Archive for the ‘Events’ Category
Thursday • January 22, 2015 • by admin
What: Master Class with Vievee Francis
When: Saturday, April 24, 6:00PM – 8:00
Where: Lucky Dog Books, 633 W. Davis St.
Fee: $40
WordSpace is proud to offer a master class with Vievee Francis on April 24th in conjunction with his Dallas performance April 23th @ SDCC. Click here for the show and read on for information on how to submit.
We invite you to submit three poems for consideration for our workshop. We will pass along the best manuscripts for consideration to Vievee Francis; she will choose which ones to discuss in class. Space is limited. Manuscripts sent in earlier will be given priority for consideration. Follow the link below to submit.
Vievee Francis is the author of Horse in the Dark (Northwestern University Press, 2012), which won the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize for a second collection, and Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University, 2006). Her third book, Forest Primeval, is slated for release in 2015 (Northwestern University Press). Her work has appeared in numerous print and online journals, textbooks, and anthologies including Poetry, Best American Poetry, Cura, Waxwing and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry (W.W. Norton 2012). She has also been a Poet in Residence for the Alice Lloyd Scholars Program at the University of Michigan. In 2009 she received a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award and in 2010, a Kresge Fellowship. She is currently an Associate Editor for Callaloo, and a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing (Undergraduate Creative Writing Program) at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC.
Thursday • January 22, 2015 • by admin
What: Mitchell S. Jackson MASTER CLASS
When: Saturday, February 7th, 3-4:30 pm
Where: Lucky Dog Books, 633 W. Davis St.
Fee: $40
WordSpace is proud to offer a master class with Mitchell S. Jackson on Feb. 7th in conjunction with his Dallas performance Feb. 6 @ SDCC. Click here for the show and read on for information on how to submit.
We invite you to submit a short story or excerpt of 15 pages, double-space for consideration to be discussed in the workshop.
We will pass along the best manuscripts for consideration to Jackson and he will choose which ones to discuss in class. Space is limited. Manuscripts sent in earlier will be given priority for consideration. Follow the link below to submit.
Mitchell S. Jackson is a Portland, Oregon native who lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is a 2014 Lannan Foundation Fellow and winner of the Ernest Gaines prize for fiction and has been the recipient of fellowships from Urban Artist Initiative and The Center For Fiction and the Hurston Wright Foundation’s award. Jackson teaches writing at New York University. His novel The Residue Years was praised by publications such as The New York Times, The Times of London, and O, the Oprah Magazine. The novel was a finalist for the Center For Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan First novel prize, the PEN/ Hemingway award for first fiction, The Hurston / Wright Legacy Award for best fiction by a writer of African descent; it was long-listed for the William Saroyan International Prize for writing.
We will notify you by Feb. 5th if accepted. Payment will be due immediately.
Wednesday • January 14, 2015 • by admin
Who: Tova Charles and Zai Sadler
What: WordSpace 3rd Fridays @ Dallas Poetry Slam
When: Friday, May 15, 8 pm
Where: Heroes Bar and Grill, 7402 Greenville Avenue
Hosted by : GNO and RockBaby
Marzai “Zai” Sadler started writing at 10 years old as a way to escape her already cluttered mind. Writing has never left her nor forsaken her. It is her best friend and longest lasting relationship. It continues to bless her in ways she never thought possible.
Zai has been on 4 slam teams in Austin TX representing both of the community venues. She made Austin Neo Soul’s slam team her first time out and with that team in 2010 made final stage at her first appearance at the National poetry slam. She was on the 2012 Austin Neo Soul slam team that took 1st in group piece finals. And most recently the Austin Poetry slam team ranked 5th in the Nation. She has also released a cd of poetry and hip hop entitled The Epilogue and is currently working on her 2nd project. Zai’s slam and performance poetry career has been brief but thriving and promising.
Tova Charles, a powerhouse performing spoken word artist that has been taking the Slam community by storm since 2008. Born in Lafayette, LA but raised in Austin, TX. The daughter of a Librarian and Zydeco Percussionist, life was never boring. She gained her passion for writing from her mother and her passion for performing from her father. In spring 2003 she had the pleasure of being inducted in Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc., one of the original Historically Black Sororities. She is not only a great writer but performer as well. She has also work as the Creative director for They Speak, Austin’s premier youth poetry slam with the late Dr. Sheila Siobhan.
She plans on continuing her career as a Spoken word artist and as an activist in the youth poetry movement. She has performed all over the country and has participated in national Slams including:
• 2009 National Poetry Slam, Placing 5th overall, Austin Neo- Soul Poetry Slam
• 2010 National Poetry Slam, Semi-Finalist , Austin Poetry Slam
• 2010 Southwest Shoot out, Austin Poetry Slam
• Finalist of 2010 Rock The Republic Festival
• 2010 Slam Champ of the University of Houston Scarlet Poetry Slam Team
• Finalist of 2011 Woman of the World Poetry Slam, Placing 10th overall
2013 Nation Poetry Slam, Placed 5th overall, Austin Poetry Slam
She is a Graduate of the University of Houston with a BA in English literature.
Tova Charles and Zai Sadler were both on the 2013 Austin Poetry Slam team and placed 5th in the Nation and was featured on Button Poetry with the group poem called “Nina” which has had over 11 thousand hits. The Hair and Talk and Teeth Tour will showcase group work and individual poems from Tova and Zai.
See Tova Charles and Zai Sadler, the WordSpace Third Fridays at Dallas Poetry Slam feature, on Friday, May 15, 2015.
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Dallas Poetry Slam & Open Mic
Open Mic every Friday
$100 Slam 1st and 3rd Fridays
Heroes Sports Bar & Grill
7402 Greenville Ave
Dallas, TX 75231
Sign up at 7:30pm
Show at 8:00pm
$5 Admission
Free Parking
Drink Specials
Food Available
www.dallaspoetryslam.com
Wednesday • January 14, 2015 • by admin
Who: DANIELLE INEZ
What: WordSpace 3rd Fridays @ Dallas Poetry Slam
When: Friday, March 20, 8 pm
Admission: $5, Free to WS Members
Hosted by: RockBaby and GNO
Before she could write poetry, Danielle Inez was always moved to express herself artistically. As early as five years old, she recalls making construction paper books with pictures that told stories she created with an endless imagination. At the age of 12, she wrote her first poem “The Cloudless Sky”. This poem reminded her that her dreams were only as significant as she made them. This poem also sparked a passion for poetry that drove her write everyday. By 17, she joined the Creative Writing Club at her high school. Soon, she was chosen to be Poet of the Month for writing one of her all time favorite poems “Black Rose”. She diligently participated in poetry contests for recognition and scholarships but, she was not able to achieve much success at that time. So, Danielle decided to stick with writing just for the love of poetry and she began avoiding the pressure of competitions. Then in college, she found it rewarding to simply share her poetry with people who desired to hear. So in her early twenties she felt inspired to do spoken word as a means of empowering others. As she continues this journey to reach and teach through the art of poetry, her greatest desire is to be true so that others will be moved to be true also. The most powerful lesson she has learned so far is to let integrity be a reward in itself.
Tuesday • January 13, 2015 • by admin
Who: GENE BARRY
When: Saturday, March 21, 8 pm
Where: Lucky Dog Books, 633 W. Davis Street, 75208
Gene Barry is an Irish Poet, Art Therapist and a practicing Psychotherapist. He has been published widely both at home and internationally and his poems have been translated into Arabic, Irish and Italian.
Barry is founder of the Blackwater Poetry group that meets weekly in The Spinning Wheel in Castletownroche County Cork, Ireland and administers the world famous Blackwater Poetry Group on Facebook. He is also a publisher and runs the publishing house Rebel Poetry.
As an art therapist using the medium of poetry, Gene has worked in hospitals, primary and secondary schools, NA, Youthreach, with retired people’s groups, AA, asylum seekers and with numerous poetry groups.
H
e has read in Australia, the US, the Caribbean, Holland, England, Scotland, England, and Belgium and as the guest poet at numerous Irish poetry venues. In 2007 Gene read at the Patrick Kavanagh Celebration in Dublin.
Barry’s chapbook No Family Tree was published 2008 and in 2013 his collection Unfinished Business was published by Doghouse Books. In 2010 Gene was editor of the anthology Silent Voices, a collection of poems written by asylum seekers living in Ireland.
Gene edited the anthologies Remembering the Present in May 2012, Inclusion and The Blue Max Review 2012, 2013 and 2014 editions as part of the Fermoy International Poetry Festival. In 2014 Barry additionally edited Irish poet Michael Corrigan’s collection Deep Fried Unicorn, and fathers and what must be said and The Day the Mirror Called for Rebel Poetry.
Barry is also founder and chairman of the Fermoy International Poetry Festival and is presently editing his new collection of poems.
Unfinished Business by Gene Barry (Doghouse books): Gene Barry is a very engaged poet. What he observes in today’s world is his muse. The poem ‘Michael’ is a prime example: After polio had visited, / the boy it chose / was never the same.
Detailed lines follow to a tragic conclusion. Poets who write on life have reality as their canvass and this is very true of the poems in this publication. Unfinished Business is a great first collection and earns a space on the poetry favorites shelf.
Poetry Cornwall: Barry works as an art therapist and psychotherapist in north County Cork. However as a poet he founded Elbow Lane Poetry and the Fermoy International Poetry Festival, of which he is also chairman. He also teaches poetry in local schools and edits collections. Although this is his first collection, his poems have been widely published and even translated into Arabic and Italian.
His professional life brings him into contact with asylum seekers, active retirement groups and hospital patients and their experiences are reflected in many of his poems. As well as this, his poetry also reflects his own experiences and thoughts on the big issues on life and love.
Books Ireland:
Tsead Bruinja. Holland: The poems of Gene Barry are generous and compassionate. Barry writes rebel poetry that rebels against the hardening of our hearts and minds and urges us to stay open-minded and understanding. Anybody who writes lines like ‘lost my breath again / as they doled out / the currency of resentment, / bitterness’ deserves your and my attention. I am thrilled and happy that his first collection has finally appeared in print.
Michèle Vassal. France: Gene Barry’s poems informed and grounded in the vernacular of the soul, reveal his deep understanding of human nature. His poetry describes la condition humaine with an unequivocal honesty and a purity of language which, I have to admit, transported me.
Bradley R. Strahan. USA:Gene Barry knows how difficult it is to deal with the burdens that are visited upon each generation by its progenitors. His poetry epitomizes the struggle all of us must face to put aside the hurt and forgive, and possibly even love.
His work deals honestly with the day to day realities and struggles of daily life in a way that shrugs off nothing, that refuses to obfuscate or romanticize. His poetic voice is an original one that speaks memorably to all of us.
Wednesday • December 17, 2014 • by admin
What: The Wildcatter Exchange Festival
Where: In the Historic South Main Village, Fort Worth Texas
Festival Dates: March 27 and March 28
LaToya Watkins: March 28
WordSpace is honored to be a promotional partner of the 2015 Wildcatter Exchange Festival as well as sponsor of 
2014 Pushcart Prize winner LaToya Watkins in a special appearance. Win-Win!
Stay tuned for more info and updates.
Monday • December 15, 2014 • by admin
What: First Hearings
Who: Mary Helen Specht
When: Thursday, February 19, 7 pm
Where: The Wild Detectives, 14 West Eighth Street, 75208, in Bishop Arts District
Hosted by: Charles Dee Mitchell
Charles Dee Mitchell curates and hosts the series First Hearings. Meet authors. Hear them read. Buy their books. Get their autographs. (And the bar will be open for business.)
Mary Helen Specht was born and raised in Abilene, Texas. She has a B.A. in English from Rice University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College, where she won the department’s fiction award. Her writing has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes and has appeared in numerous publications, including:
The New York Times;
The Colorado Review;
Prairie Schooner;
Michigan Quarterly Review;
The Southwest Review;
Florida Review;
Southwestern American Literature;
World Literature Today;
Blue Mesa;
Hunger Mountain;
Bookslut;
The Texas Observer; and
Night Train, where she won the Richard Yates Short Story Award.
A past Fulbright Scholar to Nigeria and Dobie-Paisano Writing Fellow, Specht teaches creative writing at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas.
“An ambitious, highly accomplished debut. . . . Specht moves among a deep cast of characters and corresponding perspectives with absolute mastery. . . . Most important, and impressive, is Specht’s sure handling of the interior life.”Ben Fountain, author ofBilly Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Monday • November 24, 2014 • by admin
WordSpace @ Two Bronze Doors presents, our fourth installment of The Pegasus Reading Series, a new monthly forum for poets and writers to showcase their work in the DFW area. This month we showcase the work of Logen Cure, Mag Gabbert, Luca Jacob, and more!
Logen Cure is a poet and teacher. She is the author of two spoken word projects: the Make it Memorable EP (2014) and In Keeping, a chapbook published by Unicorn Press (2008). Her work also appears in Word Riot, Radar Poetry, IndieFeed: Performance Poetry, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She lives in Texas with her wife.
Mag Gabbert is a PhD student at Texas Tech with a specialization in creative writing, specifically in poetry and non-fiction. She graduated with a bachelors in English from Trinity University and received her MFA in poetry writing from The University of California at Riverside. Mag is a contributing writer for The Nervous Breakdown, where her essays regularly appear.
Her poetry, essays, and reviews have also been published or are forthcoming in The Rattling Wall, The Rumpus, and The San Antonio Current, among others. Mag has previously served as the co-editor of The Trinity Review and associate poetry editor of The Coachella Review; she is now an associate editor of Iron Horse Review and is the graduate advisor of Texas Tech’s undergraduate literary journal, The Harbinger.
Chris George lives and works in Dallas, Texas where he is the resident writer at Two Bronze Doors art gallery and editor-in-chief of the literary journal Disembodied Text. His work has been featured in a number of journals, including The Arts United, Spiderweb Salon, and LUX. His chapbook Dreamscapes was published by Micro-Micro Press in 2013.
Lucas Jacob’s poems, fiction, and essays have appeared in several dozen journals, including Southwest Review, Barrow Street, and Potomac Review, and are forthcoming in many others, including Western Humanities Review. A past winner of the Gival Press Tri-Language Poetry Contest, he was short-listed for the Fish Poetry Prize (2012), was a finalist for the Arts & Letters Poetry Prize (2013), was a semi-finalist for the Norman Mailer Award in short fiction (2012), and was a semi-finalist in the Frost Place Chapbook competition (2014). He lives in Fort Worth, and he teaches and does arts-program-administation work at the Trinity Valley School, where he is humbled by his students, who are terrific except in their refusal to live by his classroom motto: “No cats.”
Tuesday • November 18, 2014 • by admin
When: Thursday, June 4, 7 pm
What: Salon: Fan View: Martha Heimberg talks about Kay Ryan
RSVP for location: wordspace@wordspace.us
Born in California in 1945 and acknowledged as one of the most original voices in the contemporary landscape, Kay Ryan is the author of several books of poetry, including Flamingo Watching (2006), The Niagara River (2005), andSay Uncle (2000). Her bookThe Best of It: New and Selected Poems (2010) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Ryan’s tightly compressed, rhythmically dense poetry is often compared to that of Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore; however, Ryan’s often barbed wit and unique facility with “recombinant” rhyme has earned her the status of one of the great living American poets, and led to her appointment as U.S. Poet Laureate in 2008. She held the position for two terms, using the appointment to champion community colleges like the one in Marin County, California where she and her partner Carol Adair taught for over thirty years. In an interview with the Washington City Paper at the end of tenure, Ryan called herself a “whistle-blower” who “advocated for much underpraised and underfunded community colleges across the nation.”
Ryan’s surprising laureateship capped years of outsider-status in the poetry world. Her quizzical, philosophical, often mordant poetry is a product of years of thought. Ryan has said that her poems do not start with imagery or sound, but rather develop “the way an oyster does, with an aggravation.” Critic Meghan O’Rourke has written of her work: “Each poem twists around and back upon its argument like a river retracing its path; they are didactic in spirit, but a bedrock wit supports them.” “Sharks’ Teeth” displays that meandering approach to her subject matter, which, Ryan says, “gives my poems a coolness. I can touch things that are very hot because I’ve given them some distance.”
Kay Ryan is the recipient of several major awards, including fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She has received the Union League Poetry Prize and the Maurice English Poetry Award, as well as the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Since 2006 she has served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Martha Heimberg, presenter, has been writing about theater, the arts and historic preservation for over 30 years for numerous Texas newspapers and magazines, including Dallas Weekly, D Magazineand Texas Monthly. She currently writes a weekly theater column for Turtle Creek News. She has won awards from the Dallas Press Club and the Texas Historic Commission, and is a founding member of the Dallas Fort Worth Theater Critics Forum. She coordinates DART’sPoetry in Motion program, and has served many years on the WordSpace board. Her degrees in English and comparative literature are from Southern Methodist University. She is associate professor of English at Northwood University in Cedar Hill, Texas.
Tuesday • November 18, 2014 • by admin
Friday, February 5, 7:30 pm
Book Release: Words of Witness: Black Women’s Autobiography in the Post-Brown Era (University of Wisconsin Press)
Bonus: Darryl Dickson-Carr will conduct an interview with Professor Ards
Bonus #2: Hosted by Sanderia Faye
RSVP for location: 214-838-3554, wordspace@wordspace.us
Angela Ards has published extensively on African American literature and culture in the post-civil rights era, a historical moment that demands recalibrated ways of thinking about black identity as questions of gender and class complicate allegiances and agendas previously based on race. Her book examines how writers bring their lived experience to bear on crafting both a language and a politic that might account for this new stage of African American history. She received her PhD from Princeton University and teaches at SMU.
“Ambitious, timely, engaging, and provocative. Angela Ards, erudite and remarkably widely read, situates her analysis of a new political ethic grounded in black women’s experience at the intersection of autobiography studies, feminism, black literary history, and cultural and political theory.”
—Julia Watson, coeditor of Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader
Fort Worth has long been home to the wildcatter spirit. Pioneers pushed further into the frontier, either by society or a restless nature. Cowboys and cattlemen arrived forging trails through uncharted prairies. Finally, the oilmen came with little more than instinct and guts to pull riches from beneath the sod.
