Tag: story booth

Fishers of the Moon book release

main stage at Playhouse on the Square

join us as we take center stage for the unveiling, reading, and signing of story booth’s 2014-2015 literary anthology of original work from the past year-and-a-half of our afternoon creative writing workshops, featuring the stories of more than thirty-five middle- and high-school youth from seven Memphis schools. these young writers will read from and sign their stories, and we’ll have copies of the book for sale. this event will be the first time the writers will have the book revealed to them, so please join us for the big surprise and celebration.

part of the 2015 Mid-South Book Festival programs

Mid South Book Fest

panel discussion: the state of alternative literary spaces / TN

located in the Ballet Room at Playhouse on the Square

readings, workshops, and publishing opportunities have long been associated with academic or mainstream environments, perhaps limiting access to the greater public. Sundress Publications and Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) in Knoxville, the Porch in Nashville, and story booth in Memphis have each carved out distinct literary “space” across the state, working to provide valuable opportunities for writers, readers, and youth — rural retreats, workshops, writing contests, and reading series, to name a few. Jim Warner, Susannah Felts, and Nat Akin discuss the role of writer-as-organizer, and the kind of partnerships and programming it takes to make these spaces vibrant contributions to a city’s broader literary community.

part of the 2015 Mid-South Book Festival programs

Mid South Book Fest

story booth volunteer interest / training session

if you’re interested in becoming involved with story booth as a teaching artist, writing mentor, or volunteer of any kind, this session will help introduce you to the opportunities story booth has for the upcoming school year, and will also serve as the “refresher” for current volunteers to get up to speed on exciting new additions to story booth’s programming. we’d love to have you help out over here, and by the end of this session, you’ll know everything you need to do just that.

email Nat at nat@crosstownarts.org to RSVP or call at 901.573.8444.

working writer’s cocktail hour

in the interests of further cultivating and connecting the literary community of Memphis, story booth is hosting the second edition of Crosstown Arts’ Working Writers’ Cocktail Hour to help usher in the second-annual Mid-South Book Festival.

presenting authors in town for the festival are welcome, college and MFA students to early/mid-career/accomplished (meaning published and not-yet-published) writers who live and work in Memphis are welcome too. whether writers of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, screenwriting, playwriting, journalism, art writing, music writing—all are invited to visit story booth for an hour or so to do what it normally takes an expensive retreat to make happen: bring a group of writers together to stand around, have a drink, and make connections with other working writers they may or may not have known before.

whether or not your day-job is writing makes no difference — if you’re a working writer, you’re invited.

Mid South Book Fest

 

Visiting Writer Tom Piazza

Join us for our latest collaboration with The Booksellers at Laurelwood as we welcome Tom Piazza to Memphis to read from and sign his new novel, A FREE STATE. Tom Piazza is the author of ten books, including the novel City Of Refuge, which won the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, and the post-Katrina classic Why New Orleans Matters. Other works include Devil Sent The Rain, a collection of his essays and journalism, the Faulkner Society Award-winning novel My Cold War, and the short-story collection Blues and Trouble, which won the James Michener Award for Fiction. Tom also wrote for the HBO drama series Treme.

No less a literary critic than Bob Dylan has said, “Tom Piazza’s writing pulsates with nervous electrical tension – reveals the emotions that we can’t define.” A well known writer on American music as well, Tom won a Grammy Award for his album notes to Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: A Musical Journey and is a three-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for Music Writing. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Bookforum, The Oxford American, Columbia Journalism Review, and many other periodicals. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he lives in New Orleans.
Tom Piazza

A FREE STATE

The year is 1855. Blackface minstrelsy is the most popular form of entertainment in a nation about to be torn apart by the battle over slavery. Henry Sims, a fugitive slave and a brilliant musician, has escaped to Philadelphia, where he earns money living by his wits and performing on the street. He is befriended by James Douglass, leader of a popular minstrel troupe struggling to compete with dozens of similar ensembles, who imagines that Henry’s skill and magnetism might restore his troupe’s sagging fortunes.

The problem is that black and white performers are not allowed to appear together onstage. Together, the two concoct a masquerade to protect Henry’s identity, and Henry creates a sensation in his first appearances with the troupe. Yet even as their plan begins to reverse the troupe’s decline, a brutal slave hunter named Tull Burton has been employed by Henry’s former master to track down the runaway and retrieve him, by any means necessary.

Bursting with narrative tension and unforgettable characters, shot through with unexpected turns and insight, A FREE STATE is a thrilling reimagining of the American story by a novelist at the height of his powers.

 

Impossible Language

This installment of Impossible Language features readings by Angie Macri, John Reed, and Sandy Longhorn.

Become better acquainted with this ongoing poetry reading series by following here: Twitter @impossiblelang, Facebook or Tumblr.