Archive for December 16th, 2011
WordSpace Critics Circle: UNT’s David Holdeman on Yeats
UNT’s David Holdeman on Yeats
When: Wednesday February 29th, 7pm
Where: Contact WordSpace at 214-838-3554
Leap Day! We are honored to host David Holdeman, in programming partnership with University of Texas English Department to present an in-depth investigative experience of W. B. Yeats..
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David Holdemanis a Professor of English at University of North Texas. Dr. David Holdeman specializes in twentieth-century Irish literature and culture (especially W. B. Yeats); modern British and American poetry and drama; and the theory and practice of scholarly editing. His most recent book, W. B. Yeats in Context (Cambridge, 2010), co-edited with Ben Levitas, features thirty-nine essays by distinguished Yeatsians from around the world. His previous books include The Cambridge Introduction to W. B. Yeats (Cambridge, 2006); “In the Seven Woods” and “The Green Helmet and Other Poems”: Manuscript Materials by W. B. Yeats (Cornell, 2002); and Much Labouring: The Texts and Authors of Yeats’s First Modernist Books (Michigan, 1997). Dr. Holdeman is an active member of the Society for Textual Scholarship and served as program chair for its 2003 conference held at New York University.
W. B. Yeats is a writer who requires, and at the same time tests the limits of, contextual study. More than perhaps any other Irish writer, he produced his own context as much as it produced him. His cultural and political activities, combined with his prolific literary output, made an impact that can only be understood by close attention to his words in relation to the times in which he lived. W. B. Yeats in Context maps Yeats’s world in concise, lively essays by distinguished critics and historians. The places, people, themes and intellectual frameworks most important to his development receive close attention, as do his artistic influences, and the production and reception of his work. As a gateway into the study of Yeats, this volume offers much new information for both students, scholars and anyone interested in the life and times of this enigmatic and influential poet.
Here are links to the poems David has chosen for the 29th.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Adam’s Curse
Easter 1916
The Second Coming
Byzantium
The Critics Circles are intimate, salon with limited seating. WordSpace Members: Free. Non-Members $5 RSVP WordSpace 214-838-3554
Sophia Dembling Book Release and Signing Party
What: Sophia Dembling Book Release and Signing Party
When: Thursday, December 6, 7pm
Where: Barnes and Noble, Lincoln Park, NW Highway, across from Northpark Mall
Purchases at Barnes & Noble benefit WordSpace Dec. 6-11. Use this number when checking out in the store or online: 10877611
Sophia Dembling is a Dallas-based writer whose career as a professional introvert started with an essay on the website World Hum, which was so enthusiastically received that it led to The Introvert’s Corner, her blog on Psychology Today, which is so popular, it led to her latest book The Introvert’s Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World, published by Perigee books.
Sophia started her writing career at The Dallas Morning News, where she wrote about music, fitness, and travel, among many other topics. As a freelance writer, she has published hundreds of articles and essays in newspapers and magazines and online. Sophia’s other books include The Yankee Chick’s Survival Guide to Texas and The Making of Dr. Phil: The Straight-Talking True Story of Everyone’s Favorite Therapist.
Sophia lives in Oak Cliff, where it’s nice and quiet.
Special Thanks to Barnes & Nobles Booksellers and their Bookfair project for nonprofit organizations. Barnes and Noble will contribute a percentage from the sale of books bought the day of Sophia Dembling’s reception and book signing through December 11, in the store and online–a great opportunity to pick up gifts for the holidays and help a great organization!
See reviews of The Introvert’s Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World. in Publisher’s Weekly and at Psych Central
Jason Cohen @ WordSpace World Headquarters
What: Jason Cohen, in conjunction with his exhibit @ Mighty Fine Arts
When: Saturday July 14th, 8pm
Where: WordSpace, 415 North Tyler St.
WordSpace is delighted to add another dimension to Jason Cohen’s exhibit,
“Facetotems”, at Mighty Fine Arts by presenting Jason’s multi-media, spoken-word work at WordSpace, next door to Mighty Fine Arts.
The exhibit opens June 9 and runs through July 29. Mighty Fine Arts will be open that evening for a final viewing of Jason’s show. Click here for more info on “Facetotems”
Jason Cohen was raised in Richardson Texas and holds a BA in fine art from UNT. For the last 20 years, he has been successfully providing fringe retail for the DFW area with Forbidden Books, Forbidden Video, Forbidden Gallery &, currently Curiosities Antiques. When not out hunting for exotic antiques across Texas, you can find him having light saber battles with his son, tea parties with his daughter, out in the garden helping his wife plant exotic succulent cacti, or painting weird pictures in his studio.
Joe Ahearn and Greg Thompson
When: Saturday August 11th, 7pm
Where: Lucky Dog Books, 633 W. Davis, 75208
Hosted by: Opalina Salas
Joe Ahearn is the author of one full-length collection of poetry, and three chapbooks, synthetic Five Fictions (Mudlark Chapbook Series) and Kyoko At Play (Harvest Publications). He earned his M.F.A. at the University of Texas, where he was a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers and served on the editorial board for Bat City Review. Ahearn co-edited the anthology, Best Texas Writing and currently curates the blog, Bat Terrier. He is also currently the guest editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry in Review.
His poetry, essays, fiction and translations have been published in leading print and Internet magazines, including American Literary Review, Big Bridge, CrossConnect, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Dog Canyon, Haight-Ashbury Literary Review, Mudlark, The Quarterly, Sentence, Sonora Review, Web Del Sol and many others. His work has been anthologized in Another Testament, CrossConnect: Writers of the Information Age, Best Texas Writing #2, An Introduction to the Prose Poem, and Eating Chocolate Ice Cream, Reading Mayakovsky.
His criticism and reviews have been published in Coldfront, Sentence, and the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry.
Ahearn is the recipient of the Web Del Sol Editor’s Choice Award and the HITBOX award for Internet literature. He has been nominated for seven Pushcart Prizes and was recently a finalist in national contests administered by the Sonora Review and the River Styx.
Ahearn has taught and lectured at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, Southern Methodist University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Texas at Dallas, WordSpace and the Writer’s Garrett. He currently teaches in the graduate writing program at Western Connecticut State University.
Greg Thompson was once nominated for the Pushcart is a graduate student of the University of Texas, Dallas, father of three children. Asked to describe his work said, “I think I write post language poetry, whatever that means.” Has studied under Joe Ahearn, Brian Clements, Brenda Hillman, Jack Gilbert, Fred Turner, etc, etc and most importantly The Three Stooges
Sanderia Smith, Jennifer Wallach and Venus Opal Reese @ Chocolate Secrets
Dr. Venus Opal Reese, Sanderia Smith, and Jennifer Wallach
When: Wednesday February 15th 7pm
Where: Chocolate Secrets, 3926 Oak Lawn Ave.
You are invited to sit, enjoy, and take in all that is Chocolate Secrets with a great event curated especially to honor African-American History Month: a special booksigning event and performance by Venus Opal Reese.
Jennifer Wallach, co-author and editor of Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and one of the book’s contributors, Sanderia Smith will be on hand to sign copies of the books and Venus Opal Reese will perform one of her beautiful signature pieces. You may remember the gliterati evening from last year’s booksigning event at Chocolate Secrets that included Rosalyn Story and her new book Wading Home. Expect another memorable evening together.
Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas, 1962-1967: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) arrived in Arkansas in October 1962 at the request of the Arkansas Council on Human Relations, the state affiliate of the Southern Regional Council. SNCC efforts began with Bill Hansen, a young white Ohioan–already an early veteran of the civil rights movement–who traveled to Little Rock in the early sixties to help stimulate student sit-in movements promoting desegregation. Thanks in large part to SNCC’s bold initiatives, most of Little Rock’s public and private facilities were desegregated by 1963, and in the years that followed many more SNCC volunteers rushed to the state to set up projects across the Arkansas Delta to help empower local people to take a stand against racial discrimination. In the five short years before it disbanded, the SNCC’s Arkansas Project played a pivotal part in transforming the state, yet this fascinating branch of the national organization has barely garnered a footnote in the history of the civil rights movement. This collection serves as a corrective by bringing articles on SNCC’s activities in Arkansas together for the first time, by providing powerful firsthand testimonies, and by collecting key historical documents from SNCC’s role in the region’s emergence from the slough of southern injustice.
Jennifer Jensen Wallach is an assistant professor of history at the University of North Texas. She is the author of Closer to the Truth than Any Fact: Memoir, Memory, and Jim Crow (2008) and Richard Wright: From Black Boy to World Citizen (2010). She is also working on an overview of U.S. food history that is to be published by Rowman & Littlefield. In 2010 History News Network named Dr. Wallach a “Top Young Historian.”
SANDERIA FAYE received an MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction from Arizona State University. She has taught Creative Writing for Arizona State University, and Freshman Composition, and Literature for The United States Navy and at Mesa Community College among many others. An excerpt from her novel Mourning Bench appeared in Mythium Literary Journal and in Jennifer Wallach and John Kirk’s book Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas, 1962-196. She moderated the grassroots panel for the Arkansas Civil Rights Symposium during the Freedom Riders 50th Anniversary, July 2011 based on the excerpt from her novel.
Her work was selected for “Best Of” honors at the 2011 Eckerd College Writers’ Conference Dennis Lehane and Sterling Watson Co-Directors, and an excerpt of her work will appear in the forthcoming SABAL Literary Journal. She received scholarships to Vermont, Writers Studio, The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow and Martha’s Vineyard Writers Residency. She expects to complete her novel this winter.
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. Venus serves as WordSpace board Resource Chair. She has turned her artistry as a writer and her research as a scholar into a lucrative business using uncommon strategies to help people around the world to achieve overwhelming success.
Monetizing Your Message: (CANCELLED)
Dr. Venus Opal Reese
When: CANCELLED
Where: Wordspace, 415 North Tyler Street
Free for Wordspace Members!
As a service to WordSpace, Dr. Venus Opal Reese (aka Dr. Venus) will share her secrets in a special opportunity for authors, scholars, educators, artists, and poets who want to turn their story, writing or research into riches and reach new audiences, monetize their message, impact lives and make a boat-load of money!
Are you tired of doing great work–but only reach a small audience?
Are you ready to make big money from your creativity but don’t know how?
Are you sick of being the best kept secret because you are still getting the
word out ol’ school style–flyers, word of mouth, or mailings?
Do you have a mailing list but it’s dead and you want to breath life into it?
Are you sick and tired of being afraid of the Internet as an avenue to expand
your reach, but don’t know how to use it without selling out on your art?
If any of these strikes a cord, this is the workshop is JUST FOR YOU!
Give yourself a new way of seeing yourself and grant yourself permission to
prosper! Take creativity and turn it into cash Use copywriting as a creative form online
Take your talent and your story to build a brand that makes you money and
expands you into new markets you never imagined would pay for you words
Dr. Venus Opal Reese has turned her artistry as a writer and her research as a scholar into a lucrative six figure business that’s on the fast track to seven. And she has been able to do so without selling out! Her model is so effective,
one of her clients (She has clients ya’ll!) closed a 1.7 million dollar investment deal!
Her model works for organizations as well. Dr. Venus has been selected to do an
international speaking and media tour with eWomen Network, the largest women networking organization in North America, with 144 chapters and over half a
million members! Here is the kicker: everything she is doing she learned as a
poet, theatre artist and scholar. If she can do it–and trust me she is still an
artist who is sensitive about her sh$t–you can do the same!
WordSpace Salon: Miroslav Penkov
WordSpace Salon: Miroslav Penkov
When: Wednesday, March 14th 7pm
Where: Contact WordSpace 214-838-3554
Miroslav Penkov was born in 1982 in Gabrovo, Bulgaria. When he was four, his family moved to the capital city of Sofia, where he graduated from First English Language High School. He arrived in America in 2001 and completed a bachelor’s degree in Psychology, followed by an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas.
His stories have won The Southern Review’s Eudora Welty Prize and have appeared in or are forthcoming from A Public Space, One Story, Orion, The Sunday Times, Granta Online, The Best American Short Stories 2008, The 2012 PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories.
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EAST OF THE WEST, which is his first book, was published in the U.S. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and in ten other countries. In Bulgaria his own translation of the stories will be published by Ciela under the title “?? ????? ?? ??????.”
Miroslav is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Texas and currently the editor of the American Literary Review.
WordSpace Members Free Non-Members $5
Become a Member and enjoy the benefits of interacting with writers in intimate home settings, get discount and priority tickets to special events and be eligible for free workshops!
WordSpace Student Readings at the 2012 SMU Literary Festival
WordSpace Student Readings at SMU Literary Festival
Who: Hockaday School, Greenhill School, Booker T. Washington School, Yavneh Academy, Texans Can Academies
When: Wednesday March 21st 6:30pm
Where: SMU McCord Auditorium in Dallas Hall
More: SMU Full Lineup and Festival Details
WordSpace is greatly honored to present their annual Dallas area high school students reading at the 2012 Southern Methodist University Literary Festival.
These young writers bring with them not only the enrichment of dedicated and recognized artists-teachers, but often the most innovative and interdisciplinary collaborations of writing in this promising preview of the future.
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The students and their work are curated by well-known writers who also work in education, featuring emerging writers selected by Farid Matuk of Greenhill School, Kyle Vaughn of Hockaday School, Scott Davison of Booker T. Washington Arts Magnet, Tim Cloward of Yavneh Academy and Sanderia Smith of Texans Can Academies.
FREE and Open to the public.
Special Thanks to David Haynes and the SMU Department of English for creating this very special opportunity for the City’s talented young writers.
Dan Savage Live
Half Price Books and WordSpace are extremely pleased to present the syndicated relationship culture columnist and podcaster, gay rights activist, media
pundit, Dan Savage at the Kessler Theater.
Chuck Taylor and Chris Carmona @ Tyler-Davis Arts District Block Party
Join us for a publishing party honoring Slough Press, Saving Sebastian, a Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Drug Abuse, by Chuck Taylor and Beat, by Christopher Carmona.
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Chuck Taylor’s Slough Press has been publishing fiction, poetry, and essays for over thirty years. The focus of the press is on contemporary literary authors who experiment with form, communicate to a wide audience, and hope to influence the culture positively. The Press has received grants from the Texas Arts Commission and has won numerous awards.
Chuck Taylor is a Texas Yankee reared in Texas, Minnesota, Illinois, and North Carolina, won the Austin Book Award for his collection, What Do You Want, Blood? He has worked in the Poets- in-the-Schools program, been a CETA poet in Salt Lake City, operated a used bookstore, worked in the laundry of a hospital, labored for the Terrill State Mental Hospital and the Texas School for the Deaf, owned a small press, and is the former Coordinator of Creative Writing at Texas A&M University. Conversations with the poet Lucien Stryk in 1967 stimulated his interest in Asian culture and he was able to work and study in Japan from 1991-94. Married three times, he has three children, three stepchildren, and six grandchildren.
Saving Sebastian-A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Drug Abuse is a memoir in which Dr. Charles Taylor chronicles with painful frankness his son’s spiral downward into drug and alcohol abuse as well as Sebastian’s recovery, though it was a long and difficult one. Dr. Taylor also examines with almost brutal honesty his own role in his son’s self-destructive behavior. This is a book that parents of drug abusing children will find both touching and helpful.
Christopher Carmona hails from the Rio Grande Valley in Deep South Texas. He is a Beat poet following the tradition of poets like Jack Kerouac, Bob Kaufman, and Raul Salinas. He is deeply interested in exploring the intersections of Native Americans and Latinos. He believes in practicing poetry as a form of social resistance. Much of his writing works to redefine what it means to be ‘beat’ as a poet. He has been published in The Writers’ Block, Beatlick Art & News, World Audience Literary Journal, and El Tecolote. He is also editing an anthology of Beat Texas writings for UT Press with Chuck Taylor and Rob Johnson.
Beat is a collection of poems working to keep the beat. Mixing together life in deep south Texas, life as a Chicano, and life as a beat poet. This book serves to keep the tradition of the Beat Generation alive and well where it should be…in poetry.
Both authors will be reading from their current works, signings and past Slough Press titles will be available for purchase.
WordSpace/Tyler-Davis Arts District
415 North Tyler St.
Hosted by Karen X
