This Wednesday, November 12th
Aleksandar (Sascha) Hemon will read at Oakton Community College. He is the winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for 2008, as well as a MacArthur Grant.
Also on Wednesday
FILM DIRECTOR’S PREVIEW
Screening followed by Q&A with Filmmaker Gus Reininger
7:00 PM
Ferguson Lecture Hall, 600 South Michigan, 1st floor
The feature length film “Corso – The Last Beat” introduces a new generation to the icons of
“The Beat Generation” – Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Gregory Corso.
ETHAN HAWKE, two time Academy Award Nominee, takes us on an on the road discovery of
GREGORY CORSO - the most colorful of the inner circle of THE BEATS, writers who changed
world culture and social history. Please visit this site for more details.
Also also on Wednesday
Tom Raworth
6:30 pm
In partnership with the Chicago Poetry Project
SAIC Ballroom, 112 S. Michigan Avenue
From the Poetry Center’s newsletter:
Since 1966 Tom Raworth has published more than 40 books and pamphlets of poetry, prose and translations, including Meadow, Clean & Well Lit: Selected Poems 1987-1995, Eternal Sections , and The Relation Ship, winner of the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize. During the 1970s he traveled and worked in the United States and Mexico, returning to England in 1977 to be Resident Poet at King’s College, Cambridge, in which city he still lives. Raworth’s graphic work has been shown in France, Italy, and the United States, and he has collaborated and performed with musicians (Steve Lacy, Joëlle Léandre, Steve Nelson-Raney, Esther Roth, Nino Locatelli), painters (Giovanni D’Agostino, Micaëla Henich), and other poets (Franco Beltrametti, Corrado Costa, Dario Villa). In 1991 he was invited to teach at the University of Cape Town: the first European writer to visit there for thirty years. Of his selected early poems, Tottering State, Lyn Hejinian has written “These are among the greatest writings of our times.” Since 1970 he has read across the United States and Canada almost annually, and lived with his family in the US and Mexico between 1972 and 1977 (Ohio, Mexico City, Chicago, Texas, San Francisco).
Sunday, November 16
Free Poetry Workshop
1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Hyde Park Art Center - 5020 S. Cornell Avenue
FREE
Led by award-winning poet Valerie M. Wallace, MFA, this free workshop will draw upon the Art Center’s exhibitions for inspiration, conversation and playfulness. The goal will be to establish a positive environment for critical feedback and community, and to generate new work.
All levels welcome. Past participants welcome!
Enrollment is limited and registration is required. For more information or to register, call 773-324-5520.
Near CTA Routes #6, #15, #28, Metra 51st Street
Valerie M Wallace
Editor, Deep Dish Poem-a-Month
http://chicagopoem.typepad.com/
Over the weekend...
Poetry and Hip-hop with Kevin Coval (Four-time HBO Def Poetry Jam alumnus and published poet)
“This is one of my favorite poets.”
– Mos Def, rapper/actor
“...raw, straight no chaser. That’s the real lethal weapon right there.” – Michael Eric Dyson, author/professor/sociologist
“In Coval’s voice is our hope for a new world for peace, grace and beauty.” - Studs Terkel, author/historian
A Gwendolyn Brooks Center Two-Day Workshop Series
November 15 & 16, 2008
1 to 4 p.m. – Nov. 15/11 to 2 p.m. – Nov. 16
at the Gwendolyn Brooks Center @ Chicago State University (95th and King Drive)
Cost: $10
This event is sponsored by the Gwendolyn Brooks Center at Chicago State University. For more information, please call 773-995-4440 or e-mail .
Narrative Magazine has announced the winners of its 2008 First-Person Contest. The first, second, and third place stories are available to be read online on the official announcement page.
Keep an eye on the Narrative Magazine website for great future contests.
I still get the tingles. When I hear about a StoryStudio writer getting published, I stop and think, wow, we’re really in the middle of an amazing literary world.
And then, when I get a copy of the published piece or finally find the time to read it online, I shake my head and think, wow, there’s some real talent in this studio.
Here are two writers whose stories have recently been published:
- Liz Radford’s short story, Best for Flight, was published in Prick of the Spindle, and
- Mary Bower’s opening novel chapter from The Second Whack. (BTW, Mary’s been in our Advanced Writer’s Workshop and Story Workout so I’ve had the extreme pleasure of reading drafts of this novel!) won a contest.
Liz Radford’s story is a haunting, affecting story of a young man who comes to learn about his own feelings of love. It’s also about a young boy who knows much more than the adults around him realize.
Liz has been an avid Write-a-Thoner and was in our Reading as a Writer class. I know she’s really been working at hard her short stories and the work is clearly paying off.
The Writing Show is an exciting website with lots of information and just a few contests that they run. Mary’s novel chapter won fourth place in their 2008 Novel Contest. The novel has been progressing with good speed (even if she doesn’t think so!) and it’s been especially gratifying to see how she continues to get deeper and deeper into these characters, never settling for a stereotype or a predictable plotline. Definitely take a look at The Second Whack.
Kudos Liz and Mary! If you’re reading this, take a few minutes to read this work and leave some comments!
I know, I know. It’s Saturday.
It’s been said that there are only two stories in the world: the hero’s journey and the stranger coming to town. Of course, the stranger story is just the hero story told from another perspective. I’m not sure I buy it. Although many stories have these basic patterns, sometimes the main story is boy meets girl or child/oppressed person overthrows authority.
Anyway.
For today, tell the stranger story from either perspective. If you’re looking at it from the visitor’s perspective, look at travel guides & pictures, listen to music, and eat the food of your strange land to get a feel for it. If you’re telling the story from another perspective, first take a really clear look at your community. How would you describe it to someone else? Now, how would you describe the opposite? How would your community react if that opposite showed up on its doorsteps and tried to carry off your favorite daughter?
Happy writing!
I have a confession to make: I did not vote in the presidential election. Oh, keep your pants on. It was the 1984 election when Ronald Reagan was still trickling down havoc and I was still in college and furious about the whole political atmosphere. AIDS was killing it’s way through the gay community and even though I lived in Washington, just blocks from the White House, I felt incredibly invisible.
What a difference 24 years makes!
All these years Robin Morgan’s quote, “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention,” has been forever on my lips. And boy, have I been angry. But on Tuesday night, with tears pushing their way through, I felt proud of this country for the first time in a long time. I admit I still have my qualms about Obama. I’m not a one-issue voter, but I do notice his silence on several issues important to me. And before you start lecturing me on the need to move to the middle in order to govern, I’m not buying.
Because on Wednesday morning, waking up to the new rights afforded to California chickens and taken away from lesbians and gay men, I was back to thinking about Robin’s quote and how angry I still am.
The personal is indeed political and in my life, it always has been. So I’ll be watching and wondering where I fit in.
What does all this have to do with writing or reading? Everything.
It is through literature that we learn about human nature. It is through stories that we debate the options life presents us. In stories, moral ambiguity is enlightening, forcing us to continue the discussion, forcing us to continue to look inward for our own personal answers. And when politics intrude, all the better.
So I am sitting down with my characters this weekend for a long talk. No more small, petty actions. We’re going to be thinking big. We’re going to tackle the questions for which we know there are no clear answers. We’re going to feel the politics of this nation very, very personally.
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