The William & Anne Axton Series with Heather A. Slomski

“Heather A. Slomski is the author of The Lovers Set Down Their Spoons, winner of the 2014 Iowa Short Fiction Award and published by the University of Iowa Press. She received her M.F.A. from Western Michigan University and held the Axton Fellowship in Fiction at the University of Louisville. Her stories have appeared in TriQuarterly, American Letters & Commentary, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, The Normal School, and elsewhere. A recipient of a Minnesota State Artist Initiative Grant and a Minnesota Emerging Writers’ Grant, she currently lives in Minnesota with her husband and son and teaches writing at Concordia College.

Reading: Thursday, 10/30, 4:00PM, Bingham Poetry Room

Master Class: Friday, 10/31, 10AM-Noon, Humanities 300″

Both events are free and take place at the University of Louisville Campus. The Anne and William Axton Reading series, started in 1999 by former English Professor William Axton and his wife, has offered the Louisville Community many outstanding writers from across the country.

Previous seasons have included Terrance Hayes, Junot Diaz, Brian Teare, Robert Pinsky, Charles Wright, Nathaniel Mackey, Susan Minot, Mary Karr, Stephen Dobyns, Lynnell Edwards, Colson Whitehead, Robin Lippincott, Robert Hass, Silas House, Beverly Lowry, George Saunders, Louise Glück, Hannah Tinti, and Clare Vaye Watkins

Heather will be appearing on the Keep Louisville Literary radio hour at 1pm on Thursday to discuss her work and present reading excerpts. artxfm.com

notes about her short story collection, Lovers set down their spoons, from her website

In the fifteen stories that comprise this collection—some short as breaths, two of them novelettes—Slomski writes with a keen eye about relationships. About the desires that pull us together and the betrayals that push us apart. About jealousy, obsession, loneliness and regret—the byproducts of loving someone that keep us awake at night.

 

Other upcoming events:

Tonight in Lexington:

Tuesday, October 28th, 7pm, Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning
251 W 2nd St, Lexington, Kentucky 40507,
The Louisville Review and The Carnegie Center present a reading in celebration of the 75th issue of The Louisville Review. The reading takes place 7:00-8:15 p.m. Tuesday, October 28, at the Carnegie Center in Lexington and features writers who work has appeared in The Louisville Review.

Featured writers include Kentucky Poet Laureate Frank X Walker, former Kentucky Poet Laureate Sena Jeter Naslund, Karen Mann, Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, Bill Goodman, and Susan Christerson Brown.

Thursday, October 30th, 4pm, Bingham Poetry Room– Heather Slomski is giving a reading and will appear on the radio hour at 1pm to chat about her work.

Wednesday, November 5th, 630pm, Hillbilly Tea, The Spalding BFA salon, hosted by Merle Bachman

Wednesday, November 12, 730pm, Decca, Subterranean Phrases with Erin Keane and Jay Sizemore

Thursday, November 13th, 1pm, artxfm.com, The radio hour with Joy Priest.

Several great events lead up to Writers Block, Louisville + the Radio hour with Adriena Dame

This week on the radio hour [Thursday, October 23] artxfm.com, I’ll be chatting with the multifaceted, Adriena Dame, editor for the journal ‘94 creations‘. The 94 creations team will be celebrating their release party for the 6th issue on October 25th. Tune in Thursday to hear a sneak peak and some behind the scenes discussion to what went into putting this issue together.
94 creations is not Adriena’s only passion. She also serves on the Louisville Literary Arts board, has her own sock company, makes jewelry, writes, teaches, and works with at risk youth.
We’ll also be chatting about the makings of the Writers Block coming up on Nov. 15th

Adriena Dame, author of The Moo: Stories and a Novella, is a military brat, adventurer, mixed-media jewelry artist, and creative writing professor at Spalding University. She also leads writing workshops; teaches fiction, creative nonfiction, and wearable art classes; and offers homeschool English courses at 94 Creations Studios, located at Mellwood Arts Center in Louisville, Kentucky. In addition to publishing 94 Creations literary journal, she contributes to the editorial efforts of Tidal Basin Review, is a poetry coach for Generation iSpeak, and serves as a board member for the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She is a graduate of Spalding’s brief-residency MFA in Writing Program.

You can attend the release party of 94 creations this Saturday at Vault 1301- Readers include Sheri L. Wright, Nathan Gower and Karen George.

Other events leading up to Writers Block:
Saturday, October 25th, 7pm, Carmichaels, Poets Eric Scott Sutherland, Tom C. Hunley, and Lynnell Edwards will be signing and reading from their new collections.

Tuesday, October 28th, 7pm, Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning
251 W 2nd St, Lexington, Kentucky 40507,
The Louisville Review and The Carnegie Center present a reading in celebration of the 75th issue of The Louisville Review. The reading takes place 7:00-8:15 p.m. Tuesday, October 28, at the Carnegie Center in Lexington and features writers who work has appeared in The Louisville Review.

Featured writers include Kentucky Poet Laureate Frank X Walker, former Kentucky Poet Laureate Sena Jeter Naslund, Karen Mann, Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, Bill Goodman, and Susan Christerson Brown.

Thursday, October 30th, 4pm, Bingham Poetry Room– Heather Slomski is giving a reading and will appear on the radio hour at 1pm to chat about her work.

Wednesday, November 5th, 630pm, Hillbilly Tea, The Spalding BFA salon, hosted by Merle Bachman

Wednesday, November 12, 730pm, Decca, Subterranean Phrases with Erin Keane and Jay Sizemore

Thursday, November 13th, 1pm, artxfm.com, The radio hour with Joy Priest.

Friday, November 14th, 7pm, The Bardstown, InKY/ writers block kickoff

FM Dial Granted ! More Kentuckiana Authors on this weeks radio hour.

The Jeffersonville Steamboat days are this weekend, October 17-19, and amongst the Festivities, the Kentuckiana Authors will have a writers block with booths and readings.

I’ll be chatting with 3 more members of this promotional collective this Thursday on the radio hour.

We are still live streaming on artxfm.com, however the FCC has granted us the FM dial 97.1 in the Louisville, KY region.   This is a very exciting step for ArtFM, Keep Louisville Literary, and all of the other great programming the station provides.

If you missed last weeks show with Kenutckiana Authors, Atty Eve and Wilhelmina Stone, you can find it HERE along with many other archives of great readings and show.

Here are the bios for the writers I’ll be chatting with Thursday at 1pm

Mysti Parker (pseudonym) is a full time wife, mother of three, and a writer. Her first novel, A Ranger’s Tale was published in January, 2011 by Melange Books, and the second in the fantasy romance series, Serenya’s Song, was published in April 2012. The highly anticipated third book, Hearts in Exile, came out in June 2013. The Tallenmere series has been likened to Terry Goodkind’s ‘Sword of Truth’ series, but is probably closer to a spicy cross between Tolkien and Mercedes Lackey.

Mysti’s other writings have appeared in the anthologies Hearts of Tomorrow, Christmas Lites, and Christmas Lites II. Her flash fiction has appeared on the online magazine EveryDayFiction. She serves as a class mentor in Writers Village University’s seven week online course, F2K. Currently, she’s working on her first historical romance and has two children’s books in the hands of a hard-working agent.

When she’s not writing, Mysti reviews books for SQ Magazine, an online specfic publication, and is the proud owner of Unwritten, a blog

Yolantha Harrison-Pace was born in Tacoma, Washington, but lived her early childhood in Amarillo, Texas during segregation until her family moved to Champaign, Illinois in 1966.  There integration became a part of her everyday life, often just because her family of 7 attended an event or she and one of her 4 brothers were the only African American student in the classroom. This unique legacy of having lived on both sides of the track, segregation and integration, has been influential in her love for  and artistic portrayals of her precious home, America.  Pace uses her art forms as tools and strategies for supporting her platform of unity through the pursuit of cultural excellence.  Her focus group emphasis is under served populations in America and beyond.  Yolantha is an advocate for abused family members and advocates especially concerning hate crimes against women and children.  She has been a Children’s Ambassador for Haiti since the year 2000.  She is a teaching artist, playwright, poet and author and has had her play THE WHOLE SKY premier at Berea College.  Her multitude of writings have gleaned her such honors as Poet of the Year, Book of Poetry of the Year, and won her the personal accolade of Humanitarian Author of the year.  Her works have gone international through her postings as  an adjunct writer for University of Southern California’s Art Institute for Genetic Medicine.  In addition, as an Urban Folk Artist, Pace’s primitive Angel dolls are owned by collectors around the world. HER NEWEST RELEASE: UNCLE THAXTER.  A children’s book celebrating friends and family of wounded warriors.

Pace has her AA degree from Columbia College, her BFA from University of  Texas, Austin and did her Masters work at Penn State University.  Her area of study was Theater and the Performing Arts.

Also this week: The Homegrown Art, Music and Spoken Word, hosted by Bobbi Buchanan and Austin Whitely 

Ceder Grove Coffee House

Fall is upon us. It’s time to get creepy. It’s time to get scary. The thing that shivers us to our bones the most, however, is lack of creativity. So, let’s put some in the air. Share your love, spread your art, and sip on some mojotastic beverages.

ALL ORIGINAL. NO COVER FEE. $25 Cash Giveaway

DOUBLE FEATURE!
**Art by TooLaree**
https://www.facebook.com/ToolareeArt?fref=ts

**Music by XX4II**
https://www.facebook.com/XX4II?fref=ts

Music – Stories – Poems
Bring yours and get in on the act for a chance to win $25 cash!
Open Mic Signups: 6 p.m.

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

Steamboat Days are on the horizon. Meet the Kentuckiana Authors

The next two weeks I will be chatting with members of Kentuckiana Authors, an authors community for promotion and collaboration, organized by Atty Eve, on the radio hour.

Atty Eve was born and raised in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  Her family life was rough, with a religious mother and a short-tempered, alcoholic father. Her escape was reading,g writing, and music.  She received her first literary award in the fourth grade and her debut novel, My Beautiful Suicide, has been going strong.

She heads up Kentuckiana Authors which promotes authors and their work.  A busy task, with over 350 members.  Her next author promotion is the Writers Block in Jeffersonville’s Steamboat Days Festival.

STEAMBOAT DAYS  Oct. 17th – 19th

The Belle of Louisville, the oldest operating steamboat in the United States, will be celebrating a century of service in October, 2014. To celebrate this milestone, the Centennial Festival of Riverboats will take place from October 14-19, 2014 at Louisville’s Waterfront Park in downtown Louisville, attracting an estimated 300,000 visitors from around the world.  Numerous steamboats from around the country will be converging on the Ohio River for this celebration.  

The City of Jeffersonville is proud to be hosting Steamboat Days during Louisville’s Centennial Festival of Riverboats. The Big Four pedestian bridge will link both festivals together for a weekend full of activities.  In addition to Jeffersonville’s many shops and dining opportunities, Steamboat Days will feature a juried art village, live art demonstrations, live music on the Riverstage, a parade, and a kids fun zone.   

Wilhelmina Stolen is the pseudonym for romance writer, Shannon Hayes. Shannon is a native of Kentucky and makes her home in a small southern town close to the Tennessee line.

During her adolescence, her mother’s free spirited nature became restless causing the family to embark on a slew of adventurous moves across the country. The moves provoked a hunger for adventure and romance and introduced her to a wonderful world of history and beauty.

As with most writers, her stories began at an early age with long sessions of seclusion and secrecy. While her classmates and friends were outside playing, Shannon was locked away in her room hammering out ideas on an old 1940’s Royal typewriter.

After finding Mr. Right, Shannon found herself wanting the comfort and security of the small Kentucky town she longed to escape as a child. Fortune smiled upon her and she became the family historian; gathering pictures, wills, marriage certificates and everything else that somehow managed to fall into her lap. Stories flooded her mind and writing quickly became an obsession that turned into the Way of Hearts Saga.

The saga spans six generations and three families.

Mysti Parker (pseudonym) is a full time wife, mother of three, and a writer. Her first novel, A Ranger’s Tale was published in January, 2011 by Melange Books, and the second in the fantasy romance series, Serenya’s Song, was published in April 2012. The highly anticipated third book, Hearts in Exile, came out in June 2013. The Tallenmere series has been likened to Terry Goodkind’s ‘Sword of Truth’ series, but is probably closer to a spicy cross between Tolkien and Mercedes Lackey.

Mysti’s other writings have appeared in the anthologies Hearts of Tomorrow, Christmas Lites, and Christmas Lites II. Her flash fiction has appeared on the online magazine EveryDayFiction. She serves as a class mentor in Writers Village University’s seven week online course, F2K. Currently, she’s working on her first historical romance and has two children’s books in the hands of a hard-working agent.

When she’s not writing, Mysti reviews books for SQ Magazine, an online specfic publication, and is the proud owner of Unwritten, a blog voted #3 for

Tune in October 9 and 16 to hear live readings and Q&A with these authors and more on artxfm.com at 1pm;

Check out the Steamboat Days in Jeffersonville, October 17-19

Also THIS Friday: InKY

On Friday, October 10th join Louisville Literary Arts for InKY at the Bard’s Town, at 1801 Bardstown Road, for an evening of literary entertainment, including:
– OPEN MIC, SPECIAL GUEST, poet, Drew Pomeroy, and, FEATURED InKY readers, novelist, Allison Lynn and poet, Liegh Anne Hornfeldt.

Open Mic sign-ups begin at 6:45, and the Open Mic reading will begin at exactly 7 PM.

Allison Lynn is the author of the novels The Exiles (New Harvest/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) and Now You See It (Simon & Schuster, 2004), which won the William Faulkner Medal from the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society and the Chapter One Award from the Bronx Center for the Arts. Novelist Darin Strauss says The Exiles is “better about current-day New York — and the promise of the American world outside New York — than just about anything I can remember. If books teach you how to live, read The Exiles to learn how to be a new parent, a spouse, a human being. Just read it.”
In addition to her novels, Lynn has written articles, reviews, and essays for The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Sun-Times, People, and elsewhere. She teaches in the Creative Writing program at Butler University in Indianapolis, where she lives with her husband, the writer Michael Dahlie, and their son, Evan.

Leigh Anne Hornfeldt, a Kentucky native, is the author of East Main Aviary (Flutter Press, 2012), The Intimacy Archive (ELJ Publications, 2013) and the editor at Two of Cups Press. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, as well as the recipient of a grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. In 2013 her poem “Laika” placed 2nd in the Argos Prize competition., and in 2012 she received the Kudzu Prize in Poetry. Her work has appeared in journals such as Spry, Lunch Ticket, Foundling Review, and The Journal of Kentucky Studies.

Drew Pomeroy was born and raised in Southwest Alabama and he can fake a variety of Southern accents at the drop of a hat. He now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, a different kind of South with really fancy horses and bourbon instead of pigs and cheap beer. He’s a dog lover, a poet, a boxer, and he thinks James Wright should be required reading for anyone hoping to write poetry. Drew holds a BA in History from Samford University and is a recent graduate of Spalding University’s MFA in Creative Writing program.