highland reading this thursday (9.19) @ 7pm

I'll be reading at Highland Coffee's on the 19th at 7pm. This will be the second reading of the delta literary journal's Fall 2013 Highland Reading Series.  The readers include Emily Provosty, Kat de Vay, and Vincent Cellucci.

delta is a literary journal associated with LSU's English department, though they are left to fend for themselves in terms of funding, readers, etc. delta publishes a new volume of undergrad writing every year, but they're probably most recognized as the coordinators of the Highland Series.

nola adult poetry workshop

my alma mater has me teaching a poetry workshop in nola autumn!!
nola please sign up or holla to friends about courses if you know someone that may be interested in pre-funking friday nights with some word sorcery uptown (details below)



deceptions in eight weeks covering: ego, mana, incantations, evocation, animism and hexes, invisibility, "i"llusion, and ceremony.

it will be haunting--

VAC

Loyola Writing Institute

The Loyola Writing Institute is pleased to offer fall writing courses for the community!

Writing Well-Crafted Fiction
Taught by Stephen Rea • Tuesdays from 7 – 9 p.m. • Starts Sept. 17 for eight weeks
Whether your goal is to perfect your short stories or get your literary novel onto bookstore shelves, or you simply enjoy writing for yourself and want to master the basics, this course will improve your fiction writing.

The Soul of Wit: Flash Fiction Writing
Taught by Tom Andes • Wednesdays from 7 – 9 p.m. • Starts Sept. 18 for eight weeks
This class will examine the short, short stories of celebrated writers and will help students write fiction pieces under 2,000 words through workshops and tutorials.

Writing the Essay as Story: Creative Nonfiction
Taught by Peyton Burgess • Thursdays from 7 – 9 p.m. • Starts Sept. 19 for eight weeks
Students will workshop one creative essay that utilizes research and a strong personal voice in order to not only entertain the reader, but also to make the reader feel smarter.

Your Magic Words: Crafting Poetry
Taught by Vince Cellucci • Fridays from 6 – 8 p.m. • Starts Sept. 20 for eight weeks
This workshop will help students understand the language of poetic magic and the crafting of poetry. Classes will focus on reading and analysing poems, and writing and work-shopping students' poems.

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Where: Loyola campus, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday Bobet Hall, Rm 341. Thursday, Marquette Hall, Rm 406.
Cost: $250.00  
Open to: Adults (21+) and is not for Loyola credit. Participants must not be currently enrolled as full-time students.
Sign up: Send your check to Walker Percy Center, 6363 St. Charles Avenue, Box 157, New Orleans, LA 70118. Please include your email address or phone number and indicate which course you are signing up for.
For further information: e-mail lwi@loyno.edu or call 504-931-9902.

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Teacher biographies

Tom Andes was born and raised in New Hampshire, and has lived on both coasts and in New Orleans. His work has appeared in numerous periodicals and in the Best American Mystery Stories series, and he has taught writing privately and at San Francisco State University and the ADVANCE Program for Young Scholars in Natchitoches, LA.

Patricia Brady came to New Orleans in 1961 and never went away. A former director of publications at the Historic New Orleans Collection, she has published several biographies, including those of Martha Washington and Julien Hudson.

Peyton Burgess was born in Richmond, Virginia and received an MFA in fiction from New York University, where he taught undergraduate creative writing and worked as fiction editor for Washington Square Review. He is currently the fiction editor for New Orleans Review and his writing has appeared in Salon, Exquisite Corpse, The Faster Times, La Fovea, and Otis Nebula.

Vincent A. Cellucci wrote An Easy Place / To Die (City Lit, 2012). He also edited and contributed to both The Katrina Decameron (audiobook available through iTunes) and Fuck Poems an exceptional anthology (Lavender Ink, 2013). He teaches communication in the LSU College of Art + Design.

Anne Gisleson has been published in The Mississippi Review, the New Orleans Review,Constance, Muse Media, Gambit Weekly and the Great American Poetry Show Anthology. She has participated in residencies at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the New York Institute for Writers and has also received a Louisiana Division of the Arts grant and a Surdna Arts Teacher's Fellowship.

Stephen Rea is originally from Northern Ireland but has lived in New Orleans since 2004. A former national newspaper journalist in the UK, he is the author of the book Finn McCool's Football Club, a tale set against Hurricane Katrina centered around the Irish pub in Mid-City.

three of my favs @ underpass tomorrow

Fiction and Poetry by Min Kang, Dylan Krieger and Emily Nemens!

Chelsea's at 8! (Facebook event)

Min Kang is a failed chemistry major. She is a third-year poet at LSU. Her writing has been featured in Asia Literary Review, Santa Clara Review, and LSU's own New Delta Review. She co-coordinated the 5th Annual Delta Mouth Literary Festival with Jackie Kari and invited writers from the contiguous United States and Canada to read and perform in Baton Rouge.


Dylan Krieger frets and fucks in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she is currently earning her MFA in poetry and co-coordinating the Delta Mouth Literary Festival at Louisiana State University. Her heart and warm jackets, however, still reside in the Catholic stronghold of South Bend, Indiana, where she was born, baptized thrice, and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Notre Dame in 2012. As a Latin minor, she can attest she was indeed the highest there.

Emily Nemens is a third year fiction MFA and the newly appointed prose editor at The Southern Review, which means she'll probably be a third year for a while. Her fiction is in the current issue of The Gettysburg Review and on esquire dot com, and her political watercolors, including a new series, "Let's talk about sext," are on view at women of the 112th dot tumblr dot com.

author sarah car_july_14_br gallery sundays @ 4

Please join the Baton Rouge Gallery for a presentation and booksigning with reporter Sarah Carr featuring her new book, HOPE AGAINST HOPE, a moving portrait of school reform in New Orleans told through the eyes of a family, a teacher and a principal.

"It's work like this that makes journalism truly matter, that makes clear that reportage is not merely about fact and argument and theory, but about human lives in the balance. In Hope Against Hope, Sarah Carr has taken an open mind and a careful eye to the delicate, complicated issue of public education and the fading American commitment to equality of opportunity. She does so not by embracing ideological cant or political banter, but by following people through the schools of New Orleans, a city that is trying desperately to reconstitute and better itself after a near-death experience. Don't embarrass yourself by speaking further on American education without first reading this."—David Simon, creator ofThe Wire and Treme

“Of the many dreams and schemes for upgrading New Orleans after Katrina, the controversial, convulsive overhaul of the city’s public schools is the one that really happened. Sarah Carr offers readers a ringside seat on an attempted revolution. No one who cares about public education in America can afford to ignore this balanced and vivid account.”—Jed Horne, author of Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City 

In September 2005, just days after Katrina, the New Orleans school board placed its thousands of employees on unpaid leave. Three months later it effectively voted to fire them. And in November, the state legislature removed most of the city’s public schools from the control of the locally elected board and placed them in the Recovery School District, with key officials intending to turn them over to charter operators. They had plenty of evidence to support their case: the failure of nearly two thirds of the schools to meet the state’s minimum criteria for academic performance; the school district’s impending financial ruin; nearly $70 million in federal money not accounted for properly; the FBI investigators who moved into the school system offices to probe financial irregularities, crumbling facilities where hallways smelled of urine; the near complete abandonment of the public schools by the city’s middle and upper classes and the shocking disinvestment of those with power and money that ensued; the frustration and anger of many of those left behind; and the undervalued children who, taking stock of it all, not infrequently gave up.

Some call the education overhaul a clean slate and fresh start for one of the country’s worst school systems. Others describe it as disaster capitalism at its most flagrant and destructive. But regardless, the reinvention of New Orleans schools after Katrina became the nation’s most comprehensive test case for a school reform agenda favored by a diverse coalition including President Obama, hedge fund billionaires, and young idealists.

In HOPE AGAINST HOPE: Three Schools, One City, and the Struggle to Educate America’s Children, education reporter Sarah Carr tells the story of this reinvention through the varying perspectives and experiences of the people living it.

Over the course of a year, Carr immersed herself in the lives of veteran principal Mary Laurie, new teacher Aidan Kelly, and fourteen-year-old Geraldlynn Stewart and her family. She observed hundreds of classes, visited colleges with students, sat in on professional retreats and staff meetings, and shadowed her subjects late into the night.

The debate over urban education in America, crystallized in New Orleans, speaks to broad, deeply rooted tensions in our country over what the civil rights movement should look like in the 21st century, and who should lead it. It speaks to fundamental disagreements over how the push for racial equality should proceed, at a time when the end goal remains as elusive as ever. And it speaks to a nationwide loss of trust — in our public institutions, each other and ourselves. At its heart, HOPE AGAINST HOPE is the story of our community’s painful struggle — in the wake of one of the most tragic disasters in our history — to rebuild that trust.

Sarah Carr has written about education for the last twelve years, reporting on the growth in online learning in higher education, the battle over vouchers and charter schools in urban districts, and the struggle to educate China’s massive population of migrant children. Her work has been honored with numerous national awards and fellowships, most recently a Spencer Education Journalist Fellowship at Columbia University. She lives in New Orleans, where she covered schools for the Times-Picayune. Hope Against Hope is her first book.

tonelli digital broadside

in order to commemorate his bday poetry trip to nola
(and in collaboration with his son Miles' painting)
river writers releases its fifth digital broadside:
Chris Tonelli "Three Masks One River" from The Trees Around

($10/print + s/h) email for submissions or orders
designed by vincent a. cellucci

first digital broadside: Ben Lowenkron "Bone River Hymnal"

second digital broadside: Eric Elliott "The Graves We Dig"
third digital broadside: Christopher Shipman "Three Rivers"
fourth digital broadside: Christopher Shipman "Three Tragic Death Scenes"

chris tonelli visits nola

Poet Chris Tonelli reads twice this week in NOLA.  Please come out and support this traveling talent. This Gemini promises Gravitron poems and new work--

6/6/13         8PM

 
1501 St. Roch Ave

a poetry reading at the open art salon at 1501 St. Roch Ave. featuring Brad Richard, Chris Tonelli (bio below) and Megan Burns followed by an open mic. 

6/8/13         7PM

 

Kajun's Pub

Cold Cuts reading series

Tonelli reading with performer Erin Miley and fellow poet Vincent A. Cellucci

Chris Tonelli is one of the founding editors of Birds, LLC, an independent poetry press. He also founded and curates the So and So Series and edits the So and So Magazine. He is the author of four chapbooks, most recently No Theater (Brave Men Press) and For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press), and his first full-length collection is The Trees Around (Birds, LLC). New work can be found in or is forthcoming from jubilat, Fou, La Fovea, and Leveler. He works at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where he lives with his wife, Allison, and their two kids, Miles and Vera.