Past Programs | Directions to Casa Libre

Edge 45: a Reading Series of Emerging and Younger Writers
w/Debby Jo Blank, Lisa M. Cole, and Jessica Langan-Peck

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, June 13
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:

Debby Jo Blank is a primary care physician in Tucson, Arizona. She is the author of The Explosion of Binary Stars (Shearsman Books, 2012). Her medical training was in Boston at Tufts, Harvard and a three-year Sloan
Fellowship at MIT. She won the Faulkner Prize for Poetry in 2008 and has been short-listed for the Hippocrates Prize, the Black Lawrence Award, and was a finalist for both the St. Lawrence Award and the Joy Harjo Contest. In 2012, she was awarded the W.D. Snodgrass Fellowship. She studied in the MFA program at Lesley University. She has also studied writing at Sarah Lawrence, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Poetry Week of San Miguel de Allende, Iowa Writer's Workshop, ASU and as an Undergraduate at Stanford. She hikes in the Sonoran Desert in the American Southwest, a greenbelt of cacti, Palo Verdes, Mesquite, Cottonwoods, and other indigenous plants hardy enough to withstand the summer heat and the winter freeze. She has volunteered in hospice and at the Poetry Center of the University of Arizona.

Lisa M. Cole is a writer and artist who holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona’s Creative Writing program. She is the author of two chapbooks, "Tinder// Heart" and "The Bodyscape" both of which are forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She is currently transforming "Tinder//Heart" into a full-length collection. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the anthology, "Bound By the Secrets We Hide;" Nimble; Gloom Cupboard; Sawbuck; Snow Monkey; The Albion Review; Persona; The Foundling Review; Bluestream, and other publications. She was nominated for "Best of the Net" award for 2011 and she was the recipient of the Lois Nelson Award in Creative Nonfiction in 2005. Lisa's poetry reviews appear in Bone Bouquet, Press 1, Gently Read Literature, and Gloom Cupboard.

Jessica Langan-Peck is completing her MFA in fiction at the University of Arizona, where she also teaches writing and works on the Sonora Review. She is from New York, a considerably more humid place than this, and she writes about it often, along with bicycles, and potatoes. Her work has appeared in Splash of Red.

 

 

 

Next Edge Reading will be held July 18, 2012.

Past Edge Readings:

May 2012

Apr 2012

Mar 2012

Feb 2012

Jan 2012

Nov 2011

Oct 2011

Sept 2011

July 2011

June 2011

May 2011

April 2011

March 2011

February 2011

January 2011

 

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