Tag: june

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!

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 to Host First Undergraduate Poetry Writing Weekend at Firefly Farms

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Sundress Academy for the Arts, a branch of Sundress Publications, is pleased to announce its inaugural Undergraduate Writers Retreat, which will be held from Friday, June 13th to Sunday, June 15th, 2014. The three-day, two-night camping retreat will be held on SAFTA’s own Firefly Farms in Knoxville, Tennessee and focus on poetry writing, particularly with an eye towards creating, editing, and finalizing a graduate school application portfolio.

A weekend pass includes instruction, writing supplies, food, drink, transportation to and from the airport, and all on-site amenities for $200, with tents, sleeping bags, and other camping equipment available to rent. Payment plans are available!

The event will be open to all undergraduate and recently graduated college students and provides an opportunity to work with many talented and published authors from around the country, including Erin Elizabeth Smith, T.A. Noonan, and Rhonda Lott.

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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 earned her PhD in Creative Writing at the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and teaches a bit of everything in the English Department at the University of Tennessee. She also serves as the managing editor of Sundress Publications and Stirring.

T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently four sparks fall: a novella (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013) and, with Erin Elizabeth Smith, Skate or Die (Dusie Kollektiv, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Reunion: The Dallas Review, West Wind Review, Hobart, Ninth Letter, and Phoebe, among others. A weightlifter, crafter, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she serves as the Associate Editor of Sundress Publications, Founding Editor of Flaming Giblet Press, and Literary Arts Director for the Sundress Academy of the Arts.

Rhonda Lott, an alumna of the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi, recently earned her doctorate in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry from Texas Tech University. She has worked with Sundress Publications since 2008 as both an editor and artist-in-residence with contributions of poetry broadsides and book covers. Her writing has appeared internationally and locally in a variety of venues, including Hayden’s Ferry Review, cream city review, and The Los Angeles Review, as well as the Knoxville Film Festival 7-Day Shootout.

Space at this workshop is limited to 10 poets, so reserve your space today!