Friday, April 12, 2013 Will Read For Women Donation Drive
On Friday, April 12th, So to Speak will host our second annual reading drive to benefit the local domestic violence shelter, Bethany House. The reading will feature poetry by Kyle Dargan, Jill Leininger, Mel Nichols, and Kim Roberts, as well as fiction by Nicole Idar. We’d love to have you join us! The reading is scheduled for Friday, April 12th at 8:00 p.m.at the Black Squirrel in Adams Morgan (2427 18th Street NW). Audience members are asked to bring toiletry items and other pantry necessities to donate to the shelter.
Suggested items include: Baby wipes, Adult wipes, Lotion, Shampoo, Conditioner, Combs, Bleach, Dish detergents, Dishwasher detergents, Razors, Tweezers, Lip balm/Lip gloss, Vaseline, Brushes, Toothpaste, Toothbrushes, Mouthwash, Bath soaps, Laundry detergents, Toilet paper, Paper towels, Napkins, Diapers (size 3-6), Pull-ups (size 2T-5T).
Bethany House was organized to help women and their children who have suffered from domestic violence regain health and dignity and become re-established in their community by providing temporary housing and support.
Kyle Dargan is the author of three collections of poetry, Logorrhea Dementia(2010), Bouquet of Hungers (2007) and The Listening (2003). For his work, he has received the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Dargan has partnered with the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities to produce poetry programming at the White House and Library of Congress. He is currently an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at American University and the founder and editor of POST NO ILLS magazine.
Nicole Idar grew up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her stories have appeared in World Literature Today, Rattapallax, and The New Ohio Review, where she was as a finalist for the 2009 Fiction Prize. Her first published essay, “Refrain from Being a Totally 100% Bookworm,” won a 2012 Bethesda Magazine award. She is presently at work on a novel, The Epic of the Toyol.
Jill Leininger’s poems have been included in Shenandoah, Seattle Review, Harvard Review, cream city review, and Poetry International, among others. “Roof Picnic Skies, New York,” her first chapbook, is a series of prose poems inspired by the artist William Kentridge (dancing girl press, Chicago). A second chapbook of poems, “Sky Never Sleeps,” was selected by Mark Doty for publication with BLOOM in 2012. As a graduate of the University of Oregon’s M.F.A. program (’99), Jill has been a finalist for the Ruth Lilly Fellowship and has also received writing fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and Lambda Literary. She is currently working at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD.
Mel Nichols is the author of four collections of poetry, including Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon (National Poetry Series finalist) and Bicycle Day. Her work can also be found at The Huffington Post, Poetry, The Brooklyn Rail, Jacket2, PennSound, HTML Giant, The Pink Line, and forthcoming in Open Letters Monthlyand The Poetry Project Newsletter. She has been a visiting artist at the Corcoran College of Art & Design, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit, and others, and she teaches digital poetry and other writing courses at George Mason University. New books are forthcoming from Flowers & Cream Press and Edge, and her punkulele band πhole will be coming soon to a venue near you.
Kim Roberts is the author of five books, most recently Animal Magnetism, winner of the Pearl Poetry Prize, and the anthology Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC. Roberts edits the literary journal Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and co-edits the Delaware Poetry Review. She is involved in two large online projects mapping DC literary history: she is co-curator of the web exhibit DC Writers’ Homes, and is part of the team creating DC By the Book, a project mapping the location where novels and short stories have been set in Washington, sponsored by the DC Public Libraries. Roberts has been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Humanities Council of Washington, and the DC Commission on the Arts, and has been a writer-in-residence at 14 artist colonies.
