Tasha Golden~Once you had Hands [8.2.16]9am on 97.1 FM WXOX

Tasha Golden will be joining me on the radio hour on Tuesday, August 2nd, 9am, 97.1 FM Louisville or streaming worldwide on artxfm.com .

Tune in to hear poems from her debut book “Once you had Hands” and discussion about the study of creative writing as an outlet for incarcerated and or abused teen women. Her story winds from a poplar songwriter who was increasingly approached by people that connected to her lyrics to a doctoral student of Public Health.

 

 

Tasha Golden is the frontwoman and songwriter for the critically acclaimed band Ellery (http://www.ellerymusic.com). Her songs have been heard in major motion pictures, TV dramas, radio, etc, and her prose and research have been published in Ploughshares, Pleaides, and Ethos Journal, among others. Her debut book of poetry, Once You Had Hands (Humanist Press, 2015) explores violence in both intimate relationships and religion. Currently a doctoral student in Rhetoric at the University of Louisville, Golden researches the impact of writing and the arts on public health, and leads creative writing workshops for incarcerated teen women.

“When ‘Christian’ attitudes, rituals, and abuses (physical and mental) are part of one’s formative experience of the richness of life itself, how does one extricate one- self from the perversion of this ‘religion’ yet affirm the glory and terror of existence? This book is a feral cry that invents the only form that can contain it; it’s a cry em- bodied in and ennobled by art, which doesn’t dilute but enhances its power. I am at a loss to describe, even from the outside, that power. I can only urge you to read it.”

– James Cummins, author of Still Some Cake

The book is available through humanist press

 

Additionally, Subterranean Phrases is making a quiet comeback in a new venue. August 15th will be the premier event featuring Ryan Werner and Gwen Beatty

Ryan Werner is the author of several short story collections and a novella. Of his work, Mary Miller (author of Big World and The Last Days of California) said, “Ryan writes with authority, skill, and passion, not only about the Midwest, but about youth and what it means to be young.” His work has appeared in the Indiana Review, The Rumpus, Smokelong Quarterly, [PANK], Entropy, Juked, and many other places of varying notoriety and popularity.

http://www.ryanwernerwritesstuff.com/

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Gwen Beatty is the author of the short story chapbook Kill Us On the Way Home (Passenger Side Books, 2015) and a forthcoming collection of personal essays. She is the founding editor of Moonsick Magazine, an online literary journal dedicated to publishing significantly female-identified people and non-binary folks. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Juked, Luna Luna, Paper Darts, and some anthology with Joyce Carol Oates.

http://www.gwenbeatty.com/

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Dreamland, August 15th, 8pm

 

Lee Pennington, Jill Baker, and Appalachian Newground [5.24.16]

Lee Pennington’s latest book of Poetry and stories, Appalachian Newground, Illustrated by Jill Baker, is the first book in 23 years and marks his 20th published.  He is 2 time Pulitzer nominee and Former Poet Laureate of Kentucky. Lee and Jill will both be joining me on the radio hour this Tuesday, 9am, on 97.1 WXOX louisville, artxfm.com (global).

“Those of us who know and love Lee Pennington’s work have waited 23 years for this book, and it was well worth the wait! Appalachian Newground , his twentieth book, holds the universe between its covers in the poems and short stories. You do not have to be from Appalachia to relate to the contents. He honors the land and people everywhere. There is something for each reader that will illuminate the mind, warm the heart, and touch the soul forever. It is beautifully illustrated by renowned artist, Jill Baker. Lee was Poet Laureate of Kentucky in 1984 and was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. This book will undoubtedly earn him another nomination! This is a book you must buy and keep close at hand when you need to read something beautiful and inspirational!” -Roberto Brown, Amazon Review 

LEE PENNINGTON is the author of 19 books including I knew a Woman (1977 Love Street Books) and Thigmotropism (1993 Green River Writers/Grex Press)–both nominated for Pulitzer Prize. He has had over 1300 poem published in more than 300 magazines in America and abroad. In 1984 he was designated Poet Laureate of Kentucky by the state legislature. He has had nine plays produced, wrote the script for The Moonshine War (MGM, 1970, starring Alan Alda, Richard Widmark, etc.), and has published thousands of articles in everything from Playgirl to Mountain Life and Work. Since 1990, through his video production company, JoLe Productions (joleproductions.com), Lee, along with his late wife, Joy, produced 23 documentaries including In Search of the Mudmen (1990), Wales: History in Bondage (1995), and Secret of the Stones (1998), Eyes that Look at the Sky: The Mystery of Easter Island (2001), The Mound Builders (2001), The Serpent Fort: Solving the Mystery of Fort Mountain, Georgia (2005), Let Me Not Drown on the Waters: Fred Rydholm, Michigan’s “Mr. Copper”(2008), Sometimes You Clean, Sometimes You Litter: The Amazing Warner Sizemore (2012), Room to Fly: Anne Caudill’s Album (2013). Lee is a graduate Berea College in KY and the University of Iowa. He holds two Honorary Doctor degrees: Doctor of Literature from World University, and Doctor of Philosophy in Arts from The Academy of Southern Arts and Letters. He taught for nearly 40 years, the last 32 as Professor of English and creative writing at University of Kentucky Jefferson Community College until he retired in 1999 He has traveled extensively (in all the United States, all the Canadian Provinces except one, and in 78 foreign countries). He lives with artist Jill Baker in Kratz House, a designated historic home, in Middletown, KY. For the past six years, he has served as president of the Ancient Kentucke Historical Association, a group dedicated to the study and research of pre-Columbian contact in the Americas. In June of 2013 the University of Louisville in Kentucky dedicated and opened THE LEE AND JOY PENNINGTON CULTURAL HERITAGE GALLERY which houses Pennington’s body of work.  Link to Lee’s Documentaries

Jill Baker’s driving force in life is to show the beautifully complex design of the world. The softness or power of color and light she observes is so much more than meets the eye, that it is only through realism, either impressionistic or hard edge, that a painting can approach it.

“I began creating art when I about 2 years old. According to my mother, I spent hours a day and used up reams of paper drawing quietly by myself throughout my childhood.

“I was driven to try to recreate what I saw. I was determined to capture the beautiful things I saw around me. Others saw what I did and encouraged me. My grandmother was a prolific artist and created big, impressionistic paintings of ladies on patios, and landscapes with dark woods and open plains with mountains. Teachers in schools made me take art; my mother saw that I had painting lessons all during my teens. My high school art teacher threatened that if I didn’t have a picture on the front of Post Magazine when I grew up that he would come back at night and rattle the paintbrushes in my studio.

“In high school I was called upon to create posters and program covers. Everyone in my class asked me to draw them. I helped make backdrops and paintings for school assemblies and hundreds of charity auctions. I realized that, along with the talent I had, came responsibilities.

“As I grew older, I felt guilty when I didn’t have the time to paint, raising children in Bowling Green, Kentucky. But I was driven to return to creating art, driven by the thousands of visual images in my head that needed to be put down on paper or painted.

“In the early 1970’s I was asked if I would like to illustrate a book for Jim Wayne Miller, and then for Frank Steele. Following the publication of those books, I was asked by Love Street Books to design a cover for a prize-winning book of poetry for Bruce Rogers, Minoan Starships. In Louisville, Lee Pennington saw my illustrations in Jim Wayne Miller’s book and asked his publisher if he could ask me to design the cover of his book of poetry called Songs of Bloody Harlan. I did that and it turned out beautifully – a large block print of a man standing on an Appalachian ridge, while the evil ghost of Bloody Harlan swirls around him and the pine trees he stands with. I then was asked to illustrate a few other books by Lee Pennington and he and Joy developed a friendship with my husband and me. We visited them and they us over the years, exchanging Christmas cards every year, with me always surprised to find my images printed on the front of Lee’s cards, to illustrate his yearly poem. Eventually, when I was single and Lee’s wife of 49 years died, we got together and now live in Louisville in Kratz House.

As a young mother and faculty wife, I showed my work in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and gradually to a wider audience in Kentucky. The State of Kentucky chose my work to hang in the capital and called me an official ‘Kentucky Artist.’ I was chosen to exhibit my work in Paris at a major exhibition of American Art. My work was at the Speed Museum in Louisville and, after attending the Academia di Belle Arti and having a solo show at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Italy I enjoyed a one-person show at the Parthenon in Nashville and a major show at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea.”

“I eventually moved to the SoHo district of New York City and earned my M.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, in Painting, in 1981. I use a variety of techniques in painting, from Old Masters’ to Impressionistic. The oil paintings I have been doing lately are impressionistic landscapes on canvas.

“But I have continued to illustrate books of poetry and prose and illustrated three of my own books, My Turn, Poems of Accord and Satisfaction and Elba Journal. The last book I illustrated, of course, is Lee’s new book of poetry, Appalachian Newground.”

 If you would like to keep up with literary events in the city, Please visit and subscribe to 502litnews, curated by the Louisville Literary Arts Board, and tune into the radio hour every Tuesday on 97.1 WXOX, artxfm.com. If you have a reading or book release in the Louisville area and would like to appear on the show, please email keeplouisvilleliterary@yahoo.com.

 

Write on,
Rachel Short, Host

Tina Parker @ ‘Flying out Loud’

 

“Tina grew up in Bristol, Virginia, and now lives in Berea, Kentucky, with her husband and two young daughters. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Another Offering (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and the full-length poetry collection Mother May I (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016). Her individual poems have been published in Appalachian Heritage, Now & Then, Still: The Journal, Rattle, and PMS: poemmemoirstory. In 2013, she received an Artist Enrichment grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women.”

Bio pulled From Tina’s website: HERE 

Tina will be on the radio hour on Tuesday, April 26th- 9am @ 97.1 FM [Louisville, KY] or artxfm.com across the globe.

We will be discussing her book, “Mother May I” and her Louisville reading for the Flying out Loud series that happens the second Monday of each month, 6pm, Sunergos Coffee. Tina will be back in town for the May reading, May 9th.

“In her debut collection Mother May I, poet Tina Parker writes about the universal worries and joys of motherhood with exacting insight–and an admirable lack of sentimentality. Her poems charm while seesawing through unflinching accounts of day-to-day family life and the honest ecstasy of a new motherhood, all more deeply felt after reading poems on miscarriage and fertility doctors. In the tradition of Wordsworth, Parker’s poems parent us all through “real language” of every day steeped in “vivid sensation.”

—Kathleen Driskell, poet, author of the best-selling Seed Across Snow and Kentucky Voices selection Next Door to the Dead”

Mackenzie Berry + Young Poets of Louisville

Mackenzie Berry, a senior at duPont Manual High School, is Founder and Executive Director of Young Poets of Louisville, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides a safe space for young people ages 13-19 to develop themselves through free writing workshops, youth poetry slams, and public readings. An alumnus of the Governor’s School for the Arts and the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, she organized and won the Louisville Youth Philanthropy Council’s first ever Poetic Philanthropy Youth Slam held at the 21c Museum in May 2015. She was the Poet Laureate of Thrivals 8.0 of the Louisville Idea Festival and has been featured on NPR through a segment on Young Poets of Louisville. Mackenzie is currently working on a chapbook entitled “Child’s Play” and plans to create various bodies of work in time to come

I will be interviewing Mackenzie on Tuesday at 9am on the radio hour: Keep Louisville Literary, 97.1 FM , WXOX  or live stream here 

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The final slam in March will be held at the Speed Art Museum (2035 S. 3rd St.). The slams also feature a young guest artist in a supportive and artistic environment. Admission is $5.

• Youth must be in high school or between the ages of
  13-19 in order to slam.
• Each participant must sign up at least one day prior to the slam here.
• Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
• Those participating in the slam should arrive no later than 6:45 p.m.

The top three winners of each slam will be able to participate in the Young Poets Final Slam in March which will determine the six young people who make the team that is seeking to represent Louisville at the Brave New Voices International Poetry Festival this summer in Washington, D.C. from July 12th-16th.

You can find the Young Poets of Louisville’s website here

Ryan Ridge + American Homes

Ryan Ridge is the author of the story collection Hunters & Gamblers, the poetry collection Ox, as well as the chapbooks 22nd Century Man and Hey, it’s America. His next book, American Homes, is forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press as part of their new 21st Century Prose series. His work can be found in places like PANK, Salt Hill, Tin House, McSweeney’s Small Chair, FLAUNT Magazine, The Santa Monica Review, Sleepingfish, and others. A former editor for Faultline Journal of Arts & Letters, Bull and others, he currently serves as a managing editor for Juked (http://www.juked.com). Ridge holds a BA in English from the University of Louisville and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Irvine.

Join us on 97.1 fm [Louisville] Tuesday Morning, 9am, to hear excerpts from the book. As we discuss Ryan’s writing and the inspiration that comes from the Union of states in which we reside, we might come to the conclusion of our greatness or our impending doom.

Not in Louisville, KY? no worries! stream live at artxfm.com

“Ryan Ridge inflects his anatomy of suburban interiors with a madcap, panoptic conceptualist idiom, and his readers will be left feeling they never gave nearly enough thought to the stuff that real, lived life comprises: walls, floors, doors, windows, garages, sheds, attics and basements. Ostensibly a tongue-in-cheek meditation satirizing the homogenization of contemporary domestic space, American Homes develops a truly heterogeneous literary architecture founded on the basis of formal dynamism and linguistic play.”––Evan Lavender-Smith
AMERICAN HOMES
“Ridge’s book explores the contradictions inherent in ideals of affluence and ownership, and does so admirably, without edging into sourness or satirical revenge killing. The humor is affable, and odd. Somewhere between Demetri Martin and Steven Wright, Jacques Tati and Wes Anderson, Ramon Gomez de la Serna and Georges Perec.”–Kyle Coma-Thompson, Electric Lit

To see more reviews and make a purchase, browse his catalogue, or simply give the website some hits, please visit: HIS WEBSITE HERE 

After you listen to the Radio hour, you may be so inspired that you would like to study craft with Ryan. YOU CAN= Saturday, March 12th

THE DEVIL’S IN THE DETAILS:
A CRAFT CLASS WITH
RYAN RIDGE
SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 2016
9:30 AM to Noon
PYRO GALLERY
900 E. MARKET STREET, LOUISVILLE, KY
$30 per persons
In this workshop, with prose stylist Ryan Ridge, participants will explore works by Ron Carlson, Elizabeth Tallent, and Ernest Hemingway with an eye toward their inventive use of objects to tell a story. Using this prose as inspiration, writers will create their own “set piece” story–one in which the smallest of salient details can have big, big meaning. The workshop may also appeal to poets looking to write short prose.
Pre-registration required
Log-on to Louisville Literary Arts’ website Scroll down to find the Pay Pal button!

UP next on keep Louisville Literary: Mackenzie Berry, organizer of the “Young Poets of Louisville” organization [March 15th]

Plus ++ Christopher McCurry [March 29th]

If you would like to appear on the radio hour, Contact Rachel Short at keeplouisvilleliterary@yahoo.com

 

Write on,

Rachel Short

 

 

 

Ready or Not, Here comes the LOVE WXOX

Join ART FM to Flip the Switch &
Begin Broadcasting on the FM Dial!

A new kind of radio station is hitting Louisville’s FM dial. ART FM has been feeling the love since receiving the WXOX call letters in 2015 and now the time has come to flip the switch on our FM transmitter!

On February 14th 2016 at 3:33pm ART FM will begin 24/7 broadcasting on the terrestrial dial at 97.1 FM. We invite you to our new studio in the SoBro neighborhood at 515 West Breckinridge Street to share this momentous occasion with us. The launch event will kick off at 2:00 p.m. with music and feature performances from some of ART FM’s talented pool of DJ’s.

WXOX 97.1 FM Signal Launch
Sunday, February 14th 2016
2:00 p.m.
We Flip the Switch @ 3:33 p.m.
515 W. Breckinridge St.

Keep Louisville Literary Radio hour is now Tuesdays at 9am

February 16th : Merle Bachman

February 23: ROOTS & WINGS

 

THE WANDERLUST WINTER GUIDE:
INKY AT THE The Bard’s Town
With NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK author Samrat Upadhyay, Kathleen Driskell, Carrie Jerrell, and Special Guest, Jeremy Paden

Also, be sure to sign up for the Writing Workshop, “Is My Poem Finished?”, led by Lynnell Edwards. It will be held on Saturday, February 13th, from 9:30 to 12:00 at Spalding University.

Samrat Upadhyay is the author of Arresting God in Kathmandu, a Whiting Award winner; The Royal Ghosts, which won the Asian American Literary Award; The Guru of Love, a New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year; and Buddha’s Orphans, a novel. His work has been translated into several languages. He has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and has appeared on BBC Radio and National Public Radio. A recipient of an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship in 2015, Upadhyay is the Martha C. Kraft Professor of Humanities at Indiana University. His most recent novel, The City Son, was shortlisted for the PEN Open Book Award.

Kathleen Driskell is an award-winning poet and teacher. Her newest poetry collection is Next Door to the Dead, a Kentucky Voices Selection, published by The University Press of Kentucky (June 2015). Her full-length poetry collectionSeed Across Snow (Red Hen, 2009) was listed as a national bestseller by the Poetry Foundation. Red Hen Press will publish her collection Blue Etiquette in Fall 2016.

Her poems have appeared in many nationally known literary journals including the Southern Review, North American Review, Shenandoah, and Rattle and are featured online on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and in American Life in Poetry. Her work has been anthologized in What Comes Down to Us: 20 Contemporary Kentucky Poets and The Kentucky Anthology.

Kathleen is professor of Creative Writing at Spalding University, where she also helps to direct the low-residency MFA in Writing Program. An Al Smith Fellow of the Kentucky Arts Council, Kathleen lives with her family in an old country church built before the Civil War.

Carrie Jerrell is the author of After the Revival, winner of the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and published by Waywiser Press. Carrie received her M.A. from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and her Ph.D. in English from Texas Tech University. She is an Associate Professor at Murray State University in Murray, KY, where she also coordinates the undergraduate creative writing program and teaches in the low-residency MFA program. She has been an artist-in-residence with the National Park Service and a recipient of grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Kentucky Arts Council.

Jericho Brown+InKY @ the Local Speed + LLA workshop + The radio hour gets a new time slot

Jericho Brown, one of five winners of the 80th annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, a juried prize that recognizes how literature can advance ideas about race, culture, ethnicity and shared humanity, will be visiting Louisville this week. He will be visiting Central High School for a lecture and Master Class with creative writing students and teachers. Then Mr. Brown will kick off the first InKY of the season with Louisville novelist, Kirby Gann.

The InKY reading series usually takes place at The Bardstown, but will be at the Local Speed for this round to accommodate a larger crowd.  There will be no open mic.

The Local Speed is located at 822 E. Market Street.

January 8th     7-9 pm

Jericho Brown’s website HERE

Kirby Gann’s website HERE 

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Saturday, January 9th

From the Louisville Literary Arts

Sign up for a query letter workshop on Saturday, January 9, from 9:30 to 11:30 at PYRO Gallery

“Mastering Your Query,” will be an informative, participative and productive query-letter workshop with literary agent, Alice Speilburg. Alice will discuss the structure of a query letter, tricks to improve it and tactics to avoid. Group members will write (or revise) a query letter for a book, and will receive in-class instruction and peer critiques. The goal of this workshop is to help participants create a polished query letter they’ll be proud to send to agents and publishers.

Thanks to our artist friends at PYRO Gallery, at 909 E. Market Street, for loaning their creative space for this LLA workshop.

Pre-registration is required for this workshop— $30 per person. Pay by credit card. Or, send a check to Louisville Literary Arts at 1860 Mellwood Ave, Studio 123, Louisville, KY 40206

Alice is a literary agent at Speilburg Literary Agency and has worked in publishing since 2008. She is a member of Romance Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, and Society of Children’s Book Authors and Illustrators, and she is a board member of Louisville Literary Arts. She is currently building her client list and represents a wide range of fiction and nonfiction. For more information, please visit her website: or connect with her on Twitter @AliceNicoleH.

And Finally, The Keep Louisville Literary radio hour on artxfm.com has moved to a new time slot starting this Tuesday, 9am

for now keep dialing into the website. but oh so soon will we hit your car radio on 97.1 WXOX

image from emorywheel.com

New Fiction by Ed Hamilton @ Carmichael’s + INKY + Writer’s BLock = consider your week booked

“In seven stories and a novella, Ed Hamilton takes on this clash of cultures between the old and the new, as his characters are forced to confront their own obsolescence in the face of a rapidly surging capitalist juggernaut. Ranging over the whole panorama of New York neighborhoods—from the East Village to Hell’s Kitchen, and from the Bowery to Washington Heights—Hamilton weaves a spellbinding web of urban mythology. Punks, hippies, beatniks, squatters, junkies, derelicts, and anarchists—the entire pantheon of urban demigods— gambol through a grungy subterranean Elysium of dive bars, cheap diners, flophouses, and shooting galleries, searching for meaning and a place to make their stand.”

“Greg had started his shop, the aptly named Fat Hippie Books, in the mid-eighties on a burned-out block of New York’s East Village. The shop was around the corner from the famous punk venue CBGB and the former office of the Yipster Times. When he moved in, the store was right across the street from a rubble-strewn lot where junkies shot up. Now, in 2004, there was a brand new condo building there. The neighborhood had gentrified, but the bookstore remained the same: aged tomes spilling off the sagging wooden shelves onto unstable piles rising up from the creaking floor. And when the door popped open with a clatter of bells, plate glass, old boards and rusty hinges, a gust of wind might set the dust to swirling, some of the same dust maybe as back in the eighties, and patrons would catch a whiff of that unmistakable used bookstore smell. And these patrons, each of that furtive, clandestine race who frequent such places, would feel that familiar tingle of recognition deep in their brain stems that told them instinctively what this place was about: the preservation of knowledge, the suspension of time.” — From The Chintz Age

     Ed Hamilton will discuss his writhing on the radio hour on Artxfm.com at 1pm Thursday, November, 12  You can hear him read live in person later the same evening at Carmichael’s Books on Frankfort Ave, 7pm

Event date:

Thursday, November 12, 2015 – 7:00pm

Event address:

2720 Frankfort Ave

Louisville, KY 40206

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Born in Atlanta, GA, writer, journalist and blogger Ed Hamilton grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. He has a master’s degree in philosophy and a bachelor’s in psychology. The author of Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living with the Artists and Outlaws of New York’s Rebel Mecca (Da Capo, 2007), Hamilton’s fiction and non-fiction have also appeared in dozens of small journals, magazines, and newspapers, both on-line and off. In 2005, together with his wife, Debbie Martin, Hamilton founded “Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea” Blog, the world’s first hotel blog. In 2007, developers took over Hamilton’s beloved Chelsea Hotel, intent on gutting the iconic building and evicting its artistic residents. Hamilton, together with a small group of other tenants who became his friends, devoted the next few years of his life to fighting for the continued existence of one of the last outposts of bohemia in Manhattan. As of this writing, Hamilton is still living at the Chelsea Hotel. Please join us for a reading and book signing of his newest work, The Chintz Age: Tales of Love and Loss for a New New York.

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Also this week:  InKy kicks off the 5th Annual Writers Block, curated by the Louisville Literary Arts 

If you have yet to register for a workshop there are a few spots left !

F R I D A Y ———– I N K Y 

Friday, October 13 , 2015 7 p.m. at the The Bard’s Town Free and Open to the Public Open-mic sign-ups will begin at 6:45 Lee Martin  is the author of the novels The Bright Forever, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction; River of Heaven; Quakertown; and Break the Skin. He has also published three memoirs, From Our House, Turning Bones, and Such a Life. His first book was the short story collection, The Least You Need To Know. He is the co-editor of Passing the Word: Writers on Their Mentors. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper’s, Ms., Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and Glimmer Train. He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. He was the winner of the 2006 Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching from Ohio State. Danielle Dutton’s  fiction has appeared in magazines such as Harper’s, BOMB, Fence, and Noon. She is the author of a collection of prose pieces, Attempts at a Life, and a novel, SPRAW L, which was a finalist for the Believer Book Award. In 2015, Siglio Press released Here Comes Kitty: A Comic Opera, an artist’s book with texts by Dutton and images by Richard Kraft. In 2016, Catapult will publish her novel Margaret the First, about the life of the seventeenth-century writer Margaret Cavendish. She teaches in the graduate creative writing program at Washington University, and in 2010, Dutton founded the small press Dorothy, a publishing project. Bobbi Buchanan  is founding editor of New Southerner Magazine, an online journal focusing on self-sufficiency, environmental stewardship and local economies. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Louisville Review, GreenPrints, New Madrid and other publications. She received the 2007 Emerging Writers Award in Nonfiction from the Southern Women Writers Conference at Berry College. The Keynote Reader is Pulitzer Prize winner, Adam Johnson We are pleased to announce our festival keynote reader, presented by the University of Louisville’s Anne and William Axton Reading Series.  Adam Johnson has received many awards for his novels and short stories.  He is a professor of English at Stanford University and a recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His fiction has appeared in Esquire, Harper’s, Playboy, GQ, Paris Review, Granta, Tin House and Best American Short Stories. He is the author of Emporium, a short-story collection, as well as the novels Parasites Like Us and The Orphan Master’s Son, for which he won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize. Mr. Johnson’s latest story collection is Interesting Facts, published by Random House.  Mr. Johnson has recently been named a finalist for the NationalBook Award for his most recent book, Fortune Smiles,     The reading, Q & A and book signings are from 5 to 7 PM.  This event is open to the public at no cost. First come, first seated! Read a brief review of Orphan Master’s Son by one of LLA’s board members Announcing a WB Festival Afterparty featuring the Literary Death Match! After a day of  conversation, inspiration education and enlightenment, there will be a raucous afterparty—a spirited literary competition. Celebrity writers will “compete” in this  ticketed emceed performance at The Haymarket Whiskey Bar.  Literary Death Match has been performed  in 57 cities worldwide.  The LA Times has called it “the most entertaining reading series ever.” This Literary Death Match Louisville debut features emcee Adrian Todd Zuniga, who will lead this performance, which brings four authors together to read their most electric writing for seven minutes before a panel of three local celebrity judges. After each pair of readers, the judges in three categories—literary merit, performance and intangibles—take turns sharing astute, often hilarious off-the-wall commentary. The judges confer and select their two favorites to advance to the finals. The two finalists then compete in avaguely literary competition to determine who takes home the Literary Death Match crown.   The Judges! Erin Keane, poet, critic, journalist and author of Demolition of the Promised Land Gill Holland, film producer, Green Builidng & Nulu developer, and Louisville Magazine’s 2009 Person of the Year. Crystal Wilkinson, author of Blackberries, Blackberries and founder of Affrilachian Poets  The Writers! Hannah Pittard, award-winning author of Reunion and The Fates Will Find Their Way Gabe Tomlin, Generation iSpeak featured poet Ryan Ridge, author of American Homes, Hunters & Gamblers, and Ox  Will Lavender, author of Obedience, a New York Times and international bestseller, and Dominance Time:  7:30 to 10 PM Place:  The Haymarket Whiskey Bar in downtown Louisville, KY Cost:   $10 in advance and $12 at the door   Purchase your tickets now!

Dark Thrillers by Aray S. Brown and Workshops at Writer’s Block to help you work on your own stories.

Thursday On the radio hour on artxfm.com, I’ll be chatting with Aray S. Brown about her Thriller “Blood is Thicker than Water”  Tune in at 1pm on the website or download the app on your smart phone.

I’ll also be playing some recorded readings about domestic violence by Titianna WellsSmith, Kimberly Crumb, Sheri Wright, and Robin G. Poetry from the “LIFE WAS Beautiful” Show poems based on the art by the late Betty Dore.

CONTACT ARAY

Aray Brown is an  indie author/ writer born and raised in Louisvile, Kentucky.

Ever since she was little she always explored her creative side. She began writing journey at an early age.  Her role models were She-Ra and He-Man back then so you can imagine the stories she would come up with.

Later on she decided to delve into something more real and personal. Despite the trials and tribulations she endured in her life, she wrote her first novel “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”, a tell all booklet centered around the life and times she spent with her grandmother while her mother was in prison. It was never published or finished. She then went on writing more unpublished novels, honing her craft so to speak. Finally finding her niche’ and braving the big bad writing world, she reinvents herself as a writer and doesn’t plan on slowing down anytime soon. She’s currently wriiting the script for Blood Is Thicker Than Water

Everyone Has a Story to Tell: Crafting Narratives

Lee Martin is the author of the novels The Bright Forever, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction; River of Heaven;Quakertown; and Break the Skin. He has also published three memoirs: From Our House; Turning Bones; and Such a Life. His first book was the short story collection, The Least You Need To Know. He is the co-editor of Passing the Word: Writers on Their Mentors. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper’s, Ms., Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and Glimmer Train. He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. He was the winner of the 2006 Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching from Ohio State.

Mr. Martin will also be one of our featured readers at the InKY reading, Friday, November 13, at the Bard’s Town theater and tavern.

How do you open a story, how do you end it, and what decisions need to be made between those two points? In this workshop, we will address matters that are relevant to how we give shape to experience stories. If you’re a fiction writer, or a writer of personal narratives, this workshop will allow you to practice techniques that will be important to the stories that you have to tell. Through the study of examples and a writing exercise, we will sharpen our skills with dialogue, exposition, description, pacing, characterization, and narrative structure. No matter where you are in your development as a writer, this workshop will give you strategies for making your stories memorable.

Register for workshops here : http://www.louisvilleliteraryarts.org/

People, Place and Beings: The Spices of an Intriguing Read
Kelly Creagh is a 2008 graduate of Spalding University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. When not writing, haunting bookstore coffee shops, or obsessively studying Poe, Kelly’s passions include the ancient art of bellydance. She lives with her squirrely, attitude-infused dogs—Annabel, Jack, and Holly—in the heart of Old Louisville, Kentucky’s largest and spookiest Victorian neighborhood. Kelly is the author of the Nevermore trilogy.

Strong, believable characters are a must in all good fiction. Setting, too, is key. And when it comes to stirring in the unusual, the mysterious or the magical, sometimes just a dash won’t do. In this workshop, we will discuss how to mix and blend these elements to create the perfect concoction to mesmerize and enchant your readers, to lure and hopelessly entrench them in the world and story you’ve created, rendering them as anxious about the dwindling pages as they are for the impending climax and resolution.

The Lipstick Wars and the Slam Resurgence in Louisville

From Sweet Peaches and KMAC poetry Slams to Floetic Friday youth slam and the VerbalArt Affair, spoken word poetry is a experiencing a resurgence in the city of Louisville. Such a resurgence that the Southern Fried competition will grace our presence in 2016 from the hard work of Lance G. Newman.  There’s a handful of hosts and artists pushing spoken word/slam into each corner of the city: Robin G with the Verbal Art Affair, which was started by Madison West and James Lee, Sweet peaches and KMAC with Lance Newman and Maxwell Sounds plus  Rheonna Thorton most recently organized and all women’s  slam competition called the Lipstick Wars.

In coalition with Arts Outreach and various charitable donations for refreshments and door prizes, Rheonna asked around until she landed the Bomhard Theatre in the Kentucky Center for Performing Arts.  A deal in itself the 600+ theatre nearly filled for the free event. Twelve women poets battled with words through three rounds of poetry in front of five judges.  The judges didn’t take their position lightly.  Rheonna plans for this event to be bi-annual and eventually host workshops for girls to empower their voice. So the judges scored accordingly and took the slam seriously by listening for imagery and craft in the performances. Contestants lost points for reading their work or not including poetic elements. The judges were booed several times as Slam encourages response throughout performance and scoring. In the same vein, points were awarded for engaging the audience and dynamics.

The top three poets were Tessa Gartin, Jazzy J, and Mizz Quoted

Tune in Thursday to artxfm.com at 1pm to hear Tessa Gartin talk about the experience and share some of her pieces. plus recordings from the competition.

Slam often doesn’t get a nod from academia in the writing community because at times craft isn’t celebrated and the pieces can head into the direction of rants with end rhyme. However, it can be done well and is being done well by a handful of poets in this city.

Look for the lipstick wars to come back in the spring of 2016

The event was so popular Miss Rheonna might have to have a preliminary round.

This weekend:

Floetic Friday, youth poetry slam

• Friday at 7:00pm – 9:00pm

• Local Speed 822 E Market St, Louisville, Kentucky 40206

• Young Poets of Louisville will be holding its first youth poetry slam of the year on October 16, 2015 at the Local Speed Museum. To perform you must be between the ages of 13-19. There will also be a young guest artist featured in a supportive and artistic environment. Admission is $5 at the door. Please come support the power of the youth voice in friendly compeition!

Homegrown Music Art and Spoken Word

• Friday at 6:00pm – 8:00pm

• Cedar Grove Coffee House 142 Buffalo Run Rd, Shepherdsville, Kentucky 40165

If you want to live in the moment, come out to Cedar Grove Coffee House Oct. 16 and get yourself a Homegrown infusion. In celebration of Halloween, we’ll be having a scary good time singing, slamming, reading, and sharing our art. There’ll be drumming and strumming and humming and big noises and tiny sounds. Plus, brilliant poetry by Tom C. Hunley and stunning art by Jason Kelty.

See why people call us the best breakout venue for open-mic performers in the state, maybe in the whole country! Shake off your stage fright and come join us. Bring your original tunes. Tell us how your heart aches. Show us what 30 days in rehab looks like. Give us a glimpse of something beautiful. Give us laughter. Move us to tears. Make us feel and think and breathe and love again.

ALL ORIGINAL. NO COVER FEE. $25 Cash Giveaway

DOUBLE FEATURE!
**Art by Jason Kelty**
**Spoken Word by Tom C. Hunley**

Music – Stories – Poems
Bring yours and get in on the act for a chance to win $25 cash!

Open Mic Signups: starting at 5:45 p.m.

*Due to language and mature themes, the show is recommended for ages 16 and up.

American Fantastic presents The Cottonwood Curse and other spooky stories and poems

• Saturday at 7:00pm – 9:oo pm

• Sunergos Coffee, Micro-Roastery 306 W Woodlawn Ave, Louisville, Kentucky 40214

American Fantastic is hosting a night of stories both ghastly and ghoulish. Hear the tale of “The Cottonwood Curse”, a story of Victorian Old Louisville, and sins from the past that give the neighborhood its haunted legacy. Want to weave a tale of your own? We’ll have an open-mic for people who want to tell their own scary stories, poems and songs.

We’ll be hosting the event at the Sunergos at 306 W Woodlawn Ave in the Iroquois neighborhood of Louisville.