Archive for December, 2011
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activities in Arkansas together for the first time, by providing powerful firsthand testimonies, and by collecting key historical documents from SNCC’s role in the region’s emergence from the slough of southern injustice.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
Rosa Alcala
Rosa Alcalá is the author of two chapbooks, Some Maritime Disasters This Century (Belladonna, 2003) and Undocumentary (Dos Press, 2008). Her work appears in the anthology, The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 2007), and in journals such as Mandorla, Chain, Barrow Street, Tarpaulin Sky,and The Brooklyn Rail. Alcalá has also translated poetry by Cecilia Vicuña, Lourdes Vázquez, and Lila Zemborain, among others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Brown University, and a PhD in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Born and raised in Paterson, NJ, she currently resides in El Paso, Texas, where she teaches in the Department of Creative Writing and Bilingual MFA Program at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Rosa Alcala: Rita Hayworth- Double Agent from Wordspace .
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WordSpace is proud to partner with Greenhill School and Farid Matuk in curating our Members Salon selections to share with Greenhill’s Creative Writing students on December 2.
The Roxy Gordon Members Salon Series
Join WordSpace Now!
Between Covers
McKinney Avenue Contemporarypresents a Wordspace sponsored exhibit, curated by Charles Dee Mitchell: Between Covers: An Exhibition for Smart Phones and the Internet. The exhibit introduces a new online registry that celebrates the diversity of North Texas published writers, from poets and novelists, to the authors of cookbooks and textbooks. Through the wonders of smart phone technology, attendees can access videos of local writers and literary organizations on the wall-mounted QR codes that, when read by smart phones, take the viewer to videos or websites In the New Works Space
The WordSpace exhibit is on display with two other Charles Dee Mitchell-curated exhibits at the MAC: “Bill Davenport and the Golden Treasures of the Pharaohs” by Bill Davenport and Selections from the “Seals of the Philosophers” by Douglas MacWithey.
Part roadside attraction, part excavation, Bill Davenport fills the large gallery with specimens unearthed from contemporary mass society. Inspired by Harry Burton’s photographs of the King Tutankamun excavation, the Houston based artist utilizes steel, paper mache and found objects to presume the chaos and mysticism of ordinary man’s treasures.
Bill Davenport is a Houston based artist who holds a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts. He works as a contributing editor for Glasstire and a freelance art critic for the Houston Chronicle. Bill has been exhibited in over 60 exhibitions beginning his career as a resident at the Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in the 1991 Core Fellows Exhibition and most recently at the Inman Gallery in Houston and the Angstrom Gallery in Dallas.
The Seals of the Philosophers was a collaborative effort of Douglas MacWithey and Charles Dee Mitchell for over a year before MacWithey’s unexpected death in August 2010. Illustrations from Opus medico-chymicum of Johann Daniel Mylius, a 3000 page alchemical text published in the 17th Century, inspired the past five years of MacWithey’s studio work. Selections from the Seals of the Philosophers is an in depth look at that work, including sculpture, drawings, and notebooks.
Douglas MacWithey was born in Ames, Iowa, in 1952 and received his MFA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. MacWithey was part of the Dallas art scene from the 1980’s, although this was to be his first exhibition here in over ten years. Recent exhibitions include “Douglas MacWithey: Selections from the Seals of the Philosphers” at testsite in Austin and “Douglas MacWithey: Sculpture and Drawings” at Barry Whistler Gallery..
The opening reception will be Saturday, September 17 from 5:30pm to 7:30pm at The MAC galleries, located at 3120 McKinney Avenue, which is in the Uptown District of Dallas. Exhibitions will be on view through October 22.
Selections from Douglas MacWithey’s notebooks will be read Wednesday, September 21 from 6:00pm to 7:00pm by curator Charles Dee Mitchell, and the novelists David Searcy and Ben Fountain. The evening is a presentation of WordSpace. Immediately following the reading at The MAC there will be a reception from 7 to 9 pm at The Reading Room, 3715 Parry Avenue. “How it is the dead man suffers the loss of his loved ones”, MacWithey’s large three panel drawing from which the reading is taken, will be on view. The drawing dates from the 1980’s and has never been shown before. It will be exhibited at The Reading Room, a project space dedicated to the intersection of the visual and literary arts, through September 30.
The opening reception will be Saturday, September 17 from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.
The exhibit closes October 28th.
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Michael Lagocki
Michael Lagocki
When: Friday May 18th, 8pm
Where: Heroes, 7402 Greenville Ave
Michael Lagocki is a professional artist, teacher, and poet. He is one of three founders of the Dallas based ArtLoveMagic, which seeks to unite artists and audiences in positive experiences. He frequently writes on issues that affect the lives and sanity of creative people at www.artlovemagic.wordpress.com.
Co-Hosted by Alexandra Marie and RockBaby
Darius Safavi
Darius Safavi
When: Saturday April 21th, 8 pm
Where: WordSpace, 415 North Tyler St.
“Be It Resolved That Pluto’s Planetary Status Shall Be Reclassified To
Dwarf Planet” by Darius Safavi
Darius Safavi returns to WordSpace after his sold out shows of “Plutonium Games” at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary to read an excerpt from his next production scheduled for 2013.
Darius Safavi’s directing credits include The Story Lenny Bruce Never Told (Teatro Dallas), The Secret War (Dallas Hub Theatre), The Desecrated Ziggurat (The Milagro Theater), Ambulance Dance (Altered Stages), and The Bald Soprano (KD Studios). For more information, visit his website.
Hosted by WordSpace Program Director, Karen X Minzer
