residencies, gigs and sunshine: this summer's proceedings

June and July 2012: artist/ writer residency in Schöppingen

14 - 16. June 2012: Remembering Flash Forward: African Literature and a Poetics in Motion
- BIGSAS Literaturfestival in Bayreuth. Festival of African and African-Diasporic Literature -

14 June 8pm: Spoken Word Performance with Deeb, Blaq Pearl
15 June 2-3.30pm 'Writing Beyond and Forward' reading and discussion with Kossi Efoui and   Ken Bugul
16 June 4.30-5.30pm 'Literature in Transition' panel discussion with Zukiswa Wanner and Kossi Efoui

10/ 11 August 2012: Black German Cultural Society of New Jersey Annual Convention
at Barnard College, New York.

10 August Performance at Goethe Institute East Village, New York

September - October 2012: writers residency Hedgebrook Whidbey Island, Washington State, US

Be part of this amazing new book series...

Witnessed website

Witnessed is a book series written in English by Black authors, who live or have lived in Germany, and is edited by Sharon Dodua Otoo.

Witnessed needs some genreous help in terms of crowd funding.

Please give what you can. 

The first book in the series will be published in October 2012 and is called: "Imagine if Black Artists Actually Mattered? Visions of Equality in Germany"
Preview: http://www.edition-assemblage.de/imagine/

Write Around Town: A London Writing Adventure with Shaun Levin

Write Around Town: A London Writing Adventure

AN EXPLORATION & WRITING WORKSHOP AROUND LONDON

More info and booking here


This exciting and practical writing workshop explores ways of engaging with the city through writing. Whether it’s for you or your characters, we’ll walk, write, and eat in central London, and use the city landscape – from Zoo to Art – as a rich resource for personal and fictional stories. The workshop will teach you how to map a character’s journey through the city; look closely at how the environment impacts on their psychology; and explore the symbolic resonances of the urban landscape, from bridges to biodiversity. London will be our laboratory, so whether you’re writing fiction, science-fiction or memoir the exercises are devised to suit all genres and cities!


All participants will be included in a final anthology of work, and be invited to contribute to the project’s blog.


We’ll create stories at the zoo; write while taking a boat ride on the Thames; take tea and notes at Fortnum & Mason; and visit the Picasso exhibition at Tate Britain. We’ll also explore the works of other writers – and meet a couple – who’ve used the city as the setting and inspiration for their fiction. From Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, to Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, from Alaa Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building to Defoe’s Journal of a Plague Year, and from Balzac’s A Street of Paris to Jane DeLynn’s Don Juan in the Village… we’ll examine extracts from these works and others, and be inspired by psychogeography to roam the city in the name of writing.


There’ll be writing suggestions and exercises between each session. All participants will be included in Writers in the Crowd, an anthology of writing in the city. A dedicated and password-protected blog will be set up for the workshop and all participants will be invited to share their work.


limited to 8 participants


The workshop will be led by Shaun Levin
Special guests: Olumide Popoola and Jonathan Kemp


Day 1: London Zoo
Day 2: Thames Walk and Boat Ride
Day 3: Tea Tales at Fortnum’s
Day 4: Picasso at Tate Britain
Day 5: The City in Fiction
Day 6: London Writers


Shaun Levin is the author of Seven Sweet Things, A Year of Two Summers, and Snapshots of the Boy. His most recent work is a fictional biography of the London-born painter, Mark Gertler. He has taught writing for twenty years, and run workshops in cafes, art galleries, bookshops, parks, a cemetery, and a zoo. Shaun is passionate about exploring the landscape, the sea, the urban environment, as well as other art forms to enrich our stories and take writing to new and unexpected places. He has lived in London for the past fifteen years and has made the city an integral and important part of his work.


Olumide Popoola is the author of this is not about sadness which traces the threads that bond a few women in a North London neighbourhood. A Nigerian German author, poet, and performer, her work is concerned with a critical investigation into the ‘in-between’ of culture, language and public space. She is currently working on a cross-genre novel, exploring vernacular and hybrid literary forms. Her work has been published in anthologies since 1988 in Germany, Slovenia, South Africa, the USA, Sri Lanka, the UK and Nigeria. In 2004 she was awarded the May Ayim Award (Poetry), the first Black International Literature Award in Germany.

Jonathan Kemp was born in Manchester in 1967 but has lived in London since 1989. His first novel, London Triptych, weaves together three narratives set in London in three different times: 1895, 1953 and 1998. It won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award. His work consistently engages with the city and he teaches courses on London at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is particularly interested in sexual subcultures and how the city gets written, how histories of the city construct archeologies which provide rich seams for a writer to mine.


Dates: Saturdays (fortnightly, except last two weeks)
(26 May, 9 June, 23 June, 7 July, 21 July, 28 July)
Venue: Various
Time: 3-6pm
Fee: £250 (£210 early-bird booking before 5 May)


price includes entrance fees, tea and cake at Fortnum’s, and boat ride
pay via PayPal or send cheque made payable to “Shaun Levin” to:
Shaun Levin, PO Box 65016, London N5 9BD
for more details, call 020-7193-7642 or email shaun@shaunlevin.com

Looking for 'this is not about sadness' within the US?

It seems to be difficult or slow or both to get my book in the US.

Here are two options: Powell's or alibris

Here's short excerpt on
Heinrich Boell Stiftung's MIgration/ Integration/ Diversity website

In the UK: Amazon.co.uk

In Germany: Unrast Verlag

facebook site

next gig: WRITE NOW, Featuring Bonnie Greer and China Mieville

WRITE NOW – Featuring Bonnie Greer and China Miéville

Presented by THE WRITING CENTRE and IPAD

University of East London

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16th 2012

7:00pm, Stratford Circus

Admission: £4/£2 (concessions)

Book tickets

WRITE NOW is a literary evening of readings, performances, and discussion on contemporary writing practice. This year we feature award-winning authors as well as UEL writers.

Bonnie Greer (OBE) is a playwright, author and critic. Her work has been performed at major theatres in the UK, on BBC Radio 4, and at the Royal Opera House. She is the author of two novels and a regular contributor to BBC’s Newsnight Review.

China Miéville is a three-time winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award and has also won the British Fantasy Award twice. His dazzling talent has led to comparisons to Kafka, Orwell and Philip K. Dick.

Tim Atkins is an internationally published poet of cutting edge verse. Among his many books, Folklore was named a Daily Telegraph book of the year. He is the founder of the international poetry journal onedit.

Tessa McWatt is the author of five novels, one of which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award and the City of Toronto Book Award. Her latest novel, Vital Signs, has recently been launched in the UK.

Olumide Popoola is a Nigerian German author and performer. Her novella 'this is not about sadness' was published in 2010 (Unrast Verlag).

Moderator: Mark Hunter, Director of IPAD, University of East London.

PLEASE JOIN US

http://www.stratford-circus.com/

'Portraits for Self Determining Haiti' by Regine Romain

Regine Romain Portraits for Self Determining Haiti 


Online Gallery


"This homage to my people is  overflowing with love and hope, honor and respect and an unfolding of a new story."


Please support this amazing exhibition and artist through a tax-deductible donation to A.I.R. Gallery  toward the cost of the exhibition and community workshops produced by REGINE ROMAIN.

VISIT: https://www.airgallery.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=main.donate
CLICK: My donation is towards general A.I.R. programming and exhibitions
DESIGNATE: Type REGINE ROMAIN in the EMAIL section to ensure your contribution goes to support  Portraits for Self Determining Haiti by Regine Romain 

Régine Romain

Portraits for Self Determining Haiti

January 5 - 28, 2012

Opening Reception: Thursday, January 5

 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Artist Talk: Thursday, January 5, 6:30 pm

   

BROOKLYN, NY January 2012 – A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce Portraits for Self Determining Haiti, the first solo exhibition of photographs by Régine Romain, an A.I.R. 2011-2012 Fellow.

Régine Romain photographs and researches Haiti’s shifting yet distinct presence throughout the world in an ongoing visual diaspora project. Her work is grounded in individual and community portraiture. This exhibition bridges two compelling views: Romain, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, as the composer of portraits on Haitian life rarely seen, and the reality of Haiti as a self-determining nation – a principle historically rooted in the people’s DNA as resurgent hope.

Portraits for Self Determining Haiti  is an exhibition of vibrant photographs of Haiti, three weeks after the 7.0 earthquake that killed more than half a million people. Elemental themes of faith, dignity, honor and respect are keenly displayed. The title is inspired by a series of essays published by The Nation in 1920 entitled "Self-Determining Haiti" written by James Weldon Johnson, a journalist, lyricist, and renowned civil rights leader of Haitian heritage.

In Ways of Seeing, John Berger states “...every image embodies a way of seeing, our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing.” The world psyche is awash in distorted narratives of Haitian people and society, and Romain’s acts of visual resistance stoke the collective imagination and keep new ways of seeing alive.

Romain’s photo essay on Haiti, including photos from Portraits for Self Determining Haiti, is featured in Meridians, Vol 11, December 2011, a journal published by Smith College. Romain’s work has been exhibited at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY; Teatro Nacional de Cuba, Cuba; UN Photography Society, NY; and the Charles Sumner Museum, DC. Her awards include Brooklyn Arts Council and the Trude Lash Fellowship. She is the editor of Diaspora Diaries: An Educators Guide to MoCADA Artists, and is the founder of Urban PhotoPoets and the Brooklyn Photo Salon. Romain received a BS from Bowie State University and an MA in Photography & Urban Culture from Goldsmiths, University of London.

As an A.I.R. Fellow, Romain will present a community workshop with the Haiti Cultural Exchange commemorating the Haitian Declaration of Independence, January 10, 2012, and an An n’ Pale| Café Conversation, January 12, 2012, at Five Myles Gallery in Brooklyn, New York from 6:30 to 9:30 pm.

A.I.R. Gallery is located at 111 Front Street, #228 in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn. Gallery hours: Wed. – Sun., 11am to 6pm. For directions please visit www.airgallery.org. For more information please contact Gallery Director, Julie Lohnes at212-255-6651 or jlohnes@airgallery.org.

The A.I.R. Fellowship Program is made possible by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, a state agency, The New York State Council on the Arts, JP Morgan Chase through a re-grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council, as well as generous support from The Bernheim Foundation, The Gifford Foundation, Elizabeth A. Sackler, The Milton and Sally Avery Foundation, The Theo Westenberger Estate, and many generous donors to the Emma Bee Bernstein Fellowship.

poetic super-gem of the year: Nikky Finney at National Book Awards US

Nikky Finney rocks the National Book Awards

Nikky Finney - a message