Past Programs | Directions to Casa Libre

Edge 69: a Reading Series of Emerging and Younger Writers
w/Jia Oak Baker, Roberto Bedoya, & John Myers

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 22
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

Jia Oak Baker is the author of a forthcoming chapbook, Crash Landing in the Plaza of an Unknown City (Dancing Girl Press, 2015). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Profane, Poet Lore, DMQ Review, Likewise Folio, and elsewhere. Jia is the recipient of the 2013 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award as well as scholarships to the New York State Summer Writers' Institute and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She has also been granted a residency from the Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico, for 2015. Jia is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, where she received a Liam Rector Scholarship, and is an editor for Four Chambers Press and an associate editor for the educational website www.languageforanewcentury.com.

Roberto Bedoya is the Executive Director of the Tucson Pima Arts Council, Tucson AZ. He is also a writer and arts consultant who works in the area of support systems for artists. As an arts consultant he has worked on projects for the Creative Capital Foundation and the Arizona Commission on the Arts
(Creative Capital's State Research Project), The Ford Foundation (Mapping Native American Cultural Policy), The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations (Creative Practice in the 21st Century), and The Urban Institute (Investing in Creativity: A Study of the Support Structure for US Artists and the Arts and Culture Indicators in Community Building Project). He is the author of the chapbook, The Ballad of Cholo Dandy (Chax, 2014). His writing has appeared in numerous publications including The New Gatekeepers: Emerging Challenges to Free Expression in the Arts, (Columbia University Press, 2003) CMYK, Eoagh: A Journal of the Arts, the Hungry Mind Review, the Los Angeles Times, and the Movement Research Performance Journal. He is the author of the white paper The Color Line and US Cultural Policy: An Essay with Dialogue and Creative Placemaking and the Politics of Belonging and Dis-Belonging. Bedoya has been a Rockefeller Fellow at New York University and a Visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.

 

John Myers is a social worker and writer living in Tucson with his partner Brian Blanchfield. His work has been published in Pank, Ilk, Spork, Abjective, Frigg, Handsome, Word For/Word, The Bakery Poetry, InDigest, Lungfull, Gigantic Sequins, The Destroyer, Interrupture (forthcoming), and Omniverse. He was raised in the Endless Mountains.

 

 

 

Next Edge Reading will be held November 19.

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Dec 2013

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