Fall Semester 2006

Charles Baxter (photo credit: Michael Hough)
SEPTEMBER 15
8:00pm
The Waldron Arts Center
Rose Firebay

Sponsored by the IU MFA Program, Department of English, WFHB Community Radio, The Bloomington Area Arts Council

1st Year MFA Readings
SEPTEMBER 29
7:00-8:30pm
IMU
Oak Room

Chris Johnson, Jennifer Burdge, Kate Russell, Christopher Citro, Danny Nguyen, and Luke Hankins

1st Year MFA Readings
SEPTEMBER 30
7:00-8:30pm
IMU
Oak Room

Kelly Kennedy, Elizabeth Hoover, Margel Nusbaumer, Dustin Nightingale, Chad Anderson, and Roxana Cazan

Michael Martone (courtesy photo)
OCTOBER 3
8:00pm
The Waldron Arts Center
Rose Firebay

Sponsored by the IU MFA Program, Department of English, WFHB Community Radio, The Bloomington Area Arts Council

2nd Year MFA Readings
OCTOBER 12
7:00-8:30pm
IMU
Bryan Room

Neil Perry, Hannah Notess, and Jackson Brown

Mary Gaitskill (photo credit: George Pitts)
OCTOBER 18
8:00pm
The Waldron Arts Center
Rose Firebay

This reading made possible by the generous grant from The IU College of Arts & Humanities Institute.
Also sponsored by the IU MFA Program, Department of English, WFHB Community Radio, The Bloomington Area Arts Council

Richard Newman
OCTOBER 30
8:00pm
Theatre and Drama Center
Room A201

This reading is sponsored by the IU MFA Program and the Department of English

2nd Year MFA Readings
NOVEMBER 9
7:00-8:30pm
IMU
Bryan Room

Raj Reddy, Cate Whetzel and Ben Debus

Major Jackson (photo credit: Marion Ettlinger)
NOVEMBER 16
8:00pm
The Waldron Arts Center
Rose Firebay

This reading made possible by a generous grant from the IU Office of the Vice President for Research and Diversity.
Also sponsored by the IU MFA Program, Department of English, WFHB Community Radio, The Bloomington Area Arts Council

2nd Year MFA Readings
DECEMBER 7
7:00-8:30pm
IMU
Bryan Room

Kristen Renzi, Abdel Shakur, and Roxana Cazan

Spring Semester 2007

2nd Year MFA Readings
JANUARY 19
7:00-8:30pm
IMU
Bryan Room

Alexander Weinstein and Steven Dolence

2nd Year MFA Readings
FEBRUARY 15
7:00-8:30pm
IMU
Bryan Room

Pilar Andrus, Vanessa Mancinelli, and Sarah Wyatt

WRITERS IN RHYTHM: POETRY AND PROSE AT THE WALDRON
FEBRUARY 16, MARCH 2, MARCH 20, MARCH 23, APRIL 18
These events are free and open to the public. A reception will follow each event. Seating is limited and will be conducted on a first-come-first served basis. For more information, contact Ryan Bruce at (812)327-9342 or manager@wfhb.org and Heather Lynn at (812)334-3100 or gallery@artlives.org.

Boxcar Books will have books available by these authors.

FEBRUARY 16
8:00pm
JOHN WALDRON ARTS CENTER
hosted by Catherine Bowman (Rose Firebay)
EUGENE GLORIA, MARTHA RHODES, TIMOTHY WESTMORELAND

Bloomington, IN: The Creative Writing Program at Indiana University, in association with WFHB Community Radio and the Bloomington Area Arts Council, presents Writers in Rhythm: Poetry and Prose at the Waldron. This five-evening series brings award-winning, distinguished, and diverse writers from around the country to read from their works together with local musicians and DJs. All readings are free and open to the public and will be held in the John Waldron Arts Center at 122 South Walnut Street in Bloomington. Seating is limited and will be conducted on a first-come-first-served basis.

EUGENE GLORIA

Eugene Gloria was born in Manila and raised in San Francisco. He earned his BA from San Francisco State University, his MA from Miami University of Ohio, and his MFA from the University of Oregon. He is the author of two books of poems - Hoodlum Birds (Penguin, 2006) and Drivers at the Short-Time Motel (Penguin, 2000), which were selected for the 1999 National Poetry Series and the 2001 Asian American Literary Award, respectively. Eugene has received a Fulbright Research Grant, a Poetry Society of America award, a Pushcart Prize, and grants from the San Francisco Art Commission and the Indiana Arts Commission. He is an Associate Professor of English and serves as the Richard W. Peck Chair in Creative Writing at DePauw University.

MARTHA RHODES

Martha Rhodes is the author of three collections of poetry: Mother Quiet (Zoo Press 2004), Perfect Disappearance (winner of the 2000 Green Rose Prize from New Issues Press), and At The Gate (Provincetown Arts, 2000). She teaches at New School University and for the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is a founding editor and the Director of Four Way Books.

 TIMOTHY WESTMORELAND

Timothy Westmoreland, a native Texan, received his BA from UT-Arlington and MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has been an Assistant Professor of Fiction Writing at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and he has also taught Creative Writing at Amherst College and Hampshire College. Timothy’s first book, Good As Any (Harcourt Brace, 2002) is a collection of short stories that was widely reviewed and recommended as the work of a promising young writer. He was featured in Book Magazine's article "Writers You Need to Know."  Amazon.com selected Good as Any for its “Top Five List of 2002 Best Books of Fiction by New Authors.”

Timothy was a guest on NPR's international program “Studio 360” and has also appeared on “Voice of America” radio.  He has already begun another book called Gathering, a novel set "in spare and punishing Texas landscapes." This novel will explore the effects of serious illness – in this case diabetes – on its young main character's life.

This event sponsored by: The Indiana University MFA Creative Writing Program, IU Department of English, The IU College Arts & Humanities Institute, The IU Office of the Vice President for Research and Diversity.

QUINCY TROUPE and VIOLINIST BILLY BANG
MARCH 2
8:00pm
JOHN WALDRON ARTS CENTER
hosted by Catherine Bowman

QUINCY TROUPE

Poet, performer, and editor, Quincy Troupe was born July 22, 1939, in St Louis, Missouri. His books of poetry include Transcircularities: New and Selected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2002); Choruses: Poems (1999); Avalanche: Poems (1996); Weather Reports: New and Selected Poems (1991); Skulls along the River (1984); Snake-Back Solos: Selected Poems 1969-1977 (1979), which received an American Book Award; and Embryo Poems, 1967-1971 (1974). He is also the author of Miles: The Autobiography (1989), which received an American Book Award; James Baldwin: The Legacy (1989); and the memoir, Miles and Me: A Memoir of Miles Davis (2000). Troupe edited the anthology Giant Talk: An Anthology of Third World Writing (1975), is a founding editor of Confrontation: A Journal of Third World Literature and American Rag and, is the founding Editorial Director of Code.

 In 1991, Quincy received the Peabody Award for co-producing and writing the radio show The Miles Davis Radio Project. Among his other honors and awards are fellowships from the National Foundation for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts. He has taught at the University of California – San Diego and Columbia University. He was the first official Poet Laureate of the state of California. He now lives with his wife, Margaret, and son, Porter, in La Jolla, California.

 WITH VIOLINIST BILLY BANG...

“Although he plays an instrument that's more closely identified with up-town concert halls than downtown jazz clubs, there's no mistaking the primary source of Billy Bang's musical inspiration. While his violin technique is extensive and his familiarity with contemporary classical forms apparent, Bang's rough-edged, sometimes almost guttural tone, his old-fashioned sense of swing, and his lexicon of vocalic expressive devices define him as a jazz musician. Bang improvises lines that might have been lifted straight from a George Crumb composition, yet he invests them with an emotionalism and spontaneity that is unique to jazz. Whether in the abstract (as a solo violinist, elaborating on skeletal melodic material) or as part of a greater whole (with Sun Ra's Arkestra, for example), a Bang performance is always awash with surprise.

Bang was born in Alabama as Billy Walker, but as an infant moved with his mother to Harlem. Bang was a small youngster, so when he evinced an interest in music as a junior high student, he was given a violin. About this time he began being called Billy Bang after a cartoon character. Prompted by a fascination with Afro-Cuban rhythms, he switched to percussion in the early '60s. As a hardship student at a Massachusetts prep school, Bang played drums with his fellow student, the folksinger Arlo Guthrie. Bang was drafted into the service and was sent to Vietnam. He became radicalized upon returning to the U.S. and worked in the anti-war movement. Bang began playing music again in the late '60s. Bang was inspired by the free jazz of the mid-'60s, especially the music of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. The influence of germinal free jazz violinist Leroy Jenkins (and Coleman's violin work) led Bang back to his original instrument. Bang studied with Jenkins and involved himself with the burgeoning New York free jazz scene. He collaborated with saxophonists Sam Rivers and Frank Lowe and performed often in the downtown lofts that often housed the avant-garde music of the day. Bang formed his own group -- the Survival Ensemble -- in the early '70s. In 1977, Bang co-founded (with bassist John Lindberg and guitarist James Emery) the String Trio of New York. It was for his work with the latter group that Bang became best known (he left the band in 1986). He also played with bassist Bill Laswell's Material and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society, and led his own groups. In the mid-'80s, Bang played briefly with a funk band called Forbidden Planet. He also collaborated on various projects with pianist Marilyn Crispell, trumpeter Don Cherry, and guitarist James "Blood" Ulmer.

In the '90s, Bang fronted his own ensembles and occasionally led ad hoc groups on record dates. A 1992 session with Sun Ra (on what was possibly Ra's last recording), bassist John Ore, and drummer Andrew Cyrille produced Tribute to Stuff Smith (Soul Note). Bang recorded Spirits Gathering -- with a band that included the drummer Dennis Charles -- for the CIMP label in 1996. The next year, he made his most straight-ahead jazz album, Bang On!, for Justin Time. That same year, he recorded Commandment (for the sculpture of Alain Kirili), an album of solo violin, for Alan Schneider's NoMore label.” ~ Chris Kelsey, All Music Guide

This event  sponsored by: The Indiana University MFA Creative Writing Program, IU Department of English, The IU College Arts & Humanities Institute, ArtsWeek, The Jacob Javits School of Music, The IU Office of the Vice President for Research and Diversity.

DAVID LEHMAN
MARCH 20
8:00pm
JOHN WALDRON ARTS CENTER
hosted by Chatherine Bowman (Rose Firebay)

DAVID LEHMAN

David Lehman was born in New York City in 1948. He attended Cambridge University as a Kellett Fellow and went on to receive his Doctoral degree in English at Columbia University, where he served as Lionel Trilling's research assistant. He is the Series Editor of The Best American Poetry Series and author of three books of poems, including Valentine Place (Scribner, 1996) and Operation Memory (Princeton, 1990). His prose books include The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets, Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man, and The Big Question. He is on the core faculty of the graduate writing programs at Bennington College and the New School for Social Research. He divides his time between Ithaca, New York, and New York City.

David is also the general editor of University of Michigan Press's Poets on Poetry Series. The University of Michigan Press has published the revised edition of his Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms that consists of poems and commentary by 85 poets, each of whom discusses the form of the poem and what occasioned it. The book includes examples of sonnets, villanelles, pantoums, prose poems, and such ad hoc forms as a poem in the form of an index to a nonexistent book and a poem in the form of a baseball lineup.

These events are sponsored by: The Indiana University MFA Creative Writing Program, IU Department of English, The IU College Arts & Humanities Institute, The IU Office of the Vice President for Research and Diversity.

"A TOUR of AMERICAN POETRY" with DAVID LEHMAN
MARCH 23
8:00pm
JOHN WALDRON ARTS CENTER
hosted by Catherine Bowman

As the new editor for the Oxford Book of American Poetry, David Lehman will host an insightful and entertaining journey through American Poetry form Whitman to contemporary writers. HE will take requests form the audience.

SHERMAN ALEXIE
APRIL 18
8:00pm
JOHN WALDRON ARTS CENTER
hosted by Catherine Bowman

SHERMAN ALEXIE
A prolific novelist, poet, and screenplay writer, Sherman Alexie has been hailed as one of the best young writers of his generation. The New Yorker named him one of the “Top Two Writers for the 21st Century.” Sherman has authored seven books of poetry, several collections of short stories, two novels, and two screenplays. His work has been honored with awards from a variety of groups ranging from the Sundance Film Festival to the Booklist's Editor’s Choice Awards as well as Washington State University.

His storytelling and lectures center on contemporary American Indian life laced with razor-sharp humor, unsettling candor, and biting wit. He reshapes our myths and stereotypes by speaking his mind on a wide range of issues - from race relations, religion, and politics to homophobia and war morality. A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, Sherman will teach, entertain, and inspire the audience interculturally, intergenerationally, and with a flair for taking you to a creative playground that is both familiar and unfamiliar to all of us.

These events are sponsored by: The Indiana University MFA Creative Writing Program, IU Department of English, The IU College Arts & Humanities Institute, The IU Office of the Vice President for Research and Diversity.

3rd Year MFA Readings
APRIL 19
7:00 pm
IMU
University Club

Roberta Kwok, Matt Colglazier, Shawna Ayoub-Ainslie, Asha French

APRIL 20
7:00 pm
IMU
University Club

Paula Carter, Britton Shurley, Chris Harvey, Amelia Martens

APRIL 21
7:00 pm
IMU
University Club

Tracy Truels, Megan Savage, Carissa DiGiovanni, Monique Harris