The Sundress Academy for the Arts is pleased to announce the guests for our July 2022 Summer Holler Salon. This event will take place on July 30th from 4 to 6PM at 195 Tobby Hollow Ln. Knoxville, TN. The event will feature six artists and include literary readings, comedy, and music. Carpooling to the event is greatly encouraged, as there will be very limited space for parking.
Summer Awad is a Palestinian-American poet, playwright, and essayist, born and raised in Knoxville. She is a second-year student in the MFA program in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University. Her work has appeared at The New York International Fringe Festival and has been published by Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Writers Resist, and Exposition Review. Themes of her work include place, migration, race, gender, ethnicity, US politics, and family. She writes alongside her beloved calico, Sappho.
Martin Cossio, a first-generation Mexican American, is an award-winning poet from San Bernardino — a recently bankrupt city an hour east of L.A. — where he grew up skateboarding and getting into trouble and currently works full-time as a guest teacher. He is a graduate of University of California, Riverside-Palm Desert’s MFA program and a former poetry editor and the lead copy editor of The Coachella Review. He has received an honorable mention from Academy of American Poets and been published in three countries: the US, England, and Hungary. His debut collection, BUD LIGHT Blues, will be published by someone sometime.
Jane Morton is a poet based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. They recently completed their MFA at the University of Alabama, where they were Online Editor for Black Warrior Review. Their poems are published or forthcoming in Boulevard, Passages North, Ninth Letter, Poetry Northwest, Muzzle Magazine, Booth, and Meridian, among other journals. They will complete a poetry residency with Sundress Publications later this year.
Angela Qian is a writer from California. She received her MFA in fiction from NYU and BA from the University of Chicago. Her writing, including fiction, poetry, and essays, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Pleiades, Shenandoah, The Guardian Long Read, Witness, The Common, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Zocalo Public Square, and several other outlets. Previously, she co-curated The Sweet & Sour Readings in Manhattan Chinatown; currently, she is on the editorial board for Hyphen. She is also a member of the rotating poetry and performance collective 85 Dessert Spoons. By day, she works at a nonprofit think tank.
Clinton Ricks is from Nashville, TN. He enjoys baking a good pie whenever he has the time and reading old books because interesting stories often have a little dust on them.
Music will be provided by Melanie Lafoy!
This month our community partner for July is Mountain Access Brigade, an abortion doula collective and abortion fund. We provide accurate information about abortion options, non judgmental emotional support, and logistical and financial assistance. We currently fund people getting abortions at the two independent clinics here in East Tennessee. Post-Roe, we plan to fund Tennesseeans leaving the state for care. We serve our clients through a secure phone and text platform, each client getting connected to an abortion doula who assesses their needs and helps make a plan to support them. Find out more about the essential work they do at https://mountainaccessbrigade.org/
