The 6th annual Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival honors Jamaica's innovative literary festival: Poets from Calabash Lit Fest share the stage with young writers in Fort Greene. (Read more below from the NY Writers' Coalition.)
The 6th annual Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival will present a free outdoor reading on August 21st at 3:00 PM featuring young writers (seven to eighteen-year-olds) reading alongside six poets who have appeared at the annual Calabash International Literary Festival in Jamaica and in the anthology So Much Things to Say: Kwame Dawes, Gregory Pardlo, Willie Perdomo, Carl Hancock Rux, Patricia Smith, and Cheryl Boyce Taylor. The Master of Ceremonies will be Laurie Cumbo, director of the acclaimed Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA). This exciting event brings several generations of writers together to build on the rich literary traditions of the neighborhoods surrounding beautiful Fort Greene Park.
The festival’s young writers are participants in a free summer-long series of creative writing workshops that take place outdoors in the park. The dynamic and innovative workshops provide 7 to 12-year-olds and teenagers a safe space to find their voices and explore all genres of creative writing. “Now six years old, our workshop series has become a mainstay of the summer for dozens of young people,” said Aaron Zimmerman, Founder and Executive Director of NY Writers Coalition, a not-for-profit organization that runs the workshops. “These six incredible poets will give hope to our next generation of writers that, one day, they too could be traveling the world to present their work.”
“Calabash has always been an inspiration to us -- the way it mixes world-class authors with workshops for aspiring authors,” said Lit Fest co-organizer Johnny Temple of Akashic Books. “As Calabash celebrates its 10th year with a new book assembling the work of over 100 poets, the Fort Greene Summer Lit Fest is proud to celebrate our 6th year with this extraordinary collaboration. This promises to be an unforgettable summer treat.”
Festival organizers urge every New Yorker to join them on Saturday, August 21st for some late-afternoon shade, poems and music in Fort Greene Park! Should the weather take a rainy turn, we will relocate to the cozy independent Greenlight Bookstore (located on 686 Fulton Street). This is also where we'll have the after-party where people can mingle with the fabulous readers.
The Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival is presented by NY Writers Coalition, Akashic Books, GTHQ and the Fort Greene Park Conservancy, with additional support from Greenlight Bookstore and The Walt Whitman Project. Sponsors include Amazon.com, the National Endowment for the Arts, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, City Council Member Letitia James, Brooklyn Community Foundation, Poets & Writers, Inc. through public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation.
Founded in 2001, NYWC is one of the largest community writing organizations in the country. NYWC creates opportunities for formerly voiceless members of society to be heard through the art of writing. We provide free, unique and powerful creative writing workshops throughout New York City for people from groups that have been historically deprived of voice in our society, including at-risk and disconnected youth, the homeless and formerly homeless, the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, war veterans, people with disabilities, cancer and major illness, immigrants, seniors and others. Since emerging in 2002, NYWC has won awards from the Union Square Awards and Petra Foundation, and received program grants from local and national funders including Time Warner, the Pinkerton Foundation, Independence Community Foundation, Hot Topic Foundation, the Kalliopeia Foundation, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the NY State Council on the Arts and others. Our workshop participants have been featured on The New York Times Blog, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show and The Huffington Post, in stories about NYWC. For more information, visit www.nywriterscoalition.org.
2010 Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival Reader Bios
Born in Ghana and raised in Jamaica, Kwame Dawes is the author of fifteen books of poetry and many books of fiction, non-fiction, criticism and drama; and editor of several anthologies of poetry. He is the author of what remains the most definitive study of the lyrics of Bob Marley, Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius. He is currently working on another Marley book as well as a book on Peter Tosh. His collection, Hope’s Hospice, appeared in spring 2009. Also in 2009, Dawes won an Emmy Award for the website livehopelove.com. His 2010 titles include, Back of Mt. Peace (poems), Bivouac (novel), and the anthology, Red: An Anthology Contemporary of Black British Poetry. He is Distinguished Poet in Residence at the University of South Carolina where he directs the SC Poetry Initiative and the university’s Arts Institute. Kwame Dawes is the programming director of the Calabash International Literary Festival that takes place each May in Jamaica.
Carl Hancock Rux is a published poet, essayist, novelist and playwright. His plays and performance works have been produced and or commissioned throughout the United States and abroad. As a radio journalist he has been a guest commentator on WNYC, and for XM radio's The Bob Edward's Show. He co-wrote and hosted National Public Radio's "Walt Whitman: Songs of Myself", winner of the New York Press Club Journalism Award for Entertainment News. As a recording artist he has recorded three cd's: "Rux Revue" (Sony 550), "Apothecary Rx (Giant Step) and "Good Bread Alley"(Thirsty Ear). Rux is the subject of "Carl Hancock Rux , Coming of Age," (Larry Clamage/Richard Maniscalco for Voices of America), a recipient of the CINE Golden Eagle award for television documentary. Carl Hancock Rux has written for (and performed with) several dance companies including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and created the title role in the Robert Wilson/Bernice Johnson Reagon opera 'The Temptation of Saint Anthony," which had its world premiere at the Paris Opera (Garnier.) He is the author of the Village Voice Literary prize winning collection of poetry "Pagan Operetta"(Fly By Night Press/Autonomedia), the novel "Asphalt" (Simon & Schuster), and the OBIE award winning play "Talk" (TCG).
Gregory Pardlo’s first book, Totem, won the American Poetry Review/ Honickman Prize in 2007. His poems, reviews and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, on National Public Radio and elsewhere. A finalist for the Essence Magazine Literary Award in poetry, he is recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a translation grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has received other fellowships from the New York Times, the MacDowell Colony, the Lotos Club Foundation and Cave Canem. Pardlo is an associate editor of poetry for Callaloo, and an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at George Washington University and divides his time between Brooklyn and Washington, D.C. For more information please visit him at www.pardlo.com. Willie Perdomo is the author of Where a Nickel Costs a Dime and Smoking Lovely, which received a PEN America Beyond Margins Award. He has also been published in The New York Times Magazine, Bomb, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, OCHO, and African Voices. His children's book, Visiting Langston, received a Coretta Scott King Honor and his follow-up, Clemente! was recently published. He has been a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Woolrich Fellow in Creative Writing at Columbia University and is a 2009 fellow in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He is co-founder/publisher of Cypher Books. www.willieperdomo.com
Patricia Smith’s fifth book of poetry, Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press) chronicles the human, physical and emotional toll exacted by Hurricane Katrina, and was a 2008 finalist for the National Book Award. This much-anticipated volume is also the focal point of a new dance/theater collaboration between Patricia and Urban Bush Women dancer Paloma McGregor. Patricia is also the author of Teahouse of the Almighty (Coffee House Press), a National Poetry Series winner, the Best Poetry Book of 2006 on About.com, and a 2007 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and Paterson Poetry Prize winner; Close to Death (Zoland Books), Big Towns, Big Talk (Zoland) and Life According to Motown (Tia Chucha). Her poems have appeared in many literary journals, and in many groundbreaking anthologies. Her poem "The Way Pilots Walk" received a Pushcart Prize, and is featured in Pushcart Prize XXXII: Best of the Small Presses. Recognized as one of the world’s most formidable performers, Patricia has read her work at venues around the world. Patricia is a four-time national individual champion of the notorious and wildly popular Poetry Slam, the most successful competitor in slam history. She was featured in the nationally-released film “Slamnation,” and appeared on the award-winning HBO series “Def Poetry Jam.”
Cheryl Boyce Taylor was born in Trinidad and raised in New York City since the age of 13. Her work has taken her to Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. She has performed at some of New York City’s hottest venues, such as Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Joyce Theater, Aaron Davis Hall, The Bowery Poetry Club, Lincoln Center, and this past summer she appeared at Celebrate Brooklyn in Prospect Park, opening for Shadow, one of Trinidad’s most talented Calypsonians. In 1994, Boyce Taylor was the first Caribbean woman to present her work in Trinidadian dialect at the National Poetry Slam. She and her New York won third place. She has toured the country as a road poet with Lollapolooza and recently performed for Mamapolooza in New York City. Her works include two collections of poetry, Raw Air and Night When Moon Follows.
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