Past Programs | Directions to Casa Libre

Edge 50: a Reading Series of Emerging and Younger Writers
w/Cybele Knowles, Sueyeun Juliette Lee & Bus Stop Dreaming (Denise Uyehara/Yvonne Montoya/Adam Cooper-Terán)

Curator: Melissa Buckheit Melissa Buckheit's Bio

A note from the curator: I have often wanted to listen to authors who are in the same place in their career as myself--emerging, published in journals, with a chapbook and/or a first full-length book, still growing but full of passion, new ideas, and an edge. But there is often infrequent opportunity for this; in fact, I have often felt disappointed in the lack, that such an open community might often be circumscribed in its literary programming.  Additionally, featuring emerging writers engages other young as well as established writers, to support, frequent and attend Casa Libre and other writing events. This cycle creates the foundation for a writing community which self-generates, remains true, open, and allows many voices the opportunity for visibility and being heard. I want Tucson to be an artistic community which includes and features many voices and peoples. Literature is the province of communication, but also reflectivity, the reflection and representation of all our narratives and of new narratives and ideas, voices which are challenging and also challenge us.

Wednesday, January 23
7:30 p.m.
Suggested Donation: $5

Come to Edge: A Reading Series of Emerging and Younger Writers. Edge is a series of local and national writers and cross-genre artists, emphasizing diversity of narrative, identity and literary source. Its purpose is to create community, visibility and voice for emerging and younger writers. Broadsheets of the authors' work will accompany each reading. Books and journals will be available for purchase and signing by the authors. Refreshments will be available after the reading.

Readers:

Cybele Knowles writes essays, stories, and poems. Her writing has appeared in Diagram, Spiral Orb, Pindeldyboz, The Asian Pacific American Journal, Faucheuse, and The Prose Poem. An essay is forthcoming in The Destroyer. She grew up in New York and California, and studied at U.C. Berkeley and the University of Arizona. She lives in Tucson, where she works as a programs coordinator at the UA Poetry Center.

 

Sueyeun Juliette Lee grew up three miles from the CIA. She received her MFA in Creative Writing for Poetry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she also completed a Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies. Currently, Sueyeun lives in Philadelphia, PA, where she is completing a doctorate from Temple University. She studies aesthetic theory and Asian American poetry's connections to the visual arts. In 2006, she launched Corollary Press, a chapbook series devoted to multi-ethnic innovative writing, and has since released twelve titles, including work by Douglas Kearney, Lynn Xu, Bhanu Kapil, Brandon Shimoda, and Jai Arun Ravine. Her own poetry frequently investigates how racial logics are produced and circulated across cultures. Her first book, That Gorgeous Feeling (Coconut Press) examines these circulations through celebrity figures like Bruce Lee, Kim Jong-Il, Toshiro Mifune, and Margaret Cho. Her second book, Underground National (Factory School), centers on the divided nation of Korea, reworking the various rhetorics that have come to define this place. Her chapbooks include Perfect Villagers (Octopus Books), Mental Commitment Robots (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), No Comet, That Serpent in the Sky Means Noise (The Black Warrior Review), A Primary Mother (Least Weasel) and the digital chapbooksTrespass Slightly In (Coconut) and What One Wants and What Will Be Prescribed / Without One Single Center Forever (The Drunken Boat). She is also the founding member of the North Asian American Poetry Collective, a group of six self-identified Asian American authors from a variety of social and geographical contexts who produce critical and creative work together. She has given readings and presentations at numerous arts and poetry institutions, including the Asian American Writers Workshop in NYC, The Kelly Writers House, the University of Santa Cruz, and California Institute of the Arts, and just completed a Visiting Professorship teaching for the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a contributing editor for the experimental journal EOAGH and a poetry reviewer for The Constant Critic. You can find her at silentbroadcast.com. 

Bus Stop Dreaming is a series of short, multi-disciplinary performances that will appear at community sites around Tucson in response to the ongoing deportations of thousands of undocumented immigrants Border Patrol. Bus Stop is a collaboration between documentary filmmaker Jason Aragon of Pan Left Productions and performance artist Denise Uyehara, in collaboration with Yvonne Montoya and video/audio artist Adam Cooper-Terán.  The project is inspired by interviews with residents of South Tucson.  This evening Yvonne and Denise will perform an excerpt from Bus Stop Dreaming in roving, mobile format.  They performed a larger segment at MOCA-Tucson in September of this year.  Bus Stop Dreaming is supported by the MAP Fund and the P.L.A.C.E./Open Society Fund from the Tucson Pima Arts Council.

Denise Uyehara is an award-winning performance artist, writer and playwright whose work has been presented in London, Tokyo, Helsinki, Vancouver and across the United States. A pioneering performance artist whose work the Los Angeles Times hails as “mastery [that] amounts to a coup de theater,” she often explores what marks our bodies as we cross borders of identity. She is the recipient of grants from the MAP Fund with Pan Left Productions and Jason Aragon, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, The National Performance Network Creation Fund, as well as The COLA Fellowship from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Her book Maps of City and Body: Shedding Light on the Performances of Denise Uyehara (Kaya) documents her recent works. She is a frequent university lecturer and a founding member of the Scared Naked Nature Girls. Find her at www.DeniseUyehara.com. Yvonne Montoya is a Tucson-based choreographer, dancer and artistic director. She is from Albuquerque, New Mexico. She studied dance at the University of Arizona where she received a BA in Spanish and an MS in Mexican American Studies.  Yvonne danced for Tucson modern dance companies FUNHOUSE Movement Theater, New ARTiculations Dance Theatre and Zeffirelli 8.  She also worked as a commissioned artist for “Undocumented Historias in the Desert of Dreams” co-produced by the Royal Society of the Arts, UK and the Fundación México.  In 2009, she founded Safos Dance Theatre where she works as a director, choreographer, and dancer.  Yvonne currently studies modern dance technique with Norman Walker. Adam Cooper-Terán is an award-winning visualist and performer from Tucson, Arizona. He is known as a prolific collaborator amongst writers, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, painters, poets, sex-pressionists, and circus troupes. Beginning his career in the non-profit arts, Adam made a name for himself as a volunteer designer and ultimately co-organizer of one of the largest public ceremonies in the Southwest, the annual All Souls Procession. His work has appeared across North America, in Europe and the Middle East, in the form of video installations, telematic rituals, and performance spectacles. He is the recipient of various grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and Tucson Pima Arts Council. In 2008 he was awarded a Lumie Award for Best Emerging Artist in Tucson, and in 2010, he was shortlisted for the Guggenheim You Tube Play competition. Find him at http://antral.net

Next Edge Reading will be held February 20, 2013.

Past Edge Readings:

Nov 2012

Oct 2012

Sept 2012

July 2012

June 2012

May 2012

Apr 2012

Mar 2012

Feb 2012

Jan 2012

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