When: Thursday, 24 March 2022, 5:00 PM Eastern Time Where: Zoom Attendance is FREE. Description: In Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy famously declares that “All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This event features six Vine Leaves Press authors whose books offer distinct pictures of familial disarray and its repercussions. Each author will read briefly from their work, followed by a Q & A session with questions from the moderator and participants. Featured books:
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When: Thursday, March 24, 2022, 7:00pm-8:00pm EDT
Where: Zoom. Click here to access. In both fiction and memoir the saying “Write what you know” holds strong allure…but is it really that simple? Join Ian M. Rogers, Gina Troisi, Anthony D’Aries, and Elaina Battista-Parsons as they discuss transposing real-life events on to the page to create something distinct and powerful. Whether it be reluctance to reveal our own embarrassing truths or worries about how the people in our lives will react, we'll explore the hazards that come with bridging the gap between art and real life. This event is part of SMOL, the Small Press Book Fair. Join via Zoom. Attendance is free and limited to the first 100 participants. Please join an evening of poetry with two former Poet Laureates of Santa Barbara, David Starkey and Paul Willis on Tuesday, October 5 at 7 p.m.
To attend this event, please click here. To view this event on YouTube, please click here.
What is 'bad-assery'? More than simply a mood, tone, theme, or mechanical approach, surreptitiously, imperceptibly this new verve far beyond the quaint, drawing-room politeness of traditional verse has taken hold of the poem and shaken it free from its place as artistic expression of rarified intellectualism and mollycoddle elitism. No longer is the poet everyone, as Walt Whitman claimed, but everyone is a poet; now being a bard is no-holds-barred. And with this, arguably, has come greater vulnerability, honesty and perceptiveness as well as a will to treat all of life in contemporary verse, while also breaking down poetry's performative pretenses. This reading brings together three of the finest practitioners of Bad-assery today, Annmarie O'Connell, Andreas Fleps and Phill Provance, for a reading of their work followed by a discussion what Bad-assery and the Bad-ass means for poetry today and in the future.
Phill Provance is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Extra info: Meeting ID: 990 4790 9417 Passcode: 793818 One tap mobile +13126266799,,99047909417#,,,,*793818# US (Chicago) +19292056099,,99047909417#,,,,*793818# US (New York) Dial by your location +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 929 205 6099 US (New York) +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) Meeting ID: 990 4790 9417 Passcode: 793818 Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/aeJh03tyTv
Martha will be teaching three writing workshops in March and April: North Texas RWA: The Road to Flaming Great Dialogue Starts With Growing Great Characters! 2-hour Zoom workshop: 12 p.m. EST (9 a.m. PST/11 a.m. CST), free for members, $20 for non-members There’s no way your character can authentically voice a fabulous comeback, desperate plea or brilliant courtroom argument until you know exactly how s/he operates! Through discussion and writing exercises in which you’ll actively work on your own characters and scenes, Martha Engber, author of GROWING GREAT CHARACTERS FROM THE GROUND UP will first explain how to grow your characters, whether for a memoir, novel, screenplay or other project. Then she’ll teach you the secret to fantastic dialogue that leads to exciting, unforgettable scenes where your characters truly speak for themselves! Las Vegas Writers Conference April 8 - 10 9 a.m. Fri., April 9: Flaming Good Dialogue: How to Create Unforgettable Characters Through Exchanges That Singe You think you’ve got fantastic, unique, bestselling characters? You’ll have to prove that to readers, not only through your characters’ actions, but also by what they say, how and when they speak is almost as important as what words they use. In this workshop, you’ll not only learn how to sidestep the most common dialogue pitfalls, including why characters all too often wind up sounding alike, but also how to employ the five techniques that will make your characters unique and eminently believable. 11 a.m. Sat., April 10: The Little Red Riding Hood Dilemma: What Kind of Publisher to Aim for, Big, Medium/Small, Self (Publishing) Over 300,000 books a year are published in the United States alone. That intense competition pushes authors toward three avenues: publication through a big publisher, a medium or small publisher, or self publishing. This workshop will offer the advantages and disadvantages to each, while helping participants form a concrete path for their current project that includes resources for pursuing that route. In anticipation of so many of your stories pouring fourth as a result, and to encourage them, she's offering the bellow giveaway. Entry is easy! Follow her on Facebook or Instagram and under the post featuring the below flyer, tell her what you're currently working on. If you've always wanted to write, enter! If you have loved ones who aspire to pen stories, pass on the news!
When: February 16, 2021 @ 5:00 PM PST Where: This is a virtual event: RSVP and attend here! ABOUT THE BOOKS
The poems in Jennifer Knox’s darkly imaginative collection, Crushing It, unearth epiphanies in an unbounded landscape of forms, voices and subjects―from history to true crime to epidemiology―while exploring our tenuous connections and disconnections. From Merle Haggard lifting his head from a pile of cocaine to absurdist romps through an apocalypse where mushrooms learn to sing, this versatile collection is brimming with dark humor and bright surprise. Alongside Knox’s distinctive surrealism, Crushing It also reveals autobiography in poems about love, family, and adult ADHD, and Knox’s empathetic depictions of the ego’s need to assert its precious, singular “I” suggest that a self distinct from the hive, the herd, the flock, is an illusion. With clear-eyed spirit, Crushing It swallows all the world, and then some. In Meg Johnson’s third full length collection, Without: Body, Name, Country, strange experiences become familiar and familiar experiences become strange as a human body, a sense of self, and an entire nation all teeter toward the verge of destruction. In daring poems and intimate flash nonfiction pieces, Johnson portrays a world that is corrupt yet full of possibilities. Sometimes frightening, sometimes funny, one woman’s struggles with health, identity, and politics reveal universal adversity, longing, and wildness. Reading this book is to climb “a spiral staircase in a tower full of fun house mirrors.” Without: Body, Name, Country is the book you didn’t know you needed. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Jennifer L. Knox is the author of four books of poems: Days of Shame & Failure (Bloof Books, 2015), The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway (Bloof, 2010), Drunk by Noon (Bloof, 2007), and A Gringo Like Me (Soft Skull Press, 2005, Bloof, 2007). Known for their dark, imaginative humor, her poems have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Granta, McSweeney’s and four times in the Best American Poetry series. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Jennifer grew up in Lancaster, California—home to Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, and the Space Shuttle. She studied film and glassblowing at Alfred University, then earned BA in English at the University of Iowa, where she attended the undergraduate Writer’s Workshop. She earned her MFA from New York University. Her honors include three Milwaukee Poetry Slam champion titles and an Iowa Arts Council Fellowship for her crowdsourced poetry project, Iowa Bird of Mouth. Jennifer lives in central Iowa, where teaches at Iowa State University and in a series of private poetry writing classes online. Meg Johnson is the author of the books Inappropriate Sleepover (The National Poetry Review Press, 2014), The Crimes of Clara Turlington (Vine Leaves Press, 2015), and Without: Body, Name, Country (Vine Leaves Press, 2020). Without: Body, Name, Country was nominated for the 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards. The Crimes of Clara Turlington won the 2015 Vignette Collection Award. Inappropriate Sleepover was the runner-up for the Rousseau Prize for Literature. Both books were also NewPages Editor's Picks. Meg's poems have appeared in Hobart, Nashville Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Puritan, Sugar House Review, Verse Daily, and others. Her nonfiction has appeared in BUST, Ms. Magazine, The Good Men Project, and others. When: Thursday, March 4, 2021, 6:00pm EST to 7:00pm EST Where: Join vis Zoom https://tinyurl.com/y6zqdrcu (Attendance is limited to 100 people.) Having one’s work labeled “experimental” comes with the stigma of being difficult, outlandish, or just plain unpleasant to read while ignoring the potential and innovation these works bring to the literary scene. On the contrary, so-called “commercial” works are often overlooked as cliché, dumbed-down, or lacking in artistic value despite the immense enjoyment they bring to millions of people. The dichotomy between commercial and experimental is ultimately limiting for writers in all genres, who all too often feel pressured to avoid these extremes. These eight authors from Vine Leaves Press balance experimental and commercial elements in fiction and nonfiction to create work that both entertains and stimulates. How can writers innovate without alienating readers, and how can traditional narrative elements be revitalized to create unique works? This online Zoom event features five-minute readings from eight prose writers:
A Q&A will follow as time allows. Attendance is limited to 100 people, and we hope to see you there. WHEN? Friday, March 5, 2021, 9:00 PM to 11:00 PM EST As The Guardian reported in 2018, poetry is experiencing a revival throughout the English-speaking world, driven mostly by millennials. And yet, with a few notable exceptions like Rupi Kaur, the American poetry community is still mostly dominated by the same faces and names of the old guard. Moreover, much as it has been throughout its history, the poetic status quo remains cliquish and niche-oriented, whereas millennials themselves are the most egalitarian, most community-oriented generation yet to reach adulthood. This SMOL online reading, sponsored by Vine Leaves Press, aims to help make American poetry more reflective of its growing readership by bringing together six millennial poets of various styles, backgrounds and geographical origins for a reading of their latest work and a discussion of where they think American poetry is headed. Readers/Panelists will include:
Statement of Merit: It is often the case that conference readings/panels base themselves around similarities between poets, such as publisher, gender/sex, race, theoretical school, region, socio-economic class, etc. This has the benefit of giving a very acute view of certain corners of poetry, but that view can also be exclusionary in its narrowness. In contrast, this reading/panel will comprise poets who have little, ostensibly, in common except their age group and nationality but who, in true Millennial spirit, value each other’s work and poetry generally, with an eye toward providing their audience with an accurate overview of where American poetry is today. Though they are not all Vine Leaves Press authors, the six poets participating in this reading/panel have been brought together by the publisher in the service of providing a sampling of what’s next for American poetry as the Internet makes communication and collaboration across regions, genres and approaches ever stronger. Attendance Information:
Phill Provance is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Topic: SMOL Exclusive: Six Millennials from Across the U.S. Time: Mar 5, 2021 09:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting: Click Here Meeting ID: 926 1336 3208 Passcode: 249982 One tap mobile +13126266799,,92613363208#,,,,*249982# US (Chicago) +13017158592,,92613363208#,,,,*249982# US (Washington D.C) Dial by your location +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington D.C) +1 929 205 6099 US (New York) +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) Meeting ID: 926 1336 3208 Passcode: 249982 Find your local number: Click Here |
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