The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to host a new Holler Salon with a poetry reading and dinner at Firefly Farms. An extension of our award-winning Sundress Reading Series, Holler Salon aims to encourage conversation and collaboration between creative individuals in a variety of disciplines. The event, to be held Saturday, June 8th from 6-10 p.m., will be free and open to the public and will feature poets Emari DiGiorgio, Shannon Sankey, Muriel Leung, and Monica Brashears.
Shannon Sankey is the author of We Ran Rapturous (The Atlas Review, 2019). Her poems have appeared at Poets.org, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, the minnesota review, Puerto del Sol, Sugar House Review, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2017 Academy of American Poets Prize. She holds an MFA from Chatham University, where she was the Whitford Fellow. She is the founder of Stranded Oak Press.
Muriel Leung is the author of Bone Confetti, winner of the 2015 Noemi Press Book Award. A Pushcart Prize nominated writer, her writing can be found in The Baffler, Cream City Review, Gulf Coast, The Collagist, Fairy Tale Review, and others. She is a recipient of fellowships to Kundiman, VONA/Voices Workshop and the Community of Writers. She is the Poetry Co-Editor of Apogee Journal. She also co-hosts the blood-jet writing hour podcast with rachelle cruz and mt vallarta. Currently, she is a Dornsife Fellow in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California. She is from Queens, NY.
Monica Brashears is a graduate of the University of Tennessee and is entering Syracuse University in August for an MFA in fiction. She has a double-major in English with a concentration in Creative Writing and Africana Studies. Her literary diet consists of Black Literature with a pinch of Southern Folklore. She is also a recipient of the Robert A. Burke Award for fiction, Eleanor Burke Award for nonfiction, Michael Dennis Award for poetry, and Margaret Artley Woodruff Award . She gets down to any music with flavor and really enjoys the company of cats. Some of Monica’s favorite things are as follows: fresh popcorn, full moons, and vanilla perfume.
While dinner is provided, attendees are invited to BYOB.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is an artists’ residency that hosts workshops, retreats, and residencies for writers, actors, filmmakers, and visual artists. All are guided by experienced, professional instructors from a variety of creative disciplines who are dedicated to cultivating the arts in East Tennessee.
