StoryStereo: Video

Thanks to everyone who came out for last Friday's StoryStereo event. It was, as always, a blast. Here are some video highlights:

Matthew Pitt (Attention Please Now):




James Hannaham (God Says No):



The Caribbean:




Next month's StoryStereo promises to be another great affair. First, due to a scheduling conflict The Cornel West Theory will now perform at the May show. But today we're happy to say that we're officially naming the new April performer. It's Amy Domingues. And wow, it's going to be quite a new thing for StoryStereo. But all the more exciting for that.

Also, here's some good news about one of our Emerging Writer Fellows who'll appear next month, Andrew Altschul. His book, Deus Ex Machina, was recently featured on this NPR broadcast.

Writing the Future, Carolyn Forche/Pagan Kennedy Tickets Still Available. Plus Open House Workshop Specials!

This weekend is an EXTREMELY exciting one at The Writer's Center, with four major events in three days (read further for details). At the March 21 Open House, everyone in attendance will get the opportunity to see The Writer's Center's NEW WEB SITE—and learn about some of its special features—before the site launches later this spring. We're even throwing in some Open House bargains. Find out which workshop leaders are scheduled to attend here (but note that we’ll be adding more as the week goes on).

We've added several new workshops to our spring/summer session, including a Master Poetry Workshop with Maryland State Poet Laureate Stanley Plumly. In order to register for this workshop, you must be admitted by the workshop leader. PLEASE DO NOT register online or submit a payment unless you are accepted into the workshop. And please review guidelines carefully.

To view all of our upcoming workshops, visit http://www.writer.org/.

SUMMER WORKSHOPS FOR KIDSIs your son or daughter interested in a writing workshop? Did you know The Writer’s Center offers summer workshops for kids? To view a list of summer kids’ workshops, click on the banner along the top of this page.

NEWS:

Director (and workshop leader) Charles Jensen has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. Congratulations, Charles!

WEEKEND EVENTS & DISCOUNTS

FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 8:00 P.M. STORY/STEREO. FREE

Story/Stereo: A Night of Literature & Music welcomes visiting emerging writer fellows Kathleen Flenniken (Famous) and Anthony Varallo (Out Loud). The Musical guest: More Humans. We’ll also show the exciting trailer of the film Docs in Progress will debut at our upcoming LitArtlantic festival in May. Learn more here.

SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. WRITING THE FUTURE: A ONE-DAY CONFERENCE

The Writer's Center is stoked to offer this very unique opportunity for members and local writers. If you're a writer and want to know what the future holds in store for you, this is a must-see event. For the price of a one-day workshop, you get to see some of the most important writers and publishers in the industry. Up close and in person.

Admission: $90. Admission includes a FREE one-year subscription to the revamped Creative Nonfiction Magazine AND a FREE one-year membership to The Writer's Center. To view the entire schedule of events and to register, click here.

Here’s more about Writing the Future (and yes, we will be taking registarations on the day of the event):

WRITING THE FUTURE, a one-day, information packed conference for writers in all genres and media, reporters, editors, and publishers will explore and explain the transitions and innovations taking place in the literary and publishing worlds. Panelists include Nick Bilton, NY Times tech writer and interface specialist; Richard Nash, former editor of Soft Skull Press, social publishing visionary, and founder of Cursor; Carolyn Forche, poet and essayist; Tom Shroder, writer and former editor, The Washington Post; Jay Ogilvy, co-founder of Global Business Network; Lee Gutkind, author of Almost Human: Making Robots Think; and many, many more. This event is sponsored by The Creative Nonfiction Foundation, Arizona State University's Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes, and The Writer's Center.

That same evening, from 5:00 to 7:00 P.M., join Lee Gutkind and the editors of Creative Nonfiction for a FREE reception to honor the Creative Nonfiction re-launch. Here's your opportunity to mingle with the editors and some fine writers and creative minds.

SUNDAY, MARCH 21, OPEN HOUSE. NOON-2:00 P.M.

The Writer's Center has moved its Open House from April 10 to March 21 at NOON--right before our 33rd Birthday reading (rescheduled from Snowmageddon in January). The Open House is FREE and open to everyone. As usual, you’ll be able to meet individually with workshop leaders and get feedback on what workshops are right for you. And now we're offering specials:

Everyone in attendance at the Open House will receive a $25 coupon on a Spring/Summer 2010 workshop.

Additional $25 coupons will be available on selected spring/summer workshops, which we'll announce at the Open House only. That means a potential value of $50.

Restrictions: Cannot be combined with other offers. Cannot be used on completed workshops, or workshops you're currently registered in. The selected workshop sale is for the Open House only.

CONTESTS:

Name the E-newsletter contest

Favorite Writer Quote contest

At the Open House, we're going to open two ongoing contests in conjunction with our new Web site. With our new Web site we'll be going to a snazzier, more reader-friendly version of a newsletter, and we'd like your help coming up with a good name for it. We'll announce details (and prizes for the winners) at the Open House and next week on Facebook.

We'll also announce details on our Favorite Writer Quote contest at the Open House, and what you can win.

SUNDAY, MARCH 21, BIRTHDAY READING WITH CAROLYN FORCHE AND PAGAN KENNEDY, 2:00 P.M.

Following the Open House, stick around as Pagan Kennedy and Carolyn Forche help celebrate The Writer's Center's 33rd Birthday. A champagne reception will follow this event. Admission: $20. Register here.

Story/Stereo 2, Charles Jensen, and Merrill Feitell

The Writer's Center celebrates the beginning of October with the second part of Story/Stereo, and an installment of our Open Door Reading Series with Charles Jensen (The First Risk) and Merrill Feitell (Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes), as they read from their work. Read on!

Story/Stereo Part II
Friday, October 2, 7:30P.M.

Story/Stereo is the headline event for The Writer's Center's Emerging Writer Fellowships. It features two writers on stage with great local musicians. The musical component of the event is co-curated by local muscians Chad Clark of the band Beauty Pill and Matt Byars of The Caribbean. Last year, The Writer's Center hosted an event with poets Deborah Ager, Sandra Beasley, Bernadette Geyer, and The Caribbean. That event was the prototype for Story/Stereo.

After the success of our first Story/Stereo, please join us for Story/Stereo Part II!

Join Alexander Chee as he reads from his forthcoming second novel, The Queen of the Night. He is joined by Srikanth Reddy, author of Facts for Visitors. Workshop leader and board member Rose Solari will introduce the emerging writer fellows and their will be a performance by special musical guest Bluebrain.

Alexander Chee was born in Rhode Island, and raised in South Korea, Guam and Maine. He is a recipient of the 2003 Whiting Writers’ Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in Fiction and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the VCCA. His first novel, Edinburgh (Picador, 2002), is a winner of the Michener Copernicus Prize, the AAWW Lit Award and the Lambda Editor’s Choice Prize, and was a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of the Year and a Booksense 76 selection. In 2003, Out Magazine honored him as one of their 100 Most Influential People of the Year. His essays and stories have appeared in Granta.com, Out, The Man I Might Become, Loss Within Loss, Men On Men 2000, His 3 and Boys Like Us. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and has taught fiction writing at the New School University and Wesleyan. He is currently the Visiting Writer at Amherst College and lives in Western Massachusetts.

Srikanth Reddy’s first collection of poems, Facts for Visitors, received the 2005 Asian American Literary Award in Poetry. His work has appeared in various journals. Reddy is currently an assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago.

About Bluebrain (from Chad Clark of Beauty Pill, co-musical curator with Matt Byars of The Caribbean):

Bluebrain's music is electric, serrated, often abstract, always texture-fixated. Upon first listening, you will detect a decidedly futurist bent. However, under the veneer of hallucinogenic, technological treatments, there is storytelling and communication. Each song is a vista unto itself and they often highlight this with a video component to their performances. The word "multimedia" is a little banal, but it applies here.

The band is a duo of brothers Ryan and Hays Holladay. Bluebrain was borne in 2008 from the ashes of their respected and recently disbanded group, The Epochs. The Epochs were a clever, mischievous, and inventive pop band who I became acquainted with through my studio work. They were clients who impressed me enough to invite them to open for Beauty Pill, where upon they proceeded to blow us away and, frankly, embarrass us as headliners. Bluebrain's aesthetic extends outward from The Epochs, but has a distinctly different feel and perhaps a darker, more erotic persona. Learn more about Bluebrain here.

We are honored to have Bluebrain, Alexander Chee, and Srikanth Reddy with us for Story/Stereo Part II, and would be even more honored to have you as well!

Open Door Reading Series: Charles Jensen and Merrill Feitell
Sunday, October 4, 2:00P.M.

Charles Jensen reads from The First Risk, his first full-length collection of poems. He is joined by Merrill Feitell, who reads from her first collection of short stories, Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes.

Charles Jensen is the author of three chapbooks, including Living Things, which won the 2006 Frank O’Hara Chapbook Award, and The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon (New Michigan Press, 2007). His first full-length collection, The First Risk, is forthcoming in September 2009 from Lethe Press. A past recipient of an Artist’s Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, his poetry has appeared in Bloom, Columbia Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, The Journal, New England Review, spork, and West Branch. He holds an MFA in poetry from Arizona State University and is currently pursuing an MA in Nonprofit Leadership and Management. He is the founding editor of the online poetry magazine LOCUSPOINT, which explores creative work on a city-by-city basis. He serves as director of The Writer's Center.

In four extended sequences, The First Risk confronts the murder of Matthew Shepard and the myth of Venus and Adonis through the eyes of Italian Renaissance painter Luca Cambiaso; the eccentric women of Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother and the search for authenticity; the nature of love and obsession in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and the pain and confusion of loss; and the compelling story of a physicist in search of his lost wife, haunted by a phantom voice that may or may not be hers...

Merrill Feitell was born and raised in New York City. Her first book, Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes, won the 2004 Iowa Award for Short Fiction. Her stories have appeared in many publications, including the Best New American Voices series, and have been short-listed in Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Awards. She was selected as one of Fiction’s New Luminaries in the Virginia Quarterly Review, has been a fellow at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and was the Theodore Morrison Fellow in Fiction at Bread Loaf in 2005.


From bookstore manager Janel Carpenter:

Merrill Feitell has put together a superb collection of stories in Here Beneath Low Flying Planes. She has the ability to unravel seminal moments in characters' lives, full of messy complexity and intricacy, in tidy prose. Her stories are at once revelatory and a thoughtful look at the wonder in ordinary occurrences.

StoryStereo: The Official Logo

As you know, The Writer's Center will be kicking off a great new event on September 18th: the Emerging Writers' Fellowship reading called StoryStereo. That event brings together emerging poet Suzanne Frischkorn (Lit Windowpane), fiction writer Neil Smith (Bang Crunch: Stories), and hot local band the Roofwalkers (who'll officially release a self-titled album that very evening, right here at The Writer's Center). Yeah, already a little buzz on that over on Ventvox.

StoryStereo logo revealed:



Thanks to the amazing graphic designer John Foster, the owner of Bad People Good Things LLC, we've now got a super-great logo to go along with the event. If you want to see the work of a seriously incredible designer, click on the Bad People Good Thinks link above. It'll blow your mind. For The Writer's Center, it's an honor to work with such talent.

Here's the press release for the event:

Emerging Writers & Local Musicians Join Forces in New Reading Series at The Writer’s Center

StoryStereo to Offer a Blend of Music and Literature

BETHESDA, MD (August 26, 2008)—Where do DC area residents go to see emerging writers share a stage with the region’s best bands? Until recently, the answer was nowhere. Now, as part of its efforts to invigorate the local literary scene, The Writer’s Center in Bethesda has created a forum to bring these two groups of artists together—StoryStereo.

StoryStereo is the new headline event for The Writer’s Center’s Emerging Writers Fellowships, which recognize up-and-coming authors. The inaugural StoryStereo will feature poet Suzanne Frischkorn (Lit Windowpane), Canadian fiction writer Neil Smith (Bang Crunch), and local band the Roofwalkers—who will launch a new, self-titled album at the event.

Event Title: StoryStereo: A Night of Words & Music
When: Friday, September 18, 7:30 P.M.
Where: The Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD 20815
Admission: FREE and open to the public
Contact: For information, call 301.654.8664 or visit www.writer.org

Charles Jensen, The Writer’s Center’s Director, was instrumental in creating the Emerging Writer Fellowships and StoryStereo. For Jensen, giving space to emerging writers “gives our community a chance to encounter the next generation of writers for free. And it gives emerging writers an opportunity to have meaningful interaction with an audience.”

But what does this kind of collaboration mean for area musicians? Matt Byars, a member of DC band The Caribbean and one of the driving forces behind the musical component of StoryStereo, calls it “a chance to reach audiences that might very much appreciate what they do, but are not inclined to seek out bands in the same way they do novels or other forms of literature.”

Ben Licciardi, the lead singer of The Roofwalkers, agrees. He adds, “I think StoryStereo will provide music fans and area musicians the opportunity to enjoy the common ground between poetry, prose, and music."

Together for one night only, the emerging writers and local musicians will forge a lasting bridge between two art forms. Indeed, each StoryStereo—the Writer’s Center will host 6 StoryStereos per year—will be recorded and a “best of” compilation disc will be released later next year through West Main Development. With each StoryStereo, “an ever-expanding circle of artists from various disciplines,” says Matt Byars, “will realize they share a lot of common ground, and—perhaps even more importantly—audiences recognizing the overlap between music and literature.”