Superstition Review’s Fourth Issue Reading Series, Second Reading

The second reading of the semester took place as part of the Homecoming festivities on the lovely Polytechnic Campus. It was lovely, sunny, but a bit colder than the last few days, and quite blustery. The wind was blowing things around and making it more than a little difficult for all of the departments and organizations with tables set up about their programs.

We hosted our program (thankfully indoors) in the absolutely beautiful facility of the Black Box theater in the Applied Arts Pavilion. Due to a shifting situation on where we wanted/were permitted to hold the reading, the location had changed multiple times, resulting in a series of emails updating our readers. Probably confused me more than anyone else really. Even though I am the reading series coordinator, I had never spent much time on the Polytechnic campus, and did not really have much conception of where all the places were located, though I did eventually find my way to where we needed to be.

I started off by welcoming everyone to the reading and introduced Patricia Murphy, our managing editor and staff advisor. She then proceeded to explain the mission of SR and how we work, operate the magazine, and take submissions.

I then was able to introduce Laura Tohe, who was kind enough to drive out from the Tempe campus to share the written word with interested attendees out at our event at the Polytechnic campus. Laura read a variety of poems, including some beautiful poems from her most recent book, Tseyi, Deep in the Rock, which included poetry in both Navajo and English. She followed this with some assorted other poems, including assorted poems from a collection she is developing that she is calling her Bluebook collection, named because she started them in a blue notebook.

Laura finished the event by reading us a piece of a short story she wrote for Phoenix Noir, a recently published collection of noir mysteries all set in the Phoenix metro area. Mrs. Tohe laughed as she told us that she had never before written a mystery, but when she asked the editor how she should do it, drugs, sex, and murder were apparently the basic ingredients. I truly enjoyed the excerpts she read, and plan on buying the anthology to read the rest of the tale.

SR Reading 2: featuring Laura Tohe

WHEN: Thursday, October 29 @ 4 p.m.

WHERE: Applied Arts Pavilion @ ASU Polytechnic Campus

The reading will take place as part of the 2009 Homecoming celebration, featuring events such as a free concert by Arizona rock band Authority Zero and the Taste of the East Valley food fair. For more information on the Homecoming festivities, visit the ASU Polytechnic Homecoming Website.

Superstition Review is proud to announce Reading 2 of our Fall Reading Series, which will feature award winning author Laura Tohe as part of the 2009 Homecoming celebration at ASU’s Polytechnic Campus.

A current resident of Mesa, AZ, Tohe has received high acclaim for her book Tséyi’ / Deep in the Rock: Reflections on Canyon de Chelly, which received the 2007 Arizona Book Association’s Glyph Award for Best Poetry and Best Book and was named a Top Pick on the Southwest Books of the Year 2005 by the Tucson-Pima Public Library. She has also written a commissioned libretto, Enemy Slayer, A Navajo Oratorio, which made its world premiere as part of the Phoenix Symphony’s 60th Anniversary Season in February of 2008. She has also written essays, stories and children’s plays that have appeared in the U.S., Canada and throughout Europe.

Please click here for a video of Laura detailing her libretto Enemy Slayer, A Navajo Oratorio.

Raised by her family and relatives on the Navajo Indian reservation, Tohe grew up near the Chuska Mountains on the eastern border of the Diné homeland. She received her Bachelors degree from the University of New Mexico and her Masters and Doctorate degrees in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

For the event, she will read poems and an excerpt from her new short story in Phoenix Noir. Admission is free.

http://www.lauratohe.com