WEALTH OF IDEAS

Poetry Reading, Monday, August 2, 7:30 p.m. Seventeen of 38 contributors from California and beyond will read from the Tule Review 2010 (one poem per poet): Gillian Wegener William O'Daly Lenore Myers Allison Meraz Kathleen McClung Katie McCleary Devi Sen Laskar Penelope La Montagne (also reading a poem by Connie Post) L. A. Jones Taylor Graham Tom Goff Susan Flynn Margaret Duarte Clark M. Dixon Moses Sandra Bozarth Naomi Benaron Franciso X. Alarcón Edited by Linda Collins and Theresa McCourt. Host: Bob Stanley, Sacramento's Poet Laureate Copies of the summer Tule Review (perfect bound) on sale after the reading for $10 (bring check or cash)--all proceeds go to community projects related to poetry. Street Address: 1719 25th Street Sacramento, CA 95816 (Between R and Q streets) SPC Website: www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org The Sacramento Poetry Center is a nonprofit organization, and all contributions to the SPC support poetry readings and many other community projects.

Forever Let Me Go contains a taste of my poetry and Speaking for the Generations (AWP 2010) contains an excerpt from my short story "A Long Night", set in Glen View 2, Harare. The Los Angeles Event with Christopher Mlalazi is only one week, I know time will fly, so I thought I should start to prepare myself for the event. I have already selected the published works that I will carry, although I will take along some works in progress, like my selections from short story manuscripts. But here are the books I am carrying, from which I will read: Forever Let Me Go (poetry), African Roar (short stories), State of the Nation: Contemporary Zimbabwean Poetry, Speaking for the Generations (short stories), and Charles Mungoshi's The Setting Sun and the Rolling World . African Roar (StoryTime 2010), State of the Nation (Conversation 2009), and The Setting Sun (Beacon Press 1989). Chris and I will be reading our works and launching StoryTime's African Roar at an event coordi...

My ambitious, but not very active blog, Moments in Literature , is one of the 45 blogs that have just won the 2010 Top Literary Studies Blog Award. I am excited. Although I would have wanted this one here to win something, I am excited about Moments in Literature. When I started the blog at the end of 2007, I wanted to highlight intriguing moments in the fiction I was reading. Let's say I was reading David Mungoshi's The Fading Sun , I would take a moment to discuss chapter 7, highlight why I thought it was intriguing, and that would then lead to a brief discussion of Mungoshi's place in literature, etc. Right now I am re-reading Charles Mungoshi's The Setting Sun and The Rolling World , his US-published collection of selected stories. Each story has moments worth sharing, the boy in "Shadows on the Wall" reflecting on how one day he discovered a dove's nest, examined the nestlings, went away thinking about mothers and their importance to children, only ...

The Farallon Review, Tiger's Eye, & Tule Review Here are some journals to consider submitting your works to. Two of them, Tule Review and Farallon are based in Sacramento, California, while Tiger's Eye is based in Oregon. All three accepts submissions from all over the world, and their reach is expanding. Both the copies and editing are of a high quality. Tule Review is published by the Sacramento Poetry Center. The current issue if Summer 2010, which just came out. The deadline for the Winter 2011 are due by September 15, 2010. Fourteen of the contributors in the Summer issue will do a launch reading on August 2. That promises to be a big event; it is going to feature my friend Naomi Beneraon, the 2010 winner of the Bellwhether Fiction Award, coordinated by Barbara Kingsolver. Other feature poets include Tom Goff of Sacramento, Michael Lee Johnson, whose work has appeared on Munyori Literary Journal, Pablo Neruda translator William O'Daly, award-winning author Francis...

Issue 18 of Tiger's Eye Tonight the Sacramento Poetry Center hosted the Tiger's Eye Journal Readings, which featured six poets who contributed to the current issue(Spring-Summer 2010).I was the host, since second Mondays at SPC are, in the words of Sacramento Poet Laureate Bob Stanely, "Manu Mondays". It was a full house (what a lively crowd!), and the open mic featured four more poets, so for the night, we had a total of ten powerful poets. Here are some memorable moments from the reading: the audience The Tiger's Eye editors Colette Jonopulos and JoAn Osborne, who write, "We leave traces of our energy behind when we write. When another person accepts our words it completes the loop which begins with our initial creative urge. To think that our words don't change lives is to be naive. To write knowing our words are an intimate exchange of energy between the poet and the reader, is to be aware, awake, to be living the questions themselves." Cleo G...

The works of Mariana Castro. (Sacramento, CA) The fabric of women’s lives, quite literally, is the subject of multimedia artist Mariana Castro de Ali. Titled “Remnants and the Course of Life”/ “Retazos e Hilo de la Vida,” this exhibit continues La Raza Galería Posada’s 2010 spotlight of Latina artists from both Mexico and California. Castro de Ali’s materials might startle some. “I live in a mundane world; I create art with things that surround me. I use tampons, coffee filters, thread, and tea bags and also use canvases, watercolors and traditional printmaking techniques. I enjoy the juxtapositions of these apparently opposite elements (the traditional materials and the mundane ones), it makes my art credible, real. “ The artist reception will be Friday, July 9 from 5:30-7:30 PM. La Raza Galería Posada is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary cultural center located in the lively Midtown district at 1022-1024 22nd Street between J and K Sts. in Sacramento, California. “Art is a product...

I was exposed to D.H. Lawrence in Highfield, Harare, as my first setbook for A-Level. My US-educated teacher described Lawrence as "a bore", preferred William Faulkner instead, and later, after re-reading The Sound and Fury and discovering more of Quentin Compson in Absalom, Absalom , I would discover why. My teacher's attitude made me curious about Lawrence, so I went on to enjoy the "boring" [The] Lost Girl , temporarily despised The Sound and the Fury , which took me longer to master because, first the flavour of American English was new to me. I was trying still struggling with accepting "color" as a correct spelling of 'colour', and the Southern verisimilitude Faulkner presented in his characters' dialogue did not help matters either. I fell in love with the works of Lawrence, made this known to my teacher, read more of his works, including his moral and love philosophy, anything I could find at the British Council Library on those Sa...

Chris Mlalazi Villa Aurora & Eso Won Bookstore present an evening of stories, poetry & music with 2010 Feuchtwanger Fellow Christopher Mlalazi , fellow Zimbabwean writer and editor Emmanuel Sigauke, and Judicanti Responsura 7PM on Saturday, July 31, 2010 at Eso Won Bookstore 4331 Degnan Boulevard, Los Angeles 90008 Villa Aurora’s 2010 Feuchtwanger Fellow, Zimbabwean writer Christopher Mlalazi’s two books, Dancing with Life (2008, amaBooks), a collection of short stories, Many Rivers (2009, Lion Press, Ltd., UK), a novel, and his latest play Election Day (2010), deal with the social and political disintegration of his native Zimbabwe. In 2008 he was co-awarded the OXFAM NOVIP PEN Freedom of Expression Award at the Hague, which he received with Raisedon Baya for their play The Crocodile of Zambezi. The Crocodile of Zambezi (2008), a satire of the Mugabe regime set in a fictional country along the Zambezi River, was officially banned and members of its cast and crew were haras...