Archive for the ‘Events’ Category
ArtSpeak: Moni Bell and Mad Mother Gobblin
When: Saturday, July 18, 9 pm
Where: Mighty Fine Arts, 409A N. Tyler in Historic North Oak Cliff 75208
The work of Moni Bell traces some dark paths through sharks, uncertainty, impending chaos and more sharks. Her world is full of jagged sharp edges but rendered in exuberant colors and patterns and humor mitigating the darkness and keeping it at bay. What she arrives at is a perilous balance between heaven and hell, which pretty much reflects our own dilemmas. Expect as much with her musical performance which will allow you to dance with the sharks and if you get bit so what? Its part of the thrill of life!
WordSpace Season Launch Party with Special Guests Amber Tamblyn and Derrick Brown
When: Thursday, September 17, Party starts at 7:00pm. Performance starts at 8:00pm.
Where: The Wild Detectives (Oak Cliff)
Hosted by WordSpace: Charles Dee Mitchell, RockBaby, Sara Cardona, Jean Lamberty, Steve Cruz, Jerry Kelley, Laney Yarber, Richard Bailey, and Karen X Minzer.
Last year the WordSpace Season Launch Party gathered around 50 friends and supporters for a night of drinks, conversation, and presentations. This year we are making the party bigger in every way. Poets Amber Tamblyn and Derrick Brown have been causing a scene wherever they go with their Lazers of Sexcellence Tour. On September 17, they will be performing free on the outdoor stage at The Wild Detectives.
Here’s the thing about Amber Tamblyn: How many poets have a resume that includes a story arc on Two and Half Men and a stint as guest blogger for The Poetry Foundation? I’m pretty sure that puts Amber in a field of one. Amber Tamblyn is an actress and a poet. If you are a woman in, say, your late twenties or early thirties, you probably remember her as the eponymous Joan of Arcadia. Since then she has continued to act and to publish four well-received books of poetry. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who knows about these things, said of her first collection, “A fine, fruitful gestation of throbbingly nascent sexuality, awakened in young new language.” Roxanne Gay described her latest book, Dark Sparkler, as “astonishing.”
Derrick Brown is a poet, performer and publisher based in Austin, Texas. As a slam poet, he has performed in over 1800 venues ranging 
from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York City, to The Glastonbury Festival in the UK and The Sorbonne in Paris. (The one in France.) His 2012 collection Strange Light won Texas Poetry Book of the Year. In 2004, he founded Write Bloody Publishing which to date has out close to 100 books. And, like Amber, Derrick is not without acting credits. In 2014 he provided the voice of Mappy in Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
This duo has been touring the country with The Lazers of Sexcellence, described as a “ruckus…of poetry, comedy and music.” Come out to enjoy the show, hear what else WordSpace has planned for the year, grab a $1.00 taco (while they last) and select one of the happy hour specials at The Wild Detectives Bar.
BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!
September 17 is North Texas Giving Day, the day when a portion of every dollar you give to one of the participating non-profit organizations earns matching funds from The Dallas Communities Foundation.
WordSpace is a non-profit, and we are participating. As the day approaches, your in box will no doubt fill with reminders from every school, museum, theater, dance company, and wildlife rescue organization you have ever crossed paths with. Please be generous and think of WordSpace. Donations must be made on the internet through the NTGD portal, but WordSpace will have volunteers standing by to make the process as quick and painless as possible. (Or you can give at home during the day.)
THE WORDSPACE PLEDGE TO YOU: Our fundraising will not slow down the fun on September 17.
Sanderia Faye Book Launch Celebration
Salon & Book Launch Celebration: Mourner’s Bench
Who: Debut novel by Sanderia Faye
When: Thursday, October 1, 7 pm
Where: RSVP for the Party! WordSpace@WordSpace.Us
Yes! Copies of Mourner’s Bench will be On Sale!
At the First Baptist Church of Maeby, Arkansas,the sins of the child belonged to the parents until the child turned thirteen. Sarah Jones was only eight years old in the summer of 1964, but with her mother Esther Mae on eight prayer lists and flipping around town with the generally mistrusted civil rights organizers, Sarah believed it was time to get baptized and take responsibility for her own sins. That would mean sitting on the mourner’s bench come revival, waiting for her sign, and then testifying in front of the whole church.
But first, Sarah would need to navigate the growing tensions of small-town Arkansas in the 1960s. Both smarter and more serious than her years (a “fifty-year-old mind in an eight-year-old body,” according to Esther), Sarah was torn between the traditions, religion, and work ethic of her community and the progressive civil rights and feminist politics of her mother, who had recently returned from art school in Chicago. When organizers from the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) came to town just as the revival was beginning, Sarah couldn’t help but be caught up in the turmoil. Most folks just wanted to keep the peace, and Reverend Jefferson called the SNCC organizers “the evil among us.” But her mother, along with local civil rights activist Carrie Dilworth, the SNCC organizers, Daisy Bates, attorney John Walker, and indeed most of the country, seemed determined to push Maeby toward integration.
With characters as vibrant and evocative as their setting, Mourner’s Bench is the story of a young girl coming to terms with religion, racism, and feminism while also navigating the terrain of early adolescence and trying to settle into her place in her family and community.
WordSpace is honored to be first to present the debut novel of Sanderia Faye in Dallas. We will also be hosting a conversation between Sanderia and Greg Brownderville October 22 at The Wild Detectives, but the celebration starts now!
About the Author
Sanderia Faye was born and raised in Gould, Arkansas. She is the author of Mourner’s Bench (University of Arkansas Press, September 2015). Her work has appeared in various literary journals and in Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas, edited by historians Dr. Jennifer Wallach and Dr. John Kirk.
Faye is co-founder and fellow at Kimbilio Center for Fiction. She moderated a 2015 AWP panel and the grassroots panel for the Arkansas Civil Rights Symposium during the Freedom Riders 50th Anniversary. She is a recipient of awards, residencies, and fellowships from Hurston/Wright Writers Conference, Eckerd College’s Writers in Paradise Conference, Callaloo Writers Workshop, Vermont, Writers Studio, The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, and Martha’s Vineyard Writers Residency.
Faye is also a PhD candidate in the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University, and a BS in Accounting from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. She was an instructor for The United States Navy-Navy College Program for Afloat College Education (NCPACE)
Sarah Gerard and Colin Winnette
First Hearings: Sarah Gerard and Colin Winnette
When: Wednesday, October 14, 7 pm
Where: The Wild Detectives, 314 W. 8th Street, (Oak Cliff)
Hosted by: Charles Dee Mitchell
By now I’ve read Binary Star twice, and I’ve become so entwined with it that I’m reluctant to talk about the subject at length. Let me just say that I’ve never read anything like it. — Harry Mathews
I felt a breathless intensity the whole time I read Sarah Gerard’s brilliant Binary Star. I sped through it, dizzy, devastated, loving all of it. — Kate Zambreno, author of Heroines
Two lost souls hurtle through a long dark night where drug store fluorescents light up fashion magazine headlines and the bad flarf of the pharmacy: Hydroxycut, Seroquel, Ativan, Zantrex-3. Gerard’s young lovers rightly revolt against the insane standards of a sick society, but their pursuit of purity—ideological, mental, physical—comes to constitute another kind of impossible demand, all the more dangerous for being self-imposed. Binary Star is merciless and cyclonic, a true and brutal poem of obliteration, an all-American death chant whose chorus is “I want to look at the sky and understand.” —Justin Taylor, author of Flings
A bold, beautiful novel about wanting to disappear and almost succeeding. Sarah Gerard writes about love and loneliness in a new and brilliantly visceral way. — Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation
Allegorized by the phenomena of binary stars, Sarah Gerard’s first novel confronts the symptoms of modern living with beauty and courage. — Simon Van Booy, author of The Illusion of Separateness
Haints Stay is the story of two brothers, Brooke and Sugar, one of whom is pregnant with the other’s child. After the two middling bounty hunters are chased from town due to a bathhouse brawl, they encounter Bird — a boy who mysteriously appears in their camp with no memory and palms as smooth as stones. As the past races to catch up with them, each sets off in pursuit of their own peculiar sense of justice and belonging. An acid Western in the tradition of Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man, Kelly Reichart’sMeek’s Cutoff, and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo, the novel features gunfights, cannibalism, barroom piano, young love, a wagon train, stampedes, and the tenuous rise of the West’s first one-armed gunslinger.
In addition to being called “…the most anticipated American independent novel…” by Flavorwire , the novel was a Rumpus Book Club pick for May and a #brazosbest pick by Brazos Bookstore for June.
FIRST HEARINGS: ANTONIO RUIZ-CAMACHO AT THE WILD DETECTIVES
Come h
ear Antonio Ruiz-Camacho read from Barefoot Dogs, his book of linked short stories that follows the members of an elite Mexico City family who flee the country after the kidnapping and murder of their patriarch. Author Ben Fountain says of Barefoot Dogs, “Each of these stories is a straight-on jab to the soul, the kind of sharp fictional punch that wakes us up to our own flawed, fragile, essential humanity.”
Following the reading, Alfredo Corchado, author of Midnight in Mexico, will join the author in conversation and a discussion with the audience.
The reading and discussion takes place May 20, 7:00PM at The Wild Detectives, 314 West Eighth Street, Dallas, 75208. Food and drinks will be available, and Antonio will be signing books.
Earth Day Student Reading
When: Saturday, April 25, noon-5
Where: Fair Park
Hosted by: Scott Davison
Booker T. Washington hosts an annual student reading in a cool new venue.
Chris Merlick @ Mighty Fine Arts
Who: Chris Merlick
What: Artspeak
When: April 18, 9pm
Where: Mighty Fine Arts, 409A North Tyler Street (Oak Cliff)
Reivan Alexandria plus Mercury Rocket @ ArtSpeak
Who: Reivan Alexandria plus Mercury Rocket
What: ArtSpeak
Where: Mighty Fine Arts, 409A Tyler Street (Oak Cliff)
Hosted by: Steve Cruz
WordSpace recommences the infamous “ArtSpeak” series at MFA Gallery with a spoken word performance by Reivin Alexandria who will actualize the mythological and esoteric before your very eyes! And the psychedelic musical stylings of Mercury Rocket will make you howl through the night!
Mighty Fine Arts presents “Caliber Exertion” featuring new work by Preston Bradley. This show opens Sat March 7 with a reception for the artist from 6-9pm and will run till Sun April 5th. Preston Bradley’s characters emerge from a wide swath of social interaction. Boozers, business suits, tramps, rednecks and loose women are all gist for his fevered imagination. These folks are plainly familiar cause they are us, ordinary and overlooked and unheralded but somehow possessed with inherent distinction and dignity of absurd purpose. Mr. Bradley’s Tennessee upbringing informs his work with a Southern perspective, a bit askew and inclined toward dark humor and sweat and grease. He is also a recently bonafied Master Printmaker so declared by the “Fine Art” authorities at UNT. It’s to his credit that his printmaking looks to be carved out by a chainsaw, raw and unrefined and yielding up some awesome truth.
Kelly Luce
What: First Hearings
Who: Kelly Luce
Where: The Wild Detectives, 314 West Eighth Street, Dallas, TX 75208
When: March 12, 2015. 7 PM
Hosted by: Charles Dee Mitchell
Kelly Luce grew up in Brookfield, Illinois. After graduating from Northwestern University with a degree in cognitive science, she moved to Japan, where she lived and worked for three years. Her work has been recognized by fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Ragdale Foundation, the Kerouac Project, and Jentel Arts, and has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Salon, Electric Literature, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, and other magazines. She lives in Santa Cruz, California, and Austin, Texas, where she is a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas and editor-in-chief of Bat City Review. Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail is her first book.
Anne Waldman Master Class @ The MAC
What: Master Classes with Anne Waldman
When: Saturday, May 9, 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
Where: The MAC
Master Class Fee: $75, includes Friday night performance
One on One Interview: $200 (Max 10 poems/ Max 2 slots 2-3 pm, 3:30-4:30 pm)
*Includes Performance plus 11-1 pm Master Class
10 % MAC/WS Members Discounts through March 1. 214-838-3554
Workspace is proud to offer a master class with Anne Waldman on May 9th in conjunction with her Dallas performance May 8th @ The Mac. Click here for the show and read on for information on how to submit.
Focus will be on performance and live reading. Space is limited. Manuscripts sent in earlier will be given priority for consideration. Follow the link below to submit.
A prominent figure in the beat poetry generation, Anne Waldman, was born in Millville, New Jersey, on April 2, 1945, and grew up on MacDougal Street in New York City. She received her BA from Bennington College in 1966. From 1966 until 1978 she ran the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, reading with fellow poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso. Immediately following her departure from St. Mark’s, she and Ginsberg founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
She is the author of over 40 books and small press editions of poetry and poetics, including, most recently, Gossamurmur(Penguin, 2013); The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment (Coffee House Press, 2011), a 700-page epic poem 30 years in the making. She is the Distinguished Professor of Poetics at Naropa University
The Legendary ANNE WALDMAN–Don’t miss it!
