Tag: knoxville

Sundress Reading Series Presents Catherine Moore, Stacey Balkun, and Amie Whittemore

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The Sundress Reading Series is pleased to welcome Catherine Moore and Stacey Balkun for the December installment of our reading series! The event will take place this Sunday, December 11, at 2 at Bar Marley.

balkun%2c-stacey-kault-photo2-colorStacey Balkun is the author of Jackalope-Girl Learns to Speak (dancing girl 2016) and Lost City Museum (ELJ 2016). A Finalist for the 2016 Event Horizon Science Poetry Competition as well as the Center for Women Writer’s 2016 Rita Dove Award, her work has appeared in Gargoyle, Muzzle, THRUSH, Bayou, and others. A 2015 Hambidge Fellow, Stacey was awarded a SAFTA residency in 2015 and served as Artist-in-Residence at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2013. She holds an MFA from Fresno State and now lives in New Orleans, where she volunteers for literacy and teaches poetry online at The Poetry Barn.

catherine-mooreCatherine Moore’s writing has appeared in Tahoma Literary Review, Cider Press Review, Southampton Review, Caesura, Still: the Journal, Wicked Alice, The Tishman Review, concīs, and in various anthologies. She has two chapbook collections (Finishing Line Press and Kentucky Story Press) with another forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. A Walker Percy fellow, she won the Southeast Review’s 2014 Poetry Prize and had work included in “The Best Small Fictions of 2015.” She’s a recipient of a Nashville MetroArts grant. Catherine earned a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Tampa and she teaches at Columbia State Community College.

thumb_34a_0067_1024Amie Whittemore is the author of the poetry collection Glass Harvest (Autumn House Press) and co-founder of the Charlottesville Reading Series in Virginia. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Sycamore Review, Smartish Pace, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. She teaches English at Middle Tennessee State University.

 

The Sundress Reading Series is free and open to the public! We look forward to seeing you there!

Sundress Academy for the Arts Now Accepting Residency Applications for Summer

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is now accepting applications for short-term artists’ residencies during the summer residency period, during the weeks of May 8th to August 20th, 2017. These residencies are designed to give artists time and space to complete their creative projects in a quiet and productive environment.

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Each residency costs $250/week, which includes a room of one’s own, access to our communal kitchen, bathroom, office, and living space, plus wireless internet and cable.

For the summer residency period, SAFTA will be offering four full fellowships for the following—two fellowships for writers or artists of color (one sponsored by the Tennessee Arts Commission), one Tennessee Arts Commission fellowship for an Appalachian writer, and one Tennessee Arts Commission fellowship for a Tennessee writer. Three of these fellowships were made possible by an ABC grant from the Tennessee Arts Commission, awarded for the 2016-2017 season.

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The Tennessee Arts Commission fellowship for Appalachian writers is open to any writer who currently lives or works in Appalachia or any writer with strong ties to the area. The Tennessee Arts Commission fellowship for Tennessee writers is open to any writer who currently lives or works in Tennessee or any writer native to Tennessee. For either of the two writer/artist of color fellowships, the application fee will be waived for those who demonstrate financial need. Please state this in your application under the financial need section. Partial scholarships are also available to any applicant with financial need.

The application deadline for the summer residency period is January 15th, 2017.

The Tennessee Arts Commission invests in more than 600 nonprofit organizations across the state and their mission is to cultivate the arts for the benefit of all Tennesseans and their communities.

SAFTA Reading Series Presents William Woolfitt, Clifford Garstang, and Lyric Dunagan

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SAFTA Reading Series Presents
William Woolfitt, Clifford Garstang, and Lyric Dunagan 

Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is pleased to announce the SAFTA Reading Series event of June, featuring authors William Woolfitt, Clifford Garstang, and Lyric Dunagan. The event will take place June 19th at 1p.m. in Bar Marley, located on Stone Street.

William Woolfitt is the author of the poetry collections Beauty Strip (Texas Review Press, 2014) and Charles of the Desert (Paraclete Press, 2016). His fiction chapbook The Boy with Fire in His Mouth (2014) won the Epiphany Editions contest. His poems and stories have appeared in Blackbird, Image, Tin House, The Threepenny Review, and other journals. He is the recipient of the Howard Nemerov Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Denny C. Plattner Award from Appalachian Heritage. He teaches at Lee University in Cleveland, TN.

Clifford Garstang is the author of What the Zhang Boys Know (Press 53, 2012), which won the 2013 Library of Virginia Award for Fiction, and the prize-winning short story collection In an Uncharted Country (Press 53, 2009). He is also the editor of Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet, an anthology published in 2014 from Press 53. Garstang’s work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Blackbird, Cream City Review, and elsewhere, and has received Distinguished Mention in the Best American Series. He won the 2006 Confluence Fiction Prize and the 2007 GSU Review Fiction Prize and has been awarded fellowships by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ragdale Foundation, Rivendell Writers’ Colony, amongst others. In 2015 he received the Indiana Emerging Author Award from the Indianapolis Public Library Foundation.

Lyric Dunagan graduated last month with her MFA in poetry from the University of Tennessee. Her poems have previously appeared in The Volta and New Madrid, among others. She is currently working as a transcriptionist and applying for adjunct teaching positions in the fall.

As always, the Reading Series is free and open to the public!

SAFTA to Pair with VIDA for Fall Residency Contest

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Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is excited to announce that they are now accepting applications for short-term artists’ residencies in creative writing, visual art, film/theater, music, and more. Each residency includes a room of one’s own, access to a communal kitchen, bathroom, office, and living space, plus wireless internet.

The length of a residency can run from one to three weeks. SAFTA is currently accepting applications for our fall residency period, which runs from August 29th 2016 to January 1, 2017.  The deadline for fall residency applications is June 15th, 2016.

For the fall residency period, SAFTA will be pairing with VIDA to offer two fellowships (one full fellowship and one 50% fellowship) for a week-long residency to two women writers of any genre. VIDA’s mission as a research-driven organization is to increase critical attention to contemporary women’s writing as well as further transparency around gender equality issues in contemporary literary culture. Fellowships will be chosen by guest judge, Matthea Harvey. Harvey is the author of five books of poetry (most recently If the Tabloids are True What are You) and two books for children. She teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence College.  (Please note if you are applying for one of these scholarships in the financial need section of your application.)

The SAFTA farmhouse is located on a working farm that rests on a 45-acre wooded plot in a Tennessee “holler” perfect for hiking, camping, and nature walks. Located less than a half-hour from downtown Knoxville, an exciting and creative city of 200,000 in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, SAFTA is an ideal location for those looking for a rural get-away with access to urban amenities. 

The residency bedrooms are 130 sq. ft. with queen-size platform bed, closet, dresser, and desk. There is also a communal kitchen supplied with stove, refrigerator, and microwave plus plenty of cook- and dining-ware. The office and library have two working computers—one Mac, one PC—with access to the Adobe Creative Cloud.  The library contains over 700 books with a particularly large contemporary poetry section and, thanks to the Wardrobe, many recent titles by women writers. The facility also includes a full-size working 19th century full-size letterpress with type, woodworking tools, and a 1930’s drafting table.

To apply for the Sundress Academy for the Arts residency, you will need the following: 

-Application form (including artist’s statement and contact information for two references)

-CV or artist’s resume (optional)

-Artist sample (see website for more details on genre specifications)

-Application fee of $25 or $15 for current students (with student email) payable online*

For more information, visit our website: http://www.sundressacademyforthearts.com/

or find us on Facebook, under Sundress Academy for the Arts

or on Twitter, @SundressPub

*Application fee will be waived for those applying for the VIDA scholarship who demonstrate financial need. Please state this in your application under the financial need section.

Katie Hall Goes Behind the Scenes with SAFTA Films & Atomic Oasis

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SAFTA Films, alongside Atomic Oasis Productions, participated in the 7-Day Shootout for the recent Knoxville Film Festival. Filmmakers who participated had exactly seven days to film, edit, and produce a seven-minute movie. Here is a link to the Knoxville Film Festival 7-Day Shootout page. I was excited to work with a team of creative filmmakers who were willing to take on making a short-film in just one week! I am taking several film courses this semester at The University of Tennessee, but most of my previous experience with any film production is from my time as a news anchor for my high school. I knew I would be working with group of people who are in a more advanced level of filmmaking, and was eager to learn.

I served as a Production Assistant on set during the making of Atomic Oasis Productions’ short film entitled Freckles. There were talented actors/actresses, these great sound guys, and even a crucial person behind the scenes who handled the scripts, shot order, and schedule for the day (Kristi Larkin Havens). I performed the usual PA tasks such as getting coffee for the film crew, making sure the contest documentation was signed by participants, watched for continuity of the props on set (making sure props are in the same spot for each shot), and was responsible for “clapping.” My PA experience on the set of Freckles was highly informative and often hilarious (I’ll get to the funny moments in a bit).

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Everyone met around 9:00 a.m. at the local Curiosities Metaphysical Shop to begin filming for the day. The day began with coffee, as everyday does for me. My first duty as a PA was to make the essential coffee run for the crew. This shop has everything from tapestries to unique gemstones, which provided the mystical feel that was necessary for the film. The director, Gabe Crutchfield from Atomic Oasis Productions, was welcoming and informative when it came to introducing me to their production team. His cameras were of interest to me, as I immediately noticed the compact size of them. They were newer, high definition cameras, which ended up being easier to move around and yielded more dynamic shots. In my previous experience with film sets, I am used to seeing larger cameras like they would use for a news broadcast. The new, smaller cameras showed me just how far cameras have come since my days as a high school news anchor. (If we had these smaller cameras back in the day, we could’ve done more things outside of the studio!)

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Gabe assigned me the role of “clapper.” Before every shot I stood in front of the camera and verbally marked the scene and take numbers. I stood just outside the frame of each take in the film and used the clapperboard to keep track of each take. My role as “clapper” was the most involved of my jobs on set, and spanned through two days of filming. On the second day of filming, the cast and crew met at the home of a member of SAFTA, Vania Smkovski. It was on this day that I began to wonder if the clapping role was actually helpful. Gabe informed me that it provides a clear stopping point for editing purposes. He also mentioned that I was the first clapper he has ever used while making a film, so I was pleased to know that I was truly able to help the team!

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The artistic and talented people I met from SAFTA Films and Atomic Oasis Productions all worked so well together to produce Freckles for the 7-Day Shootout. Working with a creative team was amusing, insightful, and full of detail oriented tasks. Some of the more intricate details included squeezing the crew into corners to avoid getting the “boom” (sound stick) in the frame. Often times, cameras and people were shifted around to make the shot work. During one of these moments on the first day of filming, one of the cameramen bent over to adjust his camera, and it was then that everyone in the room heard a shatter. His rear-end hit against the window and cracked it. Luckily the window was already broken! The day ended on that note and everyone laughed. I expected the process to be fun, but the people were the best part!

You can watch the finished film here:

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Katie Hall is a student at the University of Tennessee but is originally from Chattanooga. She is majoring in English with a concentration in Technical Communications. Katie aspires to be an editor or technical writer subsequent to her graduation from UTK. As the Online Development Intern, she is eager to help increase SAFTA’s online presence by assisting in social media and web design.

The Confluence of Rhythms Begins: Mapping the Sounds of Your Poems

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Saturday, June 27 1:00pm – 4:00pm
Sundress Academy for the Arts
195 Tobby Hollow Ln,
Knoxville, Tennessee 37931

“Soon, soon the flesh / The grave cave ate will be / At home on me.”

Sylvia Plath’s images in “Lady Lazarus” are haunting, but they are propelled into nightmare through her expert sense of sound and rhythm. Think about the last poem that pulled you beneath its rhythmic tide. Did it chime with beauty like Elizabeth Bishop’s lines in “At the Fishhouses”:

“It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: / dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free”?

If you are wondering how to further develop the natural tempos and patterns in your poems to enhance your poems’ images and narrative, this innovative music-poetics workshop is for you.

To combat the old struggles of writing and counting metrical lines, you will learn fresh methods like sound mapping, beat-tuning, and creating nonce forms to follow the sound of your poems to their crescendos. These methods will boost sound play in both free verse and metrical poems.

If you have always wanted to incorporate slant rhyme or alliteration but it seems wooden, this workshop is for you. In this 3 hour course, we will explore contemporary poets’ rhythmic techniques and you will learn to create evolving and enlivening music within your poems. Bring a couple of drafts-in-progress (at any stage) to revise. We will also write at least one new sound-driven piece in workshop. In addition to personalized feedback from the instructor and a helpful list of further readings, there will be a discussion of where and how to place sensual, sound-driven poetry for publication.

Purchase your tickets here!

10959347_832705225537_8697748533403976874_nSandy Marchetti is the author of Confluence, a debut full-length poetry collection forthcoming from Sundress Publications, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing-Poetry from George Mason University. Eating Dog Press also published an illustrated edition of her essays and poetry, A Detail in the Landscape, and her first volume, The Canopy, won Midwest Writing Center’s Mississippi Valley Chapbook Contest. Her work appears in The Journal, Subtropics, The Hollins Critic, Sugar House Review, Mid-American Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, Green Mountains Review, South Dakota Review, Phoebe, and elsewhere. She currently works as a writing teacher and freelance creative manuscript editor in her hometown of Chicago.

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SAFTA Reading Series Presents Darren Jackson and Andra Watkins

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June 21, 2015 at 3:00PM

Birdhouse Knoxville

800 N 4th Ave, Knoxville, Tennessee 37917

Knoxville, TN– Sundress Academy for the Arts is proud to present the June edition of the award-winning SAFTA Reading Series featuring visiting writers Darren Jackson and Andra Watkins!

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Darren Jackson’s recent poems have appeared in The Pinch, The Laurel Review, The Offending Adam, Bluestem, and other journals. He has also translated Life in the Folds by Henri Michaux (Wakefield P, forthcoming Fall 2016); “The White Globe,” an essay by Bertrand Westphal, included in the The Planetary Turn: Art, Dialogue, and Geoaesthetics in the 21st-Century (Northwestern UP, 2015); and, with Marilyn Kallet and J. Bradford Anderson, Chantal Bizzini’s Disenchanted City (Black Widow Press, 2015). He was nominated for a Pushcart for fiction in 2015 and holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Tennessee.

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Andra Watkins is the author of the memoir Not Without My Father: One Woman’s 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace, nominated for the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Her other works include her debut novel To Live Forever: An Afterlife Journey of Meriwether Lewis and the photography collection Natchez Trace: Tracks in Time.

The SAFTA Reading Series is free and open to the public! We look forward to seeing you there!

SAFTA Reading Series Presents Meagan Cass & Shannon Hardwick

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KNOXVILLE, TN – Sundress Academy for the Arts is pleased to announce a fantastic summer reading by Meagan Cass and Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick! This installment of the award-winning SAFTA Reading Series will be held at the Birdhouse (800 North 4th Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37917) on Thursday, May 28th at 7:00 PM. Join Sundress Academy for the Arts in welcoming these wonderful writers to the stage for a night of reading and entertainment.

Meagan CassMeagan Cass is the author of Range of Motion (Magic Helicopter Press), and her fiction has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Pinch, DIAGRAM, Washington Square, and Puerto del Sol. Meagan Cass is an assistant Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Springfield, where she teaches courses in creative writing, publishing, literature, and composition. She founded the Shelterbelt Reading Series at UIS and serves as an assistant editor at Sundress Publications, coordinating fiction for the Best of the Net anthology. Over the last ten years, she has done editorial work for a range of national literary journals, including Stirring, Harpur Palate, and Rougarou, of which she is a founding editor.

Shannon Elizabeth HardwickShannon Elizabeth Hardwick received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her manuscript was a finalist for the Levis Prize in poetry and her chapbook was recently released by Thrush Press. She is an associate poetry editor for The Boiler Journal. Her work has appeared in collections such as 3:AM Magazine, Night Train, Versal, Sugar House Review, Four Way Review, among others.

All interested parties are encouraged to attend this latest installment of the engaging, award-winning SAFTA Reading Series. This will not be an event to miss! SAFTA welcomes everyone to the Birdhouse for this fantastic early summer reading!

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The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is an artists’ residency program on a 45-acre farm in Knoxville, Tennessee, that hosts workshops, retreats, and residencies for writers, actors, filmmakers, and visual artists. All events are guided by professional instructors from a variety of creative disciplines who are dedicated to cultivating the arts in Eastern Tennessee.

Web: http://www.sundresspublications.com                      Twitter: SundressPub

Email: safta@sundresspublications.com                            Facebook: SundressPublications

SAFTA To Host Script-Writing Workshop with Harrison Young

 

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Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present  the “Words Aren’t Everything,” workshop, which will be directed by playwright Harrison Young! This workshop will be held from 1PM-3PM on Sunday, March 15th at Sundress Academy for the Arts’s Firefly Farms (195 Tobby Hollow Lane, Knoxville, TN).

Words are great, but not when they get in the way! This wonderful workshop is designed to teach participants how to utilize improvisation-techniques to isolate how structure and relationships allow them to better focus on their stories. Participants are encouraged to bring up to four pages of their latest material to review with the class. Each participant will work on their personal piece with the guidance and instruction of playwright Harrison Young.

Harrison Young is a Theatre graduate from the University of Tennessee. His produced writing includes Online Fighting (Featured by the Brick Theater, Peoples Improv Theater, Tennessee Stage Company, Wild Thyme Players, and Pandora’s Dream Productions), A Cocaine Comedy (Featured by the People’s Improv Theater and Tennessee Stage Company), and the Secret Disclosures series (Featured by the Treehouse Theater). His performing credits include world premieres like Michael’s Story (Performed with the Treehouse Theater), The Hungry Heart (Performed with the Carpetbag Theatre), and Hoppy’s Trunk (Performed with the Tennessee Stage Company). Young lives in New York City, where he is a house team member of the improv group Vice Cream.

Attendance at this workshop is limited, so secure your chance to work with a published playwright by reserving your spot today! You can do so at our website, HERE!

OUTSpoken Opens 2015 Workshop Registration for LGBTQ+ Writers

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OUTSpoken is a second-year program from the Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) that will take place in Summer 2015. Our goal is to create a platform for the LGBTQ+ community of Knoxville, Tennessee, and its surrounding areas to record and perform the experiences of sex- and gender-diverse individuals in the South.

Registration for the OUTSpoken workshop series is now open. On-site participants will be a part of three workshops over the course of three months in order to create, edit, and produce a piece of art to be performed during SAFTA’s OUTSpoken events in Summer 2015. Workshop attendees will work with professionals in performance, prose, and poetry to compose and tell their own stories.

Workshops will be held on January 17th, February 21st, and March 28th, 2015 and run from 1PM to 3PM at the Sundress Academy for the Arts. Cost for the workshop is $25 for one, $45 for two, or $60 for all three. (Participants who attend at least two on-site workshops will be eligible to perform their piece at the OUTSpoken events later in the year.) Scholarship applications are also available on our website.

As LGBTQ issues gain greater visibility, it is crucial that we explore the complexities of sex and gender diversity respectfully. That said, we realize that unity cannot and must not be silent, and that in order to create a meaningful dialogue, we must acknowledge and listen to the stories, experiences, grievances, arguments, and counterarguments of all sex- and gender-diverse persons.

Register today!