctorate from the University of Michigan, held and left a tenure-track position at the University of Texas’ History Department/ Center for Asian American Studies, and won residencies and fellowships from the National Academy of Education/ Spencer Foundation, the University of Illinois’ Asian American Studies Program, Kundiman, VONA/ Voices, Naropa’s Summer Writing Program, and the Center for Art and Thought. Recent poems appear in Entropy, Northwest Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Hayden’s Ferry. Most recently from East Austin, Texas, she studies poetry at the University of Arizona. The Royal Room is a wheelchair accessible venue with an accessible entrance on the south side of the building. Bathrooms are gender neutral and have grab bars. Unfortunately there is only street parking. We are committed to creating accessible literary spaces. If there is anything you require to attend and enjoy this event, please do not hesitate to reach out and let us know. |
Casa Libre Presents...
Using Exotic Fruits to Write Erotic and/or Sad Poems a workshop led by Vi Khi Nao Sunday, January 20th from 11:00am-1:00pm Location TBA $63; sliding scale available email casakeepers@casalibre.org for more information or click "buy now" button below to sign up and pay Workshop Description: This workshop is designed to invite your creative faculty to exploit and transform seed-bearing botanic vessels of fecundity and edible beauties into poems of literary delicacy. Through innovative prompts, your poems will be poetically harvested and fertilized and at times dehisced using bright, carnal instincts. We will be inspired and structured by jackfruits, rambutans, cherimoyas, kiwanos, guavas, golden berries, jujubes, etc. We will turn to these exotic fruits to generate verdant poems that will make readers cry and eroticize. We will also turn to our contemporaries, poets of fruit writing, for guidance, sadness, and delirium. By the end of the workshop, we will produce ten poems. Each with a leaf attached to its head. Facilitator Bio: Vi Khi Nao is the author of Sheep Machine (Black Sun Lit, 2018) and Umbilical Hospital (Press 1913, 2017), and of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture, which won FC2’s Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize in 2016, the novel, Fish in Exile (Coffee House Press, 2016), and the poetry collection, The Old Philosopher, which won the Nightboat Books Prize for Poetry in 2014. Her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. Her stories, poems, and drawings have appeared in NOON, Ploughshares, Black Warrior Review and BOMB, among others. She holds an MFA in fiction from Brown University, where she received the John Hawkes and Feldman Prizes in fiction and the Kim Ann Arstark Memorial Award in poetry. |
Casa Libre presents...
NM ESC, Kou Sugita, Wyatt Welch, and Roberto Alejandro Sunday, January 6th 4:00pm-6:00pm Brodie's Tavern--Back Pocket Patio Bar $5-$15 suggested donation Accessibility info to come NM Esc is a writer and zinemaker from Brooklyn who writes about gender, intimacy, cyborgs, surveillance, borders, friendship, pop culture, highways, ghosts, and other flashes of light in the ever-tightening hellscape. They were a collective member at the Silent Barn for 6 years and are a co-founder of the TFW reading series. *** Kou Sugita has reoccurring nightmares that he forgets. Find recent poems in TYPO (issue) 29. *** Wyatt Welch is a local, Tucson poet. *** Roberto Alejandro is a Latinx musician/poet born and raised on La Frontera. They write about identity, sexuality, their mother and their relationship with the border. Although Alejandro resides in Tucson's Barrio Viejo, their heart belongs to el Océano Pacifico in a port city of Ensenada, Baja California MX. You can find their music on all streaming platforms under Roberto Alejandro. |
Casa Libre, Southern Arizona Senior Pride, and LGBT&S Alliance Fund present...
Bring Your Story To Life A storytelling performance featuring the stories of LGBTQIA older adults Sunday, December 2nd 3:00pm-6:00pm CANS Deli and Lounge (340 N 4th Ave) $5-$15 suggested donation This is the culminating event of the Bring Your Story to Life storytelling workshop. Anthologies of participant work will be for sale at the event. |
Bring Your Story to Life
a Storytelling Workshop for LGBTQIA+ Older Adults Saturdays, Oct 20th-Nov 17th 10:00am-12:30pm The Cornerstone Fellowship (this venue is wheelchair accessible) FREE Limit 20 participants About the Workshop: Your life’s journey is filled with important experiences that need to be told and shared. We invite you to join us for this interactive workshop where you will develop your writing and presentation skills in a safe and nurturing environment. Bring your story to life, build community, and find your voice in this 5-week workshop facilitated by local storyteller Cat Belue and Casa Libre volunteers. The workshop will culminate in an anthology release and presentation of work at Cans Deli on Sunday, Dec. 2nd, from 3:00-6:00pm. Event page to come! About Cat: Cat Belue is a southerner by birth and desert rat by choice, having called the Old Pueblo home for the past 14 years. A daily journaler, Cat started storytelling with the Tucson group Female Storytellers, aka FST!, in 2014. In addition to performing on stage, she also serves on the Selection Committee. Cat is a proud member of the LGBTQ community and shares her life with 2 adorable grown up puppies. She believes everyone deserves to have their voices heard and that in the telling of stories, we heal ourselves and the world. To sign up for this workshop, please email casakeepers@casalibre.org by Oct 19th |
The Fair Weather Reading Series Presents...
Taylor / Ensor / Wade Friday, November 2nd 7:00pm Exo Roast Coffee (403 N 6th Ave) $5 suggested donation Accessibility below bios For our November Fair Weather Reading, we welcome three former Tucsonans back to town! Shelly Taylor is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Lions, Remonstrance (Coconut Books Braddock Book Prize, 2014) and Black-Eyed Heifer (Tarpaulin Sky, 2010), and co-editor, with Abraham Smith, of the anthology of rural American poetry and essays, Hick Poetics (Lost Roads Press, 2015). A chapbook, Notes from Byzantium, is forthcoming this winter from Black Rock Press. * Hannah Ensor is a poet living in Ypsilanti, Michigan. She has published poems, essays, and reviews, often on topics of pop culture, sports, and mass media. With Laura Wetherington and Jill Darling, she co-wrote the collaborative poetry chapbook at the intersection of 3, and with Natalie Diaz she served as associate editor of Bodies Built for Game, an anthology of contemporary sports literature. Until recently, she served on the board of directors of Casa Libre and as literary director of the University of Arizona Poetry Center. Love Dream With Television is her first book of poetry; it was written in Tucson. * Meg Wade is a 2017 National Poetry Series finalist and a former Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin's Creative Writing Institute. She is the winner of the 2017 Snowbound Chapbook Award for her manuscript, Slick Like Dark, which is forthcoming from Tupelo Press. Meg has been the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and she received her MFA from the University of Arizona. You can find her work online, as well as various print journals and anthologies. She lives and writes in Nashville, Tennessee. Exo Coffee Roast is an ADA accessible venue. Street parking only. ADA entrance on 7th st. There's a ramp on the corner of 6th Ave and 7th St. There are no steps into the back entrance. The floors are concrete, and all seating is moveable. |
Casa Libre Presents...
Poetry Karaoke for Casa Libre Tuesday, October 9th La Cocina (201 N Court Ave) Raffle + friends + food + drinks: 5:00pm-10:00pm Music: 5:30pm-7:30pm Poetry Karaoke: 7:30pm-10:00pm Join us for an evening of Music, Raffle Prizes, Poetry, and Karaoke at La Cocina to help raise money for our programming in the 2018-2019 season! We love LaCo's Tuesdays for Tucson program so much, we participate every year! Thanks LaCo! ♥ Ok, so here's how this works, think poetry open mic + karaoke: you bring a poem to read (your own or one written by someone else), you get on the mic and read the poem, then you sing a karaoke song! (You can also only sing if you don't have a poem to share, or only read a poem if you don't want to sing.) Hosted by the karaoke master himself, Dmitri Bartlett! Free to the public! $2-$5 suggested donation per song/poem (no singers or readers turned away for lack of funds) More info on bands, poets, and accessibility to come! ***This is a family friendly event, so please save the poems and songs with lots of swearing for another time! Thanks! |
The Fair Weather Reading Series Presents...
Jennif(f)er Tamayo joined by Julia Kinu and Aura Valdes Saturday, September 29th 7:30pm At the Global Justice Center (225 E 26th St, Tucson, AZ 85713) $5 suggested donation This venue is wheelchair accessible! Jennif(f)er Tamayo is a queer, migrant, formerly undocumented latinx poet, essayist, and performer. JT is the daughter of Nancy, Flora, Leonor, Sol, and Ana. Her collections include [Red Missed Aches] (Switchback, 2011) selected by Cathy Park Hong for the Gatewood Prize (2010), Poems are the Only Real Bodies (Bloof Books 2013), DORA/ANA/GUATAVIT@ (RSH 2016) and YOU DA ONE (2017 reprint Noemi Books & Letras Latinas's Akrilica Series). She has held fellowships from the Hemispheric Institute for Performance & Politics and CantoMundo. Currently, JT lives and works on Ohlone and Patwin lands and is a PhD student in the department of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley; her research considers resistant, decolonial practices of voic(ing). You can find their writing and art at www.jennifertamayo.com. * Julia Kinu is a poet from many backgrounds, claiming them all proudly in their work. Their upcoming chapbook, Ojiichan Omiyage, discusses the hardships of being a first generation American with the complexities of their personal relationships with a motherland they are not familiar with. They thrive on dismantling the submissive Asian dream while offering new perspectives from the numerous backgrounds that they embody. They host a monthly POC poetry night at the Owls Club, and are the co-director for the Tucson Poetry Festival. * Aura Valdes is a queer/ non binary poet. Their work currently explores grief, and making peace with the word Home. Aura has performed at the Owls club, words on the Avenue, and other local venues. Spoken word is their first language and it is always evolving. |
The Fair Weather Reading Series Presents...
Raquel Salas Rivera and Sophia Terazawa w/ DJ set by DJ Q Saturday, August 25th 7:00pm (doors and music at 6:30pm) At the Royal Room (450 N 6th Ave) $5 suggested donation (no one turned away for lack of funds) Raquel Salas Rivera es la poeta laureada de la ciudad de Filadelfia del 2018-19. Sus poemas han aparecido en revistas tales como la Revista del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, Apogee y McSweeney’s. Es la autora de Caneca de anhelos turbios (Editora Educación Emergente), oropel/tinsel (Lark Books), tierra intermitente (Ediciones Alayubia) y lo terciario/the tertiary (Timeless, Infinite Light). En la actualidad, es co-editora Puerto Rico en mi corazón, una colección bilingüe de volantes de poetas puertorriqueños contemporáneos. Raquel Salas Rivera is the 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. Their work has appeared in journals such as the Revista del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, Apogee, and McSweeney’s. They are the author of Caneca de anhelos turbios (Editora Educación Emergente), oropel/tinsel (Lark Books), tierra intermitente (Ediciones Alayubia), and lo terciario/the tertiary (Timeless, Infinite Light). Currently, they are Co-editor of Puerto Rico en mi corazón, a collection of bilingual broadsides of contemporary Puerto Rican poets. *** Sophia Terazawa lives in Tucson and studies poetry at the University of Arizona. Her favorite color is purple, and she is the author of two chapbooks: I AM NOT A WAR (Essay Press) and Correspondent Medley (forthcoming with Factory Hollow Press). *** Accessibility info: This venue is wheelchair accessible. The bathrooms have grab bars and are gender neutral. Street parking only. Path of travel to come! |
Fair Weather Reading Series: Poets + Pool Party + w/ Sarah Gonzalez, Sarah Gzemski, & Sylvia Chan + DJ B-RAD Friday, September 29, 2017 8:00pm (doors at 7:30) $5 suggested donation snacks served Curator: Sally Roundhouse Location: Outdoor Courtyard Description: This season's inaugural Fair Weather Reading will also be a pool party and chill out session with tunes by Tucson's own DJ B-RAD. Bring your suits and ears and tummies because snacks will be served! Sarah Gonzales believes the intersection of art and activism is a critical place for community survival. She is involved in community work and youth organizing in Arizona and nationally through her consulting company, TruthSarita, LLC. She is also Codirector of Spoken Futures, Inc, a youth space to address inequity in communities through poetry. *** Sarah Gzemski is the Publicity and Publications Coordinator at the University of Arizona Poetry Center and the Managing Editor of Noemi Press. She is participating in InSight II, a writing and art collaboration project resulting in a gallery show in January 2018. Her chapbook, Centralia, is available from Porkbelly Press. *** Sylvia Chan is a poet from Hayward, California. Formerly a jazz pianist in the San Francisco East Bay, she teaches in the Writing Program at the University of Arizona and serves as nonfiction editor for Entropy and court advocate for foster kids in Pima County. Her debut poetry collection, We Remain Traditional, is forthcoming from the Center for Literary Publishing in February 2018. |
Casa Libre Presents...
Animating Memory: Somáticas w/ Vanessa Angélica Villarreal & Vickie Vértiz Sunday, October 22nd 12:30-2:30 $50, scholarship available Email casakeepers@casalibre.org for more information or to sign up Location: Casa Libre Multi-Purple Room, 228 N. 4th Ave Description: This workshop will be a generative workshop model that will focus on locating particular moments, dolencias, wounds, sensations, languages, and experiences lodged in different types of memory (cultural, generational, epigenetic, body). Come to this workshop to capture particularities of language, region, limnality, and intimacy in memory. Sign up today, before the workshop fills! Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was born in the Rio Grande Valley borderlands to formerly undocumented Mexican immigrants. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Spork, Pinwheel, Epiphany, PBS Newshour, Poor Claudia, Apogee, Waxwing, The Wanderer, Sporklet, DIAGRAM, The Feminist Wire, The Poetry Foundation Harriet Blog, and elsewhere. She has served as an editor for the Bettering American Poetry project and is a CantoMundo Fellow. Her first book of poems, Beast Meridian, is forthcoming from Noemi Press in September 2017. She lives in Los Angeles, CA, but her forever hometown is Houston, Texas. *** Vickie Vertiz was born and raised in southeast Los Angeles. A Lucille Clifton scholar at the Community of Writers, she was the 2016 Poetry Center Fellow at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Her writing can be found in Huizache, Nepantla, and in The Coiled Serpent from Tia Chucha Press. Her second collection of poetry, Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut, is available from the University of Arizona Press, Camino del Sol series starting this September. |
Fair Weather Reading Series Presents...
Vickie Vértiz, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, & Raquel Gutiérrez Sunday, October 22, 2017 4:00pm (doors at 3:30) $5 suggested donation snacks served Curator: Sally Roundhouse Location: Casa Libre's Multi-Purpose Room Description: This series celebrates LGBTQ writers, female writers, writers of color, emerging writers, and other underrepresented groups. Everyone is welcome to attend! Sometimes there will be music. Sometimes there will be dancing. Sometimes there will be video. Sometimes there will be swimming. Sometimes there will be surprises. Sometimes there will be raffles. Sometimes there will be fancy food. Sometimes there will be fancy drinks. Sometimes it will rain and you should bring an umbrella. Sometimes it will be chilly and you should bring a blanket. It is called the Fair Weather Reading Series for all of these reasons and more. Vickie Vertiz was born and raised in southeast Los Angeles. A Lucille Clifton scholar at the Community of Writers, she was the 2016 Poetry Center Fellow at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Her writing can be found in Huizache, Nepantla, and in The Coiled Serpent from Tia Chucha Press. Her second collection of poetry, Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut, is available from the University of Arizona Press, Camino del Sol series starting this September. *** Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was born in the Rio Grande Valley borderlands to formerly undocumented Mexican immigrants. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in PBS Newshour, Poor Claudia, Apogee, Waxwing, The Wanderer, Sporklet, DIAGRAM, The Feminist Wire, The Poetry Foundation Harriet Blog, and elsewhere. She has served as an editor for the Bettering American Poetry project and is a CantoMundo Fellow. Her book, Beast Meridian, is forthcoming from Noemi Press in 2017. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Poetry and Digital Media Arts at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where she eats tacos with her family, but her forever hometown is Houston, Texas. *** Raquel Gutiérrez is a poet and essayist pursuing her MFA degree in poetry at the University of Arizona. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Gutiérrez writes about space and institutionality and publishes chapbooks by queers of color with the tiny press Econo Textual Objects, established in 2014. Their work has found homes in FENCE, Zócalo Public Square, ASAP Journal, Huizache, The Portland Review, Los Angeles Weekly, and Entropy. Gutiérrez haas previously received an MA in Performance Studies from New York University and a BA in Journalism and Central American Studies from California State University at Northridge. |
Tuesday, October 24th, 2017
5:00pm-10:00pm FREE (but you should buy dinner--nom nom nom--because LaCo will donate 10% of their dinner sales to Casa Libre) Music by The Rifle, Lano, & Jessie Williams Poetry by Kris Aman, Julia Kinu, Rafael Gonzalez, & more! Casa Libre curated raffle with prizes for everyone! |
Fair Weather Reading Series Presents...
Lily Hoang & Susan Briante Saturday, November 11, 2017 7:00pm (doors at 6:30) $5 suggested donation snacks served Curator: Sally Roundhouse Location: Casa Libre's Multi-Purpose Room Description: This series celebrates LGBTQ writers, female writers, writers of color, emerging writers, and other underrepresented groups. Everyone is welcome to attend! Sometimes there will be music. Sometimes there will be dancing. Sometimes there will be video. Sometimes there will be swimming. Sometimes there will be surprises. Sometimes there will be raffles. Sometimes there will be fancy food. Sometimes there will be fancy drinks. Sometimes it will rain and you should bring an umbrella. Sometimes it will be chilly and you should bring a blanket. It is called the Fair Weather Reading Series for all of these reasons and more. Lily Hoang is the author of five books, including A Bestiary (winner of the inaugural Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s Nonfiction Contest) and Changing (recipient of a PEN Open Books Award). She teaches in the MFA program at UC San Diego. She serves Editor at Jaded Ibis Press and Executive Editor for HTML Giant. *** Susan Briante’s most recent book The Market Wonders (Ahsahta Press) was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. The Kenyon Review calls it “masterful at every turn.” She is also the author of Pioneers in the Study of Motion and Utopia Minus (an Academy of American Poets Notable Book of 2011). Briante has received grants and awards from the Atlantic Monthly, the MacDowell Colony, the Academy of American Poets, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund and the US-Mexico Fund for Culture. She is an associate professor of creative writing and literature at the University of Arizona, where she serves as faculty liaison and educational facilitator for the Southwest Field Studies in Writing Program. The program brings MFA students to the US-Mexico border to work with community-based environmental and social justice groups. Briante also produces and hosts the radio program Speedway and Swan, an hour of free-form poetry and music on KXCI 91.3 Tucson. |
Peregrinas: California Women Poets in the Southwest
Tuesday, January 2nd 7:00pm (doors at 6:30) 228 N. 4th Ave $5 suggested donation Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was born in the Rio Grande Valley borderlands to formerly undocumented Mexican immigrants. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Buzzfeed Reader, Epiphany, Apogee, Sporklet, PBS Newshour, Poor Claudia, Waxwing, The Wanderer, DIAGRAM, The Feminist Wire, The Poetry Foundation Harriet Blog, and others. She has served as an editor for the Bettering American Poetry project and is a CantoMundo Fellow. She is the author of Beast Meridian (Noemi Press, Akrilica Series, 2017). She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, but her hometown is Houston, Texas. *** Marisol Baca is the author of Tremor (Three Mile Harbor Press). She has been published in Narrative Northeast, Riverlit, Shadowed: An Anthology of Women Writers, Acentos Review, among other publications. She received her Master of Fine Arts from Cornell University where she won the Robert Chasen poetry award for her poem, Revelato. She is also a recipient of the Andres Montoya poetry scholarship. Currently, Marisol is an English professor at Fresno City College. *** Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, a first-generation Chicana, is the author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016). A former Steinbeck Fellow, Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner and Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grantee, she’s received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, National Parks Arts Foundation and Poetry Foundation. Her work is published in Acentos Review, CALYX, crazyhorse, and American Poetry Review among others. A dramatization of her poem "Our Lady of the Water Gallons," directed by Jesús Salvador Treviño, can be viewed at latinopia.com. She is a cofounder of Women Who Submit and a member of Macondo Writers’ Workshop. *** Yaccaira Salvatierra’s poems have appeared in Huizache, Diálogo, Puerto del Sol, and Rattle among others. She is a VONA alumna, the recipient of the Dorrit Sibley Award for achievement in poetry, and the 2015 winner of the Puerto del Sol Poetry Prize. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net. An educator and art instructor, she lives in San José, California with her two sons. |
Casa Libre and Moss Hope Angel Present...
Worlds Beneath Sleep: Writing Dream Narratives Saturday, January 13th 10:00am-12:00pm Casa Libre Multi-Purpose Room, 228 N. 4th Ave $50, scholarships available email casakeepers@casalibre.org to sign up or for more information Description: In this workshop Moss Angel, author of the Sea-Witch series of books, teaches their methods for creating striking short dream narratives that have their own peculiar internal logic. Learn how to use dreams & dreamlike imagery to write around rather than about & get at the emotional truth of a subject without getting bogged down in reality. *** Moss Hope Angel is a book artist and crossgenre writer living in Oregon. Ze is author of five books, most recently Sea-Witch v.2: Girldirt Angelfog, the second in hir genrequeer abstract fantasy series. Hir work & words have been featured in Autostraddle, Verse Daily, Black Warrior Review & Gulf Coast. Ze is online at http://undying.club/ |
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Fair Weather Reading Series Presents...
Moss Hope Angel and jasper avery Saturday, January 13th, 2018 at R Bar (350 E Congress St #110), 7:00pm (doors at 6:30) $5 suggested donation Moss Hope Angel is a book artist and crossgenre writer living in Oregon. Ze is author of five books, most recently Sea-Witch v.2: Girldirt Angelfog, the second in hir genrequeer abstract fantasy series. Hir work & words have been featured in Autostraddle, Verse Daily, Black Warrior Review & Gulf Coast. Ze is online at http://undying.club/ *** jasper avery is a poet and musician currently living in philadelphia. she has published a chapbook, ghost medicine, with gloworm press, and her full-length collection, number one earth, is a finalist for the 2017 Metatron Prize. her work centers around memory and forgetting, queerness, and healing. she is working on her MFA at Temple University. |
POETRY & PANCAKES!!! THE UNHOLY UNION!!!!
$10 suggested donation. Pay at the door or purchase below:
$10 suggested donation. Pay at the door or purchase below:
Casa Libre and the University of Arizona Poetry Center present...
CAConrad Sunday, January 28th, 2018 6:30pm (doors at 6:00) 228 N. 4th Ave. $5 suggested donation Books for sale! Snacks and wine provided! CAConrad's 9th book is titled While Standing in Line for Death (Wave, 2017). Among their other titles is The Book of Frank (Wave, 2010), which is now available in 9 different languages. They have received fellowships from Pew, Lannan, Banff and RADAR, and their book ECODEVIANCE (Wave, 2014) won the 2015 Believer Magazine Book Award. Publishers Weekly says, "Conrad consistently surprises, and few, if any, American poets are doing more visionary, disorienting, and wonderful work today." For information on their books and films, visit them online at http://bit.ly/88CAConrad |
Casa Libre and HARK! present...
The Poetics of Listening: A Community Harmonic Thursday, February 1st, 2018 7:00-9:00pm YWCA Southern Arizona, 525 N. Bonita Ave $10 suggested donation What connects us? What is wrong with the world? Conjure an image of freedom, what does it look like? At this one-time event, six local performers present poetic interpretations of language from Tucsonans attempting to answer these questions and more in conversations with HARK! listeners. Learn more about HARK! and their project here. |
Casa Libre Presents...
The P Word, or This is Not an Op-Ed Saturday, February 10th 10:00am-1:00pm Casa Libre Multi-Purpose Room, 228 N. 4th Ave $100, scholarships available email casakeepers@casalibre.org to sign up or for more information Description: Do we mean personal, political, or both? In our time together, we will attempt to answer these questions and more through conversation and generative writing experiments: How and when did you first become politicized? Where are your politics (emphasis on the lowercase “p”) located historically, culturally, personally? How can this be transmitted in ways that engage, surprise, and transform readers? We’ll read and listen to excerpts (poetry and creative nonfiction) from writers who in some way engage their politics in their creative work as we attempt to communicate our own personal + political as artfully as possible. *** Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of three books: the critically acclaimed Excavation: A Memoir (2014); Hollywood Notebook (2015); and the genre-breaking dreamoir Bruja (2016). Acclaimed author Lidia Yuknavitch has said, “Wendy C. Ortiz’s writing will rearrange your DNA. Permanently, beautifully… The time has finally arrived when women are telling the truth—the hard truths, the messy, glorious, loud, tender, screeching corporeal truths—about their lives as they live them and not lived as we are asked to live them.” Wendy is a recipient of two writing residencies at Hedgebrook (2007 and 2009). In 2016 Bustle named her one of “9 Women Writers Who Are Breaking New Nonfiction Territory.” In 2015 she adapted a short play from her essay “Spell” for One Axe in collaboration with and directed by Meera Menon (Farah Goes Bang, Equity). Wendy’s work has been profiled or featured in the Los Angeles Times, Poets & Writers Magazine, Los Angeles Magazine, The Rumpus, Los Angeles Review of Books, and the National Book Critics Circle Small Press Spotlight blog. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Hazlitt, StoryQuarterly, Joyland, and a year-long series on medical marijuana pharmacy cultures of Southern California was featured at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. She gives talks and teaches creative writing around the country. Wendy lives in Los Angeles, California, where she is a parent and a psychotherapist in private practice. |
Fair Weather Reading Series Presents...
Wendy C. Ortiz and Melanie C. Madden Saturday, February 10th, 2017 7:00pm (doors at 6:30) Southern Arizona Workspace, 403 N 6th Ave $5 suggested donation snacks served Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of three books: the critically acclaimed Excavation: A Memoir (2014); Hollywood Notebook (2015); and the genre-breaking dreamoir Bruja (2016). Acclaimed author Lidia Yuknavitch has said, “Wendy C. Ortiz’s writing will rearrange your DNA. Permanently, beautifully… The time has finally arrived when women are telling the truth—the hard truths, the messy, glorious, loud, tender, screeching corporeal truths—about their lives as they live them and not lived as we are asked to live them.” Wendy is a recipient of two writing residencies at Hedgebrook (2007 and 2009). In 2016 Bustle named her one of “9 Women Writers Who Are Breaking New Nonfiction Territory.” In 2015 she adapted a short play from her essay “Spell” for One Axe in collaboration with and directed by Meera Menon (Farah Goes Bang, Equity). Wendy’s work has been profiled or featured in the Los Angeles Times, Poets & Writers Magazine, Los Angeles Magazine, The Rumpus, Los Angeles Review of Books, and the National Book Critics Circle Small Press Spotlight blog. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Hazlitt, StoryQuarterly, Joyland, and a year-long series on medical marijuana pharmacy cultures of Southern California was featured at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. She gives talks and teaches creative writing around the country. Wendy lives in Los Angeles, California, where she is a parent and a psychotherapist in private practice. *** Melanie C. Madden holds an M.A. in English Literature from the University of California, Davis, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing- Creative Nonfiction from the University of Arizona. Her essays and poetry have been published in Timber Journal, The Mojave River Review, The Feminist Wire, and The Essay Daily. She is co-editor, with Leigh D.C. Spencer, of The Best of FST! Female StoryTellers Anthology Volume 1 (FinnLady Press, 2017). Melanie sits on the executive board of Tucson's FST! (pronounced "fist!") Female StoryTellers as the Philanthropy chair. When she’s not writing, telling stories, or earning her daily bread as an academic advisor at the University of Arizona, Melanie enjoys competing on game shows (she has appeared on Jeopardy! and Win Ben Stein’s Money), cooking and eating local/sustainable foods, playing with other people's dogs, and hiking. |
In lieu of a Fair Weather Reading in March, Casa Libre is cosponsoring (along with The University of Arizona Poetry Center, The Tucson Poetry Festival, The Institute for LGBT Studies, and the U of A College for Social and Behavioral Sciences)...
POG Presents Sister Spit 2018: QTPOC Cruising the West Saturday, March 17th 7:00pm The Steinfeld Warehouse, 101 W. 6th St featuring performances by Andrea Abi-Karam, Jamal T Lewis, Jay dodd, Juliana Delgado Lopera, MariNaomi, Wo Chan, & Virgie Tovar |
Casa Libre Presents....
Jami Macarty & Joni Wallace Saturday, March 24 7:00pm 228 N. 4th Ave $5 suggested donation Jami Macarty is the author of Landscape of The Wait, a sequence of poems focusing on her nephew William’s car accident and year-long coma (Finishing Line Press, June 2017), and Mind of Spring, which won the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award (Vallum, October 2017). Former Executive Director of Tucson Poetry Festival (1996-2005), her current forays into arts community service, include serving as a Poetry Ambassador for Vancouver’s Poet Laureate, Rachel Rose and as a Fresh Local Poet for Vancouver Park Board. She teaches contemporary poetry and creative writing at Simon Fraser University, edits of the online poetry journal The Maynard, and writes Peerings & Hearings–Occasional Musings on Arts in the City of Glass, a blog series for Anomalous Press (FKA Drunken Boat). A recipient of grants from Arizona Commission on the Arts, Banff Center, and BC Arts Council, among others, her poems appear in American and Canadian journals, including Arc Poetry Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Drunken Boat, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Prism international, Vallum: Contemporary Poetry, Verse Daily, and Volt. *** Joni Wallace earned her MFA at the University of Montana and is the author of three books of poetry: Kingdom Come Radio Show, Barrow Street Press, 2016, finalist for the Colorado Prize, the Besmilr Brigham Award, Word Works’ Washington Prize, and AROHO’s To the Lighthouse Award; Blinking Ephemeral Valentine Four Way Books, 2011, winner of the Levis Prize (selected by Mary Jo Bang); Redshift (Kore Press, 2001), which garnered a fellowship from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. For more information, visit joniwallace.com |
Casa Libre Presents...
Dreaming Awake A Workshop with Blache Marie Dates: March 31st & April 1st Time: 10am-12pm Location: 191 E. Toole Ave, 85701 Cost: self-determined sliding scale $100-$150 Please consider donating to https://www.youcaring.com/restorepocscholarshipfund so that Blache can provide scholarships for QTBIPOC to attend who could not otherwise afford workshop tuition. For more information or to sign up, please email casakeepers@casalibre.org About the workshop: This two-day workshop, led by artist and herbalist Blache Marie, will present documentation of oral history and stories of present day black herbalists, healers and artists working with dream medicine. Dream medicine is rest at work. Dream medicine is the movement between worlds and timelines while allowing the body to be still. Personally, dream medicine has been the only technique to balance their PTSD symptoms. They will share research from herbalists and seasonal farmers Amanda David and Rose Fleurant, and the artists of PGH Rest Stop and Nap Ministry, as well as their own lived experience and research. Presently, they are studying dream medicine in the Sonoran Desert. They have previously studied with Dr. Geryll A. Robinson, Phyllis Light, Joy KMT and Amanda David. The first day will include several modalities and methods for interacting with dream medicine, including herbal allies (ex. mugwort) and celestial bodies (ex. full moon), and names for dream medicine. We will dream together between the workshops. Please have a clear schedule on Saturday evening to get a full night's sleep. On the second day we will engage in activities to incorporate dreams into our creative practices and study of our ancestral history through methods for interpreting dreams and ancestors communication. This is a great class for writers, visual artists, multimedia artists and those interested in connecting to their ancestral roots. |
Casa Libre Presents...
Blache Marie and Leilani Clarke Saturday, March 31st 6:30-8:00pm Revolutionary Grounds, 606 N. 4th Ave $10-$20 suggested donation This event will be a multi-genre poetry performance and conjuring to include visuals, spoken word and ancestors. Herbal remedies will be available to purchase at the event. Blache Marie is an interdisciplinary research-based artist working in poetry, herbalism, living collage, and film. A Pink Door Fellow and Cornell University graduate, co-founder and creative director of For Brown Bleeders, they build ceremonial healing spaces inspired by their memories and visceral emotional experience, while examining the historical context related to their blackness, queerness, being assigned female at birth, and being raised in the Midwest. |
Casa Libre Presents...
Borders :: Bodies :: Boundaries Saturday, April 28th 10:00am-1:00pm Casa Libre Multi-Purpose Room $25 Email casakeepers@casalibre.org for more information or to sign up Description: What is a border? Who benefits from borders? What are the intersections between bodies (land water sky animal) and borders? What boundaries do we create (politically socially culturally) to protect our bodies? To preserve our borders? What are the risks of crossing borders? Of breaking boundaries? We will look at a variety of ways in which poets have breached boundaries in their writing, specifically the ways in which poets have stretched the borders of what and how political poems do politics in poetry. Some writers whose work we'll discuss include, but is not limited to, Rosebud Ben-Oni, Safia Elhillo, Sara Jane Stoner, Robin Coste-Lewis, Minal Hajratwala, Amy King, Barbara Jane Reyes, Tiffany Midge. Copies will be provided & feel free to bring copies of poems that make new boundaries for political poetry. Sign up by clicking "Buy Now." |
Fair Weather Reading Series Presents...
Metta Sáma and TC Tolbert
Saturday, April 28th
7:00pm (doors at 6:30)
Exploded View Micro Cinema, 197 E Toole Ave
$6 suggested donation
snacks served
Metta Sáma is author of the chapbooks the year we turned dragon (Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Books), le animal & other creatures (Miel), After “Sleeping to Dream”/After After (Nous-Zōt-Press) and Nocturne Trio (YesYes Books) and the forthcoming Swing at your own risk (Kelsey Street Press). Her work has appeared in various anthologies and literary journals, most recently in Best American Experimental Writing, Red Sky | poets on the global epidemic of violence against women, Resisting Arrest: Poems to Stretch the Sky, Literary Hub, Brooklyn Magazine, Fence & Obsidian. Currently a member of the Advisory Board of Black Radish Books, she is a current fellow of the Black Earth Institute and co-founder (with Darlene Kriesel) of Artists Against Police Brutality/Cultures of Violence.
***
TC Tolbert often identifies as a trans and genderqueer feminist, collaborator, dancer, and poet but really s/he’s just a human in love with humans doing human things. The author of Gephyromania (Ahsahta Press 2014) and 3 chapbooks, TC is also co-editor (along with Trace Peterson) of Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat Books 2013). S/he is an EMT and spends his summers leading wilderness trips for Outward Bound. TC was recently named Tucson’s Poet Laureate. Gloria Anzaldúa said, Voyager, there are no bridges, one builds them as one walks. John Cage said, it’s lighter than you think. www.tctolbert.com
Casa Libre Presents...
The Poetics of Terror Saturday, May 12th 11:00am-1:00pm $50-$75 sliding scale + scholarships available location TBA email casakeepers@casalibre.org to sign up or for more information About the Workshop: How do we get to a place of writing what scares us the most? How do we get to a place of performing what scares us the most? In what ways do we feel safe or unsafe expressing our differences in the face of the surveillance state? In what ways do we feel terrified? In what ways do we feel dangerous? What makes poetry dangerous? Can we write dangerous poems? What would they even look like? What forms make dangerous poetry possible / impossible? Take the parts of yourself & your politics that are stamped down by the state & amplify them — release them — break open & build them a way out — there may not be language for this — you may have to create it. About Andrea: Andrea Abi-Karam is an arab-american genderqueer punk poet cyborg, writing on the art of killing bros, the intricacies of cyborg bodies, trauma & delayed healing. Their first full length book EXTRATRANSMISSION is forthcoming from Kelsey Street Press early 2018. Andrea's chapbook, THE AFTERMATH (Commune Editions, September 2016), attempts to queer Fanon’s vision of how poetry fails to inspire revolution. With Drea Marina, Andrea cohosts Words of Resistance, a monthly radical queer open floor poetry night aimed at creating space for folks to share their work, especially if unpolished and messy. Andrea is a writer, printer, & publisher whose founding small press project Mess Editions seeks to publish emerging writing from queers, people of color, and those involved in social movements yet uninvolved in poetry & art scenes. Find their shorter recent work in The Capilano Review, Hold 2: A Journal, CA Cosmonauts & Spoon Knife Anthology 1 & 2. |
Fair Weather Reading Series Presents...
Andrea Abi-Karam & Samuel Ace Saturday, May 12th 7:00pm (doors at 6:30) Casa Libre Multi-Purpose Room, 228 N. 4th Ave $5 suggested donation Snacks served Andrea Abi-Karam is an arab-american genderqueer punk poet cyborg, writing on the art of killing bros, the intricacies of cyborg bodies, trauma & delayed healing. Their first full length book EXTRATRANSMISSION is forthcoming from Kelsey Street Press early 2018. Andrea's chapbook, THE AFTERMATH (Commune Editions, September 2016), attempts to queer Fanon’s vision of how poetry fails to inspire revolution. With Drea Marina, Andrea cohosts Words of Resistance, a monthly radical queer open floor poetry night aimed at creating space for folks to share their work, especially if unpolished and messy. Andrea is both a writer, printer, & publisher whose founding small press project Mess Editions seeks to publish emerging writing from queers, people of color, and those involved in social movements yet uninvolved in poetry & art scenes. Find their shorter recent work in The Capilano Review, Hold 2: A Journal, CA Cosmonauts & Spoon Knife Anthology 1 & 2. *** Samuel Ace is a poet, sound and visual artist. Ace is the author of Normal Sex, Home in three days., Don’t wash., and, co-authored with Maureen Seaton, Stealth. He is the winner of the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in poetry as well as a two-time finalist for the National Poetry Series and the Lambda Literary Award. His work has appeared in Poetry, Fence, Troubling the Line: Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, Best American Experimental Poetry and many other journals and anthologies. Ace’s first two books will be republished by the Belladonna* Cooperative in 2018 and a new collection, Our Weather Our Sea, is forthcoming from Black Radish Books in early 2019. |
500 Sonnets Write-a-thon
Sunday, June 3rd from 4:00pm-6:00pm 729 S Osborne Ave, Tucson, AZ $10 Suggested donation (no one turned away for lack of funds) Calling All Tucson! Casa Libre is hosting a 500 Sonnets Write-a-thon June 3rd from 4pm-6pm at 729 S. Osborne Ave Tucson, AZ 85701! Help us write 500 Sonnets to be read LIVE at our 500 Sonnet Marathon on June 9th at Hotel Congress as we raise $5,000 for Casa Libre! The event is open to ALL, we want to see everyone: you, your kids, your parents, your partners, your friends, your family, your dog! All writing experience levels encouraged and welcome! We'll have snacks and drinks for all ages as well as lots of Sonnet prompts and professional writers to help get the creative juices flowing! We are asking for a suggested $10 Donation but nobody will be turned away for lack of funds, we want your Sonnets more than we want your $$! To Sign Up for the write-a-thon email: casakeepers@casalibre.org |
500 Sonnets, A Marathon for Casa Libre
Saturday, June 9th 4:00pm-9:00pm Hotel Congress Lobby and Patio FREE! Hate to run but love to write? Do you also love supporting great local causes? Then this is the Marathon for you! Join Casa Libre Saturday, June 9th from 4:00pm – 9:00pm at Hotel Congress as we write and read 500 Sonnets in 5 hours to raise $5,000 for Casa Libre in their mission to enhance and support the creativity of professional and novice writers! This Marathon is open to the public, all writing levels and ages are encouraged to participate. Get your friends and family to sponsor you as you write or read sonnets live on the Hotel Congress Stage! We need lots of sonnets written before and during the event so don’t hesitate register for this amazingly unique opportunity! To get Registered visit http://casalibre.org/500-sonnets-registration.html To sponsor a reader or writer visit http://casalibre.org/500-sonnets-event.html Ways You Can Participate: 1. Write Sonnets 2. Read Sonnets 3. Sponsor someone reading or writing 4. Volunteer at the Event 5. All of the Above What is a sonnet? A sonnet is a poem consisting of fourteen lines using any number of rhyming schemes or none at all! Here are a couple examples of a traditional and non-traditional sonnet - we encourage all formats! |