#ArtLitPhx: Writing Sci-fi & Cli-Fi with Malik Toms

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Event Description:

Unnatural Disasters: Writing Sci-Fi and Cli-Fi in a Changing World with Malik Toms

Dates: Mondays, December 3 – 10, 2018, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Type: Generative Workshop, Lecture
Genre and Forms: Fiction, Science Fiction
Cost: $149 Regular, $135 ASU, $109 Student

To learn more and register, visit http://piper.asu.edu/classes/malik-toms/unnatural-disasters

About the Class
We sit on the edge of possibility. From Roddenberry’s sliding doors and tablet PCs to Atwood’s dystopian floods, our stories point the way to possible futures. This is a class about writing those futures. Participants will explore the basic elements of creating strong fiction and learn how to weave those elements into the extraordinary worlds we carve out of fringe science and the environmental issues shaping our tomorrows. Participants will engage with existing genre work ranging from Bacigalupi to Zelzany to learn the finer points of craft. Then participants will create new or revisit old works of fiction with an eye towards the future.

About the Instructor
Malik Toms was born and raised in Harlem, New York, and is a 20+ year veteran of the pen and keyboard. He did his undergraduate work in Sociology at Iowa State University, working as a drug rehabilitation counselor before returning to college to pursue a graduate degree in Creative Writing. He published his first short story at the age 18 after two years of “No thanks.” Since then he has worked as a freelance author, which is a bit like being a freelance mercenary minus all the bullets and moral ambiguity. His work has appeared in over thirty publications including multiple anthologies and a stand-alone novella. A graduate of Iowa State’s Creative Writing MFA program, Malik Toms polished his writing skills crafting cyberpunk and steampunk fantasies on the way to multiple Origin and Ennie award nominations including six Ennie wins. Malik also was part of the Shadowrun Returns video game team which won Diehard gameFan’s PC Game of the year in 2013. He is presently hard at work writing his first fantasy thriller. Malik currently lives in Arizona where he is regularly super-smashed by at least one of his three video game obsessed boys. When he isn’t writing, he’s teaching writing and sociology at community colleges throughout the Arizona desert, and maybe watching a lot of TV.

#ArtLitPhx: Borderlands Poetry

 

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Event Description:

Natalie Diaz and [archi]TEXTS present Borderlands Poetry: A Reading and Conversation with Eduardo C. Corral benefitting No More Deaths/No Más Muertes

Date(s): Monday, November 19, 2018, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Location: Pima Auditorium, Memorial Union, Arizona State University, 301 E. Orange St., Tempe, AZ 85281
Type(s): Conversation, Discussion, Lecture, Reading
Genre and Form(s): Multi-genre, Poetry
Cost: Free; Suggested donation to No Más Muertes

Live streaming will be available at the date and time listed at https://asunow.asu.edu/asulive

To make a donation to No Más Muertes, visit https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/nomoredeaths?code=asu

To learn more and RSVP, visit http://piper.asu.edu/classes/eduardo-c-corral/borderlands-poetry

About the Conversation
What are the physical and metaphysical conditions of borders and borderlands? How do borders span the imaginary, emotional, and physical landscapes of the human condition? Join a conversation and reading with poet and educator, Eduardo Corral, exploring the imaginative, bodily, societal, political, emotional, physical, and linguistic impacts of borders to us as human beings, our connections, and our artistic bodies of work.

Fundraising for No Más Muertes
This conversation benefits No Más Muertes (No More Deaths), a humanitarian organization based in southern Arizona dedicated to increasing efforts to stop deaths of migrants in the desert. Their mission is to “end death and suffering in the Mexico–US borderlands through civil initiative: people of conscience working openly and in community to uphold fundamental human rights” (No Más Muertes).

About Eduardo C. Corral
Eduardo C. Corral is the author of Slow Lightning, which won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. His second book, Guillotine, will be published by Graywolf Press in 2020. He’s the recipient of Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Holmes National Poetry Prize and the Hodder Fellowship, both from Princeton University. He teaches in the MFA program at North Carolina State University.

Presented by [archi]TEXTS and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at ASU

Original photo credits: Sonoran desert by No Más Muertes; Eduardo C. Corral by Matt Valentine.

#ArtLitPhx: ASU Undergraduate Writers Showcase

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Event Description:

Join the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing for our second-annual ASU Undergraduate Writers Showcase, Thursday, November 15, 2018 at the Piper Writers House (450 E Tyler Mall, Tempe, AZ 85281) from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.!

To RSVP or submit your work, visit our website at http://piper.asu.edu/events/2018/asu-undergraduate-writers-showcase. The deadline for submissions is October 19, 2018.

While encouraged, RSVPs are purely for the purposes of monitoring attendance, gauging interest, and communicating information about parking, directions, and other aspects of the event. This event is open to the public and free.

A final line-up of readers will be announced November 1st.

#ArtLitPhx: Meet Your Literary Community

#artlitphxMeet Your Literary Community

Event Description:

Meet your literary community at the Open Air Market at the Phoenix Public Market Saturday, October 6, 2018 from 8:00 a.m to 12:00 p.m.

Featuring the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Wasted Ink Zine Distro, Cardboard House Press, PC Rising, Superstition Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Lux Undergraduate Creative Review, Normal Noise and more.

Additional space will be provided for local authors and other literary organizations and groups to engage with the community. If you’re interested in participating, learn more by visiting our website at http://piper.asu.edu/events/meet-your-community.

More information about activities and programs will be announced soon.

#ArtLitPhx: Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing: Poetry Reading with Carolina Ebeid

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Event Description:

The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and Changing Hands proudly present a poetry reading with Carolina Ebeid on First Friday, September 7, 2018 at Changing Hands Phoenix (300 W Camelback Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85013) at 7 p.m. This event is open to the public and free.

To learn more and RSVP, visit https://piper.asu.edu/events/carolina-ebeid/poetry-reading

Between Inventory and Invention with Carolina Ebeid takes place the following day on Saturday, September 8, 2018 at the Piper Writers House (450 E Tyler Mall, Tempe, AZ 85281). To learn more about Carolina’s class, visit https://piper.asu.edu/classes/carolina-ebeid/list-poem-workshop.

About the Book
You Ask Me to Talk About the Interior emerges out of the ontological shock and double-bind of there being a world (rather than nothing at all), and inhabiting this world that “depends on violence.” Still, Carolina Ebeid writes, “I have wanted / to make you something // beautiful.” Drawing on influences such as Roland Barthes’s notion of the punctum (the photographic detail that pierces the viewer) to the repertoire of circles and twirls––the veronicas––bullfighters make with the red cape to attract the bull, Ebeid explores a poetics that is at once intricate and intimate. The poems in this book move by way of metaphors and poetic turns that reveal and wound; they cover territories ranging from personal confession and diagnosis to political catastrophes such as war and exile. Witnessing again to the lyric as art of ethical reckoning, each poem in You Ask Me to Talk About the Interior is an ardent fathoming of our most interior selves, each poem in Ebeid’s long-awaited first collection is a momentary “allegory for the soul.”

About the Author
Carolina Ebeid’s work appears widely in journals such as The Kenyon Review, Crazyhorse, jubilat, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry, and others. She holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers, and has won awards and fellowships from the Stadler Center for Poetry, CantoMundo, The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Academy of American Poets. She was awarded an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry for 2015.

She is a PhD candidate in the University of Denver’s creative writing program, where she serves as Associate Editor of the Denver Quarterly. Her first book, You Ask Me To Talk About The Interior, was published by Noemi Press in 2016 as part of their Akrilica series. Poets & Writers Magazine selected You Ask Me To Talk About The Interior as one of the ten best debut collections in 2016. She is currently at work on a book project entitled Hide.

Carolina grew up in West New York, NJ, and now lives in Denver. Her fellow travelers include the poet Jeffrey Pethybridge and their son Patrick; together they edit Visible Binary.

#ArtLitPhx: Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing: Summer Social Fundraiser

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Event Description:

Swing back into the literary season with a casual community get-together at our Summer Social Fundraiser, Saturday, August 25, 2018 at Changing Hands Phoenix (300 W Camelback Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85013) from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

To learn more and RSVP, visit http://piper-center-summer-social.eventbrite.com

Silent auction items include poetry consultations with visiting writers Carolina Ebeid and Dan Beachy-Quick, special gifts from Piper Center staff members, registrations to Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference and NonfictioNOW, and more.

While there will be a brief welcome from Piper Center Director and Arizona inaugural Poet Laureate Alberto Álvaro Ríos at 6:30 p.m., drop by any time to enjoy a beverage with fellow writers and readers, meet the Piper Center staff, and learn more about all of the exciting events we have planned for the upcoming year. Light refreshments will be provided. There will also be book giveaways, swag, and a silent auction featuring editing consultations, exclusive access to classes and visiting faculty, and more.

Please note that, while encouraged, RSVPs are purely for the purpose of attendance monitoring and gauging interest. You do not need to bring your registration or RSVP to the event. You do not need to register or RSVP to attend. This event is open to the public and free.

#ArtLitPhx: Diana Arterian and Douglas Manuel Poetry Reading

Poets Diana Arterian and Douglas Manuel, one of our very own Superstition Review contributors, will read from their latest works–Playing Monster :: Seiche and Testify–on Monday, April 30, 2018 at Valley Bar (130 N Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85004) at 6:30 pm. Please note this event is 21+.

About the Books:

Playing Monster :: Seiche was the Editrix’s Pick for the 1913 Press Prize for First Books in 2016. This is a book-length poem weaving many threads, but predominantly childhood experiences with an abusive father and, as an adult, increasingly aggressive acts made toward the speaker’s mother by strange men. Playing Monster :: Seiche is a piece of noir poetics. It is memoir. It is documentary.

A book of elegiac ambivalence, Testify’s speaker often finds himself trapped between received binaries: black and white, ghetto and suburban, atheism and Catholicism. In many ways, this work is a Bildungsroman detailing the maturation of a black man raised in the crack-laden 1980s, with hip-hop, jazz, and blues as its soundtrack. Rendered with keen attention to the economic decline of the Midwest due to the departure of the automotive industry, this book portrays the speaker wrestling with his city’s demise, family relationships, interracial love, and notions of black masculinity. Never letting anyone, including the speaker, off the hook, Testify refuses sentimentality and didacticism and dwells in a space of uncertainty, where meaning and identity are messy, complicated, and multivalent.

About the Authors:

Diana Arterian is the author of Playing Monster :: Seiche (1913 Press, 2017), the chapbooks With Lightness & Darkness and Other Brief Pieces (Essay Press, 2017), Death Centos (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013), and co-editor of Among Margins: Critical & Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics (Ricochet, 2016). A Poetry Editor at Noemi Press, her creative work has been recognized with fellowships from the Banff Centre, Caldera, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo, and her poetry, essays, and translations have appeared in Asymptote, BOMB, Black Warrior Review, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. Born and raised in Arizona, she currently resides in Los Angeles where she is a doctoral candidate in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. She holds an MFA in poetry from CalArts, where she was a Beutner Fellow.

Douglas Manuel was born in Anderson, Indiana. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University and a MFA from Butler University where he was the Managing Editor of Booth a Journal. He is currently a Middleton and Dornsife Fellow at the University of Southern California where he is pursuing a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing. He has been the Poetry Editor of Gold Line Press as well as was one of the Managing Editors of Ricochet Editions. His work is featured on Poetry Foundation’s website and has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Los Angeles Review, Superstition Review, Rhino, North American Review, The Chattahoochee Review, New Orleans Review, Crab Creek Review, and elsewhere. His first full length collection of poems, Testify, was released by Red Hen Press in the spring of 2017.

About the Piper Center
Diana and Doug’s reading is presented as part of the Distinguished Visting Writer Series by the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University, a home for writers, readers, and the literary community, offering talks, readings, classes, workshops, and other literary events and programs

Contributor Update: Alberto Rios and Nogales Gallery receive Arts awards

Hilltop LogoNogales, AZ has once again returned to the state’s artistic spotlight. On the weekend of Feb 13th, its Hilltop Gallery was announced as a finalist in the 2018 Governor’s Arts Awards. These awards are presented by Arizona Citizens for the Arts in partnership with the office of the Governor. They are based on the significance of the nominee’s achievements and contributions, the range of individuals and groups served by these contributions, and the degree of dedication that the nominee has to the arts. Since 1981, upwards of 200 awards have been presented to various artists and other individuals, cultural groups and organizations, and businesses.

The Hilltop Gallery is one of three finalists in the Arts in Education (Organization or School) category. These and other honorees were announced at a reception on Feb 6th, and on March 22nd in Phoenix, at the 37th annual Governor’s Arts Awards dinner and celebration, the winners will be announced.

The Hilltop Gallery, founded in 1968, is the region’s only permanent art collection. Its exhibits and education galleries focus on the variety of cultures from both the U.S and Mexico. The Gallery often collaborates on events with other local institutions and centers, such as the Consulate of Mexico. It also organizes art classes for the community, in addition to special corporate art shows for local business sponsors from June to August. One of its upcoming exhibits (March 5), is titled Faith Posey & friends- International Day of the Woman (mixed). If you are interested in becoming a Gallery Member, call 520-287-5515 for more information.

At this same March 22nd event, Alberto Alvaro Rios, also from Nogales, will be presented with the 2018 Shelley Award. This award, in honor of former Arizona Commission on the Arts Executive Shelley Cohn, is presented to an individual who, through innovative effort to create or support beneficial public policy, has advanced the arts in Arizona. Past award winners include Terry Goddard, past Phoenix mayor; Shirley Estes, builder of the Ventana Canyon Resort and community leader; and Katie Dusenberry, previous board chair of the Arizona Theater Company.

Rios is Arizona’s first poet laureate, and artistic director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University. He received his BFA in 1974 and his MFA in creative writing in 1979, both from the University of Arizona. His many volumes of poetry include A Small Story About the Sky (Copper Canyon Press, 2015), The Dangerous Shirt (Copper Canyon Press, 2009), and The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2002), which was nominated for the National Book Award. Some of his other works include Capirotada: A Nogales Memoir (University of New Mexico Press, 1999), The Curtain of Trees: Stories (University of New Mexico Press, 1999), and The Iguana Killer: Twelve Stories of the Heart (Blue Moon and Conference Press, 1984), which won the Western States Book Award. His work has made appearances in more than ninety major national and international literary anthologies, like the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.

Rios also contributed to Issue 6 of Superstition Review where several of his poems and an interview are available to read.

Congratulations, Alberto!

 

#ArtLitPhx: A Reading with Elena Passarello

 

Author, essayist, and actress Elena Passarello reads from her collection of essays Animals Strike Curious Poses on Friday, March 16th, 2018 on the back patio of the Piper Writers House (450 E Tyler Mall, Tempe, AZ 85281) at 7:00 p.m. An informal Q&A and book signing will follow the reading. This event is free and open to the public. RSVP here.

About the Book:

Beginning with Yuka, a 39,000-year-old mummified woolly mammoth recently found in the Siberian permafrost, each of these sixteen essays investigates a different famous animal named and immortalized by humans. Modeled loosely after a medieval bestiary, these essays traverse history, myth, science, and more, bringing each beast vibrantly to life.

For more information on Animals Strike Curious Poses, visit the publisher’s website or order it from your local independent bookstore.

About the Author: 

Elena Passarello is an actor, writer, and recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award. Her first collection Let Me Clear My Throat (Sarabande, 2012), won the gold medal for nonfiction at the 2013 Independent Publisher Awards and was a finalist for the 2014 Oregon Book Award. Her essays on performance, pop culture, and the natural world have been published in Oxford American, Slate, Creative Nonfiction, and The Iowa Review, among other publications, as well as in the 2015 anthologies Cat is Art Spelled Wrong and After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the Essay.

Passarello has performed in several regional theaters in the East and Midwest, originating roles in the premieres of Christopher Durang’s Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge and David Turkel’s Wild Signs and Holler. In 2011, she became the first woman winner of the annual Stella Screaming Contest in New Orleans. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon and teaches at Oregon State University.

#ArtLitPhx: “Cli-Fi Bodies, Heart-Born Worlds” with Lidia Yuknavitch

 

National bestselling author Lidia Yuknavitch presents her talk “Cli-Fi Bodies, Heart-Born Worlds” First Friday, March 2nd, 2018 in the Whiteman Hall at the Phoenix Art Museum (1625 N Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85004) at 7:00 p.m.

A growing number of contemporary Cli Fi novels are changing what we mean when we say dystopian fiction—Station Eleven, Borne, American War, Future Home of the Living God, and The Book of Joan are all examples where authors are asking how we might radically reinvent our relationship with the planet, each other, and ourselves. What if we loved the planet the way we claim to love our partners or children? What if being meant understanding our existence as relational to eco-systems and animals? What if that stuff we are made of, the matter of the cosmos and universe, isn’t as “out there” as we pretend; what if the stories inside of us, including our biology and physiology, our consciousness and emotions, have everything to do with what is around us? What if parallel universes or timelines—as reflected in new scientific discoveries as well as ancient indigenous forms of knowing—are informing our present tense? New directions in narrative help us ask more interesting questions about ourselves and the world—or worlds—we inhabit.

You can find out more information about about the event at at the Virginia G. Piper Center website and tickets here, but here are a few more details:

Lidia Yuknavitch is the author of the National Bestselling novels The Book of Joan and The Small Backs of Children, winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Award’s Ken Kesey Award for Fiction as well as the Reader’s Choice Award, the novel Dora: A Headcase, and three books of short stories. Her widely acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water was a finalist for a PEN Center USA award for creative nonfiction and winner of a PNBA Award and the Oregon Book Award Reader’s Choice. She founded the workshop series Corporeal Writing in Portland Oregon, where she also teaches Women’s Studies, Film Studies, Writing, and Literature. She received her doctorate in Literature from the University of Oregon. She lives in Oregon with her husband Andy Mingo and their renaissance man son, Miles. She is a very good swimmer.