Tag: reading series

Poets in Pajamas Presents Emily Rose Cole

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Poets in Pajamas, a Live-Stream Reading Series by Sundress Publications
Presents Episode 41: Emily Rose Cole

Ever wished you could attend a poetry reading in your PJ’s? Wished there were one closer to home? Missed a reading because you just couldn’t muster up the energy to go? Bailed because you didn’t want to go alone?

Well fret no more! Poets in Pajamas (PiP) is a live-feed online reading series presented by Sundress Publications. We bring live poetry, complete with Q&A and poet interaction, to you. We don’t ask you to dig out a scarf, no, we welcome you as you are and bring the poetry. Won’t you join us? We often draw a diverse audience from around the world and we’d love it if you, too, were there.

emilyrosecole.jpgOur next episode will air on Sunday, October 28, at 7pm EST, featuring Emily Rose Cole. On behalf of Sundress Publications, Anna Black will host.

Emily Rose Cole is the author of Love and a Loaded Gun, a chapbook of persona poems from Minerva Rising Press. Her poetry has appeared most recently in Nimrod, The Pinch, and Southern Indiana Review, among others. She is pursuing her PhD at the University of Cincinnati. To check out more of Emily’s work, visit the following links:

“MS Nocturne Without a Magician” on Phoebe Journal

“How Grandmother Tells It” on Glass Poetry Journal

“How Not to Remember Your Mother” on The Raleigh Reviewanna black

 

Anna Black has served as the editor-in-chief of the magazine Hayden’s Ferry Review and is a twice awarded Virginia G. Piper global teaching and research fellow. She received her MFA at Arizona State University. More about Anna and her work can be found at @bylineblack and bylineblack.com

The readings occur on PiP’s Facebook page every other Sunday at 7PM EST/4PM PST. The selected poet will read for about 15 minutes and will then open the floor for an additional 10-15 minutes to receive questions from the audience.

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Online: poetsinpajamas.wordpress.com            Facebook: facebook.com/poetsinpajamas
Twitter: twitter.com/poetsinpajamas                 Contact: poetsinpajamas@gmail.com

Poets in Pajamas Presents Anthony Frame

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Poets in Pajamas, a Live-Stream Reading Series by Sundress Publications
Presents Episode 39: Anthony Frame

Ever wished you could attend a poetry reading in your PJ’s? Wished there were one closer to home? Missed a reading because you just couldn’t muster up the energy to go? Bailed because you didn’t want to go alone?

Well fret no more! Poets in Pajamas (PiP) is a live-feed online reading series presented by Sundress Publications. We bring live poetry, complete with Q&A and poet interaction, to you. We don’t ask you to dig out a scarf, no, we welcome you as you are and bring the poetry. Won’t you join us? We often draw a diverse audience from around the world and we’d love it if you, too, were there.

Our next episode will air on Sunday,  September 30, at 7pm EST, featuring Anthony Frame. On behalf of Sundress Publications, Anna Black will host.

anthony frameAnthony Frame is an exterminator from Ohio. His most recent collection is Where Wind Meets Wing (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018) and recent publications include The Shallow Ends, Drunk Monkeys, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and the anthology Not that Bad (HarperCollins, 2018). He is also EIC at Glass Poetry Press.

To check out more of Anthony’s work, visit the following links:

 

anna blackAnna Black has served as the editor-in-chief of the magazine Hayden’s Ferry Review and is a twice awarded Virginia G. Piper global teaching and research fellow. She received her MFA at Arizona State University. More about Anna and her work can be found at @bylineblack and bylineblack.com.

 

The readings occur on PiP’s Facebook page every other Sunday at 7PM EST/4PM PST. The selected poet will read for about 15 minutes,  and will then open the floor for an additional 10-15 minutes to receive questions from the audience.

Sundress Reading Series Presents Carlina Duan, Lisa Dordal, and Sophia Stid

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The Sundress Reading Series is excited to welcome Carlina Duan, Lisa Dordal, and Sophia Stid for the September installment of our reading series! This event will take place from 2-4 p.m. on Sunday, September 16th at Hexagon Brewing Co., located at 1002 Dutch Valley Dr STE 101, Knoxville, TN 37918.

Screen Shot 2018-09-11 at 12.10.19 PMCarlina Duan hails from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and currently lives in Nashville, where she is an MFA Candidate in Poetry at Vanderbilt University. Her debut poetry collection, I WORE MY BLACKEST HAIR, was published by Little A in 2017, and received a Finalist Award in the Little A Emerging Writers Contest. Her poems can be found in Black Warrior Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Narrative Magazine, and elsewhere. She is currently the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Nashville Review.

 

Screen Shot 2018-09-11 at 12.10.26 PMLisa Dordal (M.Div., M.F.A.) is the author of Mosaic of the Dark (Black Lawrence Press, 2018) and teaches in the English Department at Vanderbilt University. A Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of an Academy of American Poets University Prize and the Robert Watson Poetry Prize, her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Best New Poets, Ninth Letter, Cave Wall, CALYX, The Greensboro Review, Vinyl Poetry, New Poetry from the Midwest, and Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse.

 

Screen Shot 2018-09-11 at 12.10.32 PMSophia Stid is a writer from California. Currently in the MFA program at Vanderbilt University, she has received fellowships from the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Lannan Foundation. She is the winner of the 2017 Francine Ringold Award for New Writers. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Image, Beloit, Nimrod, Ninth Letter, DIAGRAM, Haydens Ferry Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among others.

 

The Sundress Reading Series is an award-winning literary reading series that is held monthly at 2 p.m. at Hexagon Brewing Co. just outside of downtown Knoxville. The Sundress Reading Series is free and open to the public.

The Sundress Reading Series presents Chris Barton, Gwen E. Kirby, and Pamela Schoenewaldt on May 6

The Sundress Reading Series is excited to welcome Chris Barton, Gwen E. Kirby, and Pamela Schoenewaldt to the May installment of our reading series! The event will take place 2-4 p.m. on Sunday, May 6, at Hexagon Brewing Co., located at 1002 Dutch Valley Dr. STE 101, Knoxville, TN 37918. The Sundress Reading Series is free and open to the public.

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Chris Barton‘s work has appeared in Hobart, Entropy, Word Riot, Funhouse, Potluck Mag, and elsewhere. He was the winner of the 2013 undergraduate creative writing award from the University of Tennessee. He currently works at two cafes, helps with his roommate’s monthly open mic poetry event, & lives in a blue house with three cats in Knoxville, TN.

 

 

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Gwen E. Kirby‘s stories appear in One Story, Guernica, Mississippi Review, Ninth Letter, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. Guest editor Aimee Bender selected her story “Shit Cassandra Saw . . .” for Best Small Fictions 2018 and her story “Midwestern Girl Is Tired of Appearing in Your Short Stories” won the 2017 DISQUIET Literary Prize for Fiction. She received her MFA from Johns Hopkins University and her PhD from the University of Cincinnati. Starting in the fall, she will be the 2018-2019 George Bennett Fellow at Phillips Exeter Academy.

 

PamelaPamela Schoenewaldt is a historical novelist and a USA Today Bestseller whose work has been translated into four languages. She was short-listed for the Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction. Her short stories have won international awards. She was the UT Library’s Writer in Residence and is in the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame. Her one-act play in Italian, Espresso Con Mia Madre, was performed in Naples, Italy. She taught writing at the University of Maryland European Division, and UT. She lives in Knoxville with her husband, Maurizio Conti, a physicist, and dog Jesse, a philosopher. Her most recently completed novel is set against the backdrop of the 1919 Knoxville Race Riot.

Poets in Pajamas: An Interview with Sam Slaughter

The Poets in Pajamas Reading Series launches this week, hosted by Sam Slaughter, author of God in Neon and Spirits Editor at The Manual.  Below, Sam shares some of the inspiration behind Poets in Pajamas and what you should expect from this cozy new virtual reading series.  sam-slaughter

Kristen Figgins: What was the inspiration for Poets in Pajamas?

Sam Slaughter: We wanted to create a reading series that wasn’t contingent on location, one that would—as long as you have access to the internet—allow anyone to participate. Obviously, any major city is going to have multiple reading series to go to/participate in/etc., but not everyone can live in those cities. As writers, we’re often wherever the job market dictates—from Alaska to northeast Georgia to Thailand. Depending on the type of work we do, we can be just about anywhere in the world. Because of this, we wanted something that overshadowed that. That way, you would be able to participate and not feel like you’re missing out because you can’t be in Brooklyn or LA or Chicago.

KF: How are reading series important to the literary landscape?

SS: They provide connection with other readers and writers that we as artists need, considering most of us—regardless of artistic preference—spend a good deal of time alone, staring at a screen or a notebook or a canvas. They also allow readers and writers to show off their work or try out new stuff in an environment that is ready for it. You can get some immediate feedback from friends or other people there to see if that piece you’re working on is clicking or if you need to go back to the drawing board on it. Both of these points come back to the main thing: community. A reading series helps to build a community of readers and writers pursuing similar paths in the world and gives everyone an outlet to express themselves.

KF: What is your favorite memory from a reading series (either as an author or an attendee)?

SS: A great memory I have is from the first time I attended AWP, in Minneapolis in 2014. The first night I was there was the Literary Death Match, and I got to see readers like Matt Bell, Ben Percy, and Roxanne Gay battle it out, if you will.

A second fond memory I have is of the There Will Be Words reading series, hosted by J. Bradley in Orlando. I’ve been a part of it and I’ve attended multiple others and every time it was a great, engaging event. The people are great and the words are better.

KF: One of the great things about reading series is that they create a personal connection with authors and their audience.  How do you imagine retaining that personal connection while utilizing the Periscope app?

SS: Well, the easy answer is that there will be a ten-minute Q&A portion of each reading, allowing viewers to type in questions that the reader can respond to. Periscope has taken care of the interaction portion for us. Another thing is that a reading series like this can spread by word of mouth/Facebook post/tweet. Helping connect more readers and viewers can enhance the community and allow for new connections to spring up that might not have happened otherwise.

KF: If you could have a literary slumber party with any group of poets, dead or alive, who would be on the invitation list?

SS: My list wouldn’t be just poets, but regardless, I’d want to put together a slumber party that would be a hell of a good time—light on the slumbering, heav(ier) on the partying.

  1. TC Boyle
  2. Harry Crews
  3. Julia Child
  4. Anthony Bourdain
  5. Lorrie Moore

You can find out more about Poets in Pajamas including upcoming readings and how to get involved, on our website! Be sure to Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter as well!

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 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 Wins National Reading Series Contest!

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We are thrilled and honored to be the South Regional Winner of the 2014 LitBridge Reading Series Contest!

Judged entirely on nominations from readers and supporters, the SAFTA Reading Series topped those of literary organizations across seventeen southern states to win this prestigious award. In addition to being publicly recognized by the online LitBridge community, SAFTA received a monetary prize of $150 to help continue their artistic involvement in the Knoxville area and beyond.

The SAFTA Reading Series was established in November, 2013 and has since hosted a succession of noteworthy performers from across the United States including Marilyn Kallet, T.A. Noonan, Jan LaPerle, Kevin Brown, and many more. Currently, the series is held monthly at The Birdhouse, a Victorian-era home turned Neighborhood Center in Knoxville’s charming Fourth and Gill neighborhood.

Reviewers of the SAFTA Reading Series said it was “one of the best readings I’ve been to, and I’ve been to a lot,” and “readings at The Birdhouse are fun and engaging—I’ve loved every reader that has come!”

LitBridge is an online literary association that aims to promote and develop the professionalization of members of the collective writing community. Their Reading Series Contest honors new reading series that display excellence and maintain high ratings from readers and attendees.

 

 

 

SAFTA Reading Series Presents Joseph Bathanti, Kevin Brown, & Erin Elizabeth Smith

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The SAFTA Reading Series is excited to be hosting the Southern launch of the anthology, St. Peter’s B-List: Contemporary Poems Inspired by the Saints from Ave Maria Press!  The reading be hosted by The Birdhouse, on the corner of Fourth and Gill, at 3PM on June 8th, 2014.  Anthology contributors Joseph Bathanti, Kevin Brown, & Erin Elizabeth Smith will be reading from their work and have books available for sale after as well as copies of the anthology itself.

Joseph Bathanti is the Poet Laureate of North Carolina. He is the author of eight books of poetry: Communion Partners, Anson County, The Feast of All Saints, This Metal (nominated for the National Book Award), Land of Amnesia, Restoring Sacred Art (winner of the 2010 Roanoke Chowan Prize), Sonnets of the Cross, and a new collection, Concertina, from Mercer University Press. His novel, East Liberty, won the 2001 Carolina Novel Award. His latest novel, Coventry, won the 2006 Novello Literary Award. His book of stories, The High Heart, won the 2006 Spokane Prize. His new novel, The Life of the World to Come, is forthcoming in 2014 from University of South Carolina Press. His collection of personal essays, Half of What I Say Is Meaningless, winner of the 2012 Will D. Campbell Award for Creative Nonfiction, is forthcoming from Mercer University Press. Bathanti is Professor of Creative Writing at Appalachian State University.

Kevin Brown is a Professor at Lee University.  He has published two books of poetry–A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press) and Exit Lines (Plain View Press, 2009)–and two chapbooks: Abecedarium (Finishing Line Press, 2011) and Holy Days: Poems (winner of Split Oak Press Chapbook Contest, 2011).  He also has a memoir Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again (Wipf and Stock, 2012), and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories:  Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels (Kennesaw State University Press, 2012). He received his MFA from Murray State University.

Erin Elizabeth Smith is the Creative Director at the Sundress Academy for the Arts and the author of two full-length collections, The Fear of Being Found (Three Candles Press 2008) and The Naming of Strays (Gold Wake Press 2011).  Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Mid-American, 32 Poems, Zone 3, Gargoyle, Tusculum Review, and Crab Orchard Review.  She teaches a bit of everything in the English Department at the University of Tennessee and serves as the managing editor of Sundress Publications and Stirring.