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The Dictionary Project Presents!

Saturday, May 17
7 p.m
$5 suggested donation (to benefit Casa Libre)

Please join us for our fifth installment in The Dictionary Project Presents! reading series.
The Dictionary Project is an online literary project rooted in serendipity, play, and love of language. We use the age-old process of bibliomancy, divination through books, to pick a word which becomes the impetus for a piece of writing. For The Dictionary Project Presents! reading, our readers get the word two weeks prior to the event and in that time, compose a piece to share with you that is born from that word.

We are delighted to have the following writers participating:

Brian Blanchfield is the author of two full-length books of poetry: A Several World (Nightboat Books) and Not Even Then (University of California Press), as well as a chapbook The History of Ideas, 1973-2012 (Spork Press). His book of essays, Onesheets, is forthcoming from Nightboat Books, and was a finalist for a 2013 Creative Capital Innovative Literature grant. A poetry editor of Fence and a creative writing instructor in the Honors College at the University of Arizona, he lives in Tucson. More about him and his work is found at:http://brianblanchfield.com
favorite word: Twice. That's a word I like. Also: Mutual.

Lela Scott MacNeil was born in Los Alamos, New Mexico, same as the atomic bomb. She  works for the University of Arizona Press and teaches creative writing at the Writers Studio Tucson. She is an MFA Candidate in Fiction at the University of Arizona. Her fiction is forthcoming from Gertrude and Gutter Books.
favorite word of the moment: ambiguity

Farid Matuk is the author of This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Letter Machine, 2010), recipient of a 2011 Arab American Book Award, finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award, and chosen by Geoffrey G. O’Brien for the Poetry Society of America’s New American Poets series. Matuk is also the author of several chapbooks including, most recently, My Daughter La Chola (Ahsahta, 2013). New poems appear in Third Coast, Iowa Review, Poets.org, Critical Quarterly, The Baffler, and Denver Quarterly, among others. His translations from Spanish appear in Hotel Lautreamont: Contemporary Poetry from Uruguay (Shearsman, 2011) and in such journals as Kadar Koli and Translation Review. He is a contributor to Scubadivers and Chrysanthemums: Essays on the Poetry of Araki Yasusada (Shearsman, 2011), American Odysseys: Writings by New Americans (Dalkey Archive, 2013), and Beyond the Field, forthcoming from Counterpath Press. Matuk earned his BA in Comparative Literature from UC Irvine and his MFA in poetry from the Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin. He serves as contributing editor for The Volta and poetry editor for Fence.
favorite word: I'm not sure I have a favorite word right now, but I'd like to. 

Molly McCloy, a NYC Moth Storytelling Slam winner with work published in Nerve and Slate, has performed recently for Tucson's Odyssey and Female Storyteller series as well as the award-winning Lit Lounge series at The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Currently she is working on a TV pilot about the legalization of sodomy in the United States. 
favorite word: debunk

Meg Wade was born and raised in the hills of East Tennessee.  She received her MFA from the University of Arizona, where she was the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Prize.  Meg is currently finishing her first full-length verse collection, Blame the Woods, and is the working Assistant Editor for an anthology of contemporary, rural American poetry titled, Hick Poetics, forthcoming from Lost Roads Press.  Her recent work has appeared in CutBank, The Feminist Wire, and Phantom Limb, as well as work forthcoming in two anthologies set to be released from Locked Horn Press in 2014.  Beginning this fall Meg will be the 2014-2015 Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  For now, she lives, writes, and teaches in Tucson, Arizona.
favorite word right now: talisman. 

Lisa O’Neill is the creator, curator, and editor-in-chief of The Dictionary Project. A native of New Orleans and resident of Tucson, Lisa is a nonfiction writer who uses her writing investigate her curiosities and bridge gaps in both personal and collective understanding. Lisa teaches writing at The University of Arizona and Pima Community College. She has also developed curricula for and taught writing workshops with incarcerated students at Tucson detention centers. Lisa received her MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Arizona and serves on the board of Casa Libre en la Solana, a literary nonprofit supporting Tucson writers and The University of Arizona Poetry Center. Her writing has most recently been published in The Feminist Wire, defunct, The Fiddleback, drunken boat, and Diagram.
favorite word(s): yes & effervesce.