Fair Weather Reading Series

w/Alexandra, Lisa Birman, & Elizabeth Frankie Rollins

Saturday, April 23, 2015
7pm (doors at 6:30)
lemonade and snacks served

Curator: Kristen E. Nelson
Location: outdoor courtyard
Description: This series celebrates LGBTQ writers, female writers, writers of color, emerging writers, and other underrepresented groups. Everyone is welcome to attend!

Sometimes there will be music. Sometimes there will be dancing. Sometimes there will be video. Sometimes there will be swimming. Sometimes there will be surprises. Sometimes there will be raffles. Sometimes there will be fancy food. Sometimes there will be fancy drinks. Sometimes it will rain and you should bring an umbrella. Sometimes it will be chilly and you should bring a blanket. It is called the Fair Weather Reading Series for all of these reasons and more.

Alexandra, a Russian poet and composer, was released from the Eloy Detention Center on April 21, 2016, after 444 days in detention with the support of Mariposas Sin Fronteras, Casa Mariposa, and Casa Libre en la Solana in Tucson, Arizona, who raised funds for her $5,000 bond. Over 50 people, many of whom are writers themselves, contributed to her campaign. You can read some of her poems in the Huffington Post, here.

Lisa Birman is the author of For That Return Passage—A Valentine for the United States of America , co-editor of the anthology  Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action , and has published several chapbooks of poetry, including deportation poems. Her work has appeared in Revolver, Floor Journal, Milk Poetry Magazine, Trickhouse, Poetry Project Newsletter, and not enough night. Lisa served as the Director of the Summer Writing Program at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics for twelve years. How To Walk Away is her first novel.

Elizabeth Frankie Rollins has published a collection of short fiction, The Sin Eater & Other Stories (Queen’s Ferry Press, 2013). Of this book, Publisher’s Weekly wrote, “Unsettling imagery and hauntingly beautiful language characterize these stories, as ephemeral and indefinable as dreams.” Also, she has work in The Fairy Tale Review, Sonora Review, Conjunctions, Drunken Boat, The New England Review,and Green Mountains Review, among others. In 2007, Rollins received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, and in 2003, she won a Prose Fellowship from the New Jersey Arts Council. She teaches fiction and composition writing at Pima Community College.