Edge 58: a Reading Series of Emerging and Younger Writers
w/Amrit Donaldson, Allie Leach, & Lusia Slomkowska
Curator: Melissa Buckheit
Melissa Buckheit's Bio |
A note from the curator: I have often wanted to listen to authors who are in the same place in their career as myself--emerging, published in journals, with a chapbook and/or a first full-length book, still growing but full of passion, new ideas, and an edge. But there is often infrequent opportunity for this; in fact, I have often felt disappointed in the lack, that such an open community might often be circumscribed in its literary programming. Additionally, featuring emerging writers engages other young as well as established writers, to support, frequent and attend Casa Libre and other writing events. This cycle creates the foundation for a writing community which self-generates, remains true, open, and allows many voices the opportunity for visibility and being heard. I want Tucson to be an artistic community which includes and features many voices and peoples. Literature is the province of communication, but also reflectivity, the reflection and representation of all our narratives and of new narratives and ideas, voices which are challenging and also challenge us. |
Wednesday, October 16
7:30 p.m.
Suggested Donation: $5
Come to Edge: A Reading Series of Emerging and Younger Writers. Edge is a series of local and national writers and cross-genre artists, emphasizing diversity of narrative, identity and literary source. Its purpose is to create community, visibility and voice for emerging and younger writers. Broadsheets of the authors' work will accompany each reading. Books and journals will be available for purchase and signing by the authors. Refreshments will be available after the reading.
Readers:
Amrit Donaldson is an essayist, story-teller, fiction writer. She dropped out of high school, first to work as a short order cook, and later to work in a factory endlessly rolling dough around those little cocktail franks, until she was fired for talking union. She (much later) became an attorney –- representing LGBTQ community members during the AIDS epidemic in New York. She now practices mainly in the juvenile court in Tucson. Donaldson writes about gender, radical feminism, families, cults, cooking and food, and the strange life of objects found in thrift stores. Her work draws on her childhood on the Rockaway peninsula of New York, a location always on the edge, and recently devastated by Hurricane Sandy.
Allie Leach's work has appeared in Hot Metal Bridge, South Loop Review, Diagram, The Dictionary Project, and Tucson Weekly. She grew up in St. Louis, and studied at Butler University and the University of Arizona, where she received an MFA in Nonfiction. She lives in Tucson, where she works as Education Programs Assistant at the UA Poetry Center.
Lusia Slomkowska is a poet, fiction-writer, essayist, and translator. She has traveled, lived, and taught in Eastern Europe, as well as in the United States. She has also worked as an actuary, bread packer, dental assistant, and produce farmer. She received her MFA in Writing from Vermont College, and she has also studied at the Women’s Writers Center, in New York, and was a resident at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford University, UK. She has taught at Phoenix College, The Experiment in International Living, Brattleboro, VT, Freehand: a Community of Women Writers and Photographers in Provincetown, MA and the Yale Cabaret Theater in New Haven, CT. Her work has appeared in The Agni Review, Amelia, Kalliope, New Letters, Parnassus, The Quarterly, and Quarterly West, among others. She has been anthologized in Looking for Home, Women Writing about Exile; Milkweed Editions; 1990 and The Poetry of Sex; Banned Books, 1992. She has also compiled, edited and translated the anthology, Swallowing Paradise: Thirty 20th Century Polish Women Poets. She has been the recipient of grants and fellowships from The Barbara Deming/ Money for Women Memorial Foundation, the Polish National Library Association, and The Vermont Studio Center. Her writing has been awarded The Poetry Atlanta Award, Writers at Work Poetry Fellowship, Bennington Writers Workshop Poetry Prize, and The Lucille Sandberg Haiku Award, among others.
Next Edge Reading will be held November 20.
Sept 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
Apr 2013
Mar 2013
Feb 2013
Jan 2013
Nov 2012
Oct 2012
Sept 2012
