Asheville Wordfest 2011
ASHEVILLE WORDFEST MAY 3 - MAY 8, 2011
Asheville's free poetry festival in downtown Asheville, NC.
“THE WHOLE WEEKEND WAS TRANSFORMATIVE FOR ME” - audience member at Asheville Wordfest 2008
A Note From The Director
“Artistic creativity is the only thing left to you as a survivor.”
Majid Nafici, Survivor of the Iranian Revolution.
Resilience and artistic creativity. As the director of Asheville Wordfest, I’m excited to explore, through the week of Wordfest how poetry sustains us, as individuals faced with trauma and also as a culture faced with strife. Poetry has been here for us for ages, like a part of us that waits to be asked for help then delivers it whole. During this Wordfest, we’ll hold it up to see just how powerful a force it is within us, within all of us, as we move through the wonder, the terror and the peace of being human. We’ll hear and see resilience in many forms, from personal to cultural. From regional poet Carl Sandburg, explored with insight and honesty by local film-maker Paul Bonesteel in the new documentary The Day Sandburg Died, to poets who have survived Hiroshima, the Iranian Revolution, genocide in Rwanda and more found Katja Esson’s documentary, Poetry of Resilience, and to the poets shown here below, our featured readers for Wordfest 2011, we’ll hear how poetry facilitates the powerful infusion of resilience and artistic creativity to give us again and again stable and purposeful lives. I'm thankful to our sponsors for this opportunity to bring Asheville Wordfest back again this year. I look forward to seeing you.
Thank you!
laura
more from poet Laura Hope-Gill
The Poets
Quincy Troupe is an award-winning poet, best-selling author, editor, and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. His book of poems, The Architecture of Language, won the 2007 Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement. Among his other works are the bestselling Miles: The Autobiography of Miles Davis; a memoir, Miles & Me; and The Pursuit of Happyness, the autobiography of Chris Gardner and a major motion picture. Transcircularities: New and Selected Poems was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best books of poetry in 2002. Errançities, his newest book of poems, will be published in November 2011 by... learn more
Linda Hogan, a Chickasaw poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and activist, is widely considered to be one of the most influential and provocative Native American figures in the contemporary American literary landscape, and is an internationally recognized public speaker. Her most recent books are the poetry collection, Rounding the Human Corners (Coffee House Press, 2008), and the novel, People of the Whale (Norton, 2008). Her other books include the novels Mean Spirit, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Oklahoma Book Award, the Mountains and Plains Book Award; Solar Storms, a finalist for the International Impact Award, and... learn more
Allison A. Hedge Coke Huron, Cherokee heritage poet/writer, is the Paul W. Reynolds and Clarice Kingston Reynolds Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska, Kearney and a regular visiting professor in Naropa University's MFA summer writing program. She is the editor of eight anthologies and author of five poetry volumes, including: Blood Run, a verse-play (Writer of the Year Award, 2006), Dog Road Woman (American Book Award) and Off-Season City Pipe (Writer of the Year Award 2005) and a memoir, Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer (AIROS Book, 2004). Hedge Coke has featured in poetry festivals in Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Jordan, Canada ... learn more
Kwame Dawes Born in Ghana in 1962, Kwame spent most of his childhood and early adult life in Jamaica. He is a writer of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and plays. As a poet, he is profoundly influenced by the rhythms and textures of that lush place, citing in a recent interview his “spiritual, intellectual, and emotional engagement with reggae music.” His book Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius remains the most authoritative study of the lyrics of Bob Marley. Dawes has published fifteen collections of poetry. His most recent titles include Back of Mount Peace (2009); Hope's Hospice (2009); Wisteria, finalist for the Patterson Memorial Prize; Impossible Flying (2007); and... learn more
Brian Turner is a soldier-poet whose debut book of poems, Here, Bullet, won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award, the New York Times “Editor's Choice” selection, the 2006 Pen Center USA "Best in the West" award, and the 2007 Poets Prize, among others. Turner served seven years in the US Army, to include one year as an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to that, he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division. Turner's poetry has been published in Poetry Daily, The Georgia Review, and other journals, and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology published in... learn more
Katja Esson is an independent filmmaker based in New York City who mixes documentary and narrative genres. Esson began her career in Miami as a production assistant for the notorious rap group 2 Live Crew. Since her days of wrangling booty-shaking babes, Esson has directed a variety of award-winning documentaries, short films, and commercials. Born and raised in Germany, Esson brings a quirky European sensibility to the distinctively American subjects she chooses. Her documentary short Ferry Tales, which turns the unlikely setting of the Staten Island Ferry Powder Room into a celebration of sisterhood, received an Academy Award-nomination in 2004 and... learn more
Paul Guest, born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was twelve years old, racing down a hill on an old borrowed bicycle, when he discovered the bike had no brakes. He hit a ditch, was thrown over the handlebars, and broke the third and fourth vertebrae in his neck, bruising his spinal cord and paralyzing him from the neck down. Despite his physical limitations, Guest graduated from University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and from Southern Illinois University with an M.F.A. He went on to author three volumes of poetry and a memoir (2010). His debut collection of poems, The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World, explores the body and disability... learn more
Holly Iglesias is the winner of the 2008 Kore Press First Book Award. She is a poet and translator whose work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Prose Poem, Arts & Letters, Barrow Street, Margie, Crab Orchard Review, Massachusetts Review and Spoon River Poetry Review. She has been awarded fellowships by the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Edward Albee Foundation. She is the author of two chapbooks, Hands-on Saint and Good Long Enough, winner of Thorngate Road’s Frank O’Hara Prize. A critical work, Boxing Inside the Box: Women's Prose Poetry, was published by Quale Press. She teaches at University of North Carolina-Asheville and at... learn more
Keith Flynn is the author of five books, including four collections of poetry: The Talking Drum (1991), The Book of Monsters (1994), The Lost Sea (2000), and The Golden Ratio (Iris Press, 2007), and a collection of essays, entitled The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory: How To Make Your Poetry Swing (Writer's Digest Books, 2007). From 1987-1998, he was lyricist and lead singer for the nationally acclaimed rock band, The Crystal Zoo, which produced three albums: Swimming Through Lake Eerie (1992), Pouch (1996), and the spoken-word and music compilation, Nervous Splendor (Animal Records, 2003). His poetry has appeared in many journals and... learn more
Rose McLarney’s book of poems, The Always Broken Plates of Mountains, will be published by Fourway Books in 2012. She grew up in rural western North Carolina, and currently lives on an old farm in Madison County, where she raises a variety of livestock. Rose is a graduate of Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers and also earned her BA at the College. Rose has been selected as the Joan Beebe Teaching Fellow at Warren Wilson College for the 2010-2011 academic year. The fellowship annually brings an MFA graduate back to Warren Wilson to teach a variety of courses in the undergraduate curriculum.
Mendy Knott is a poet, workshop leader, and a cross-genre writer. Her work reflects life as a former police officer, Air Force veteran, and Southern preacher's kid. In 2008 she wrote the award-winning screenplay Men Only. Her first love, however, has always been poetry. Mendy’s book of poems A Little Lazarus (Half Acre Press, 2010) was published in September. Mendy is known for her powerful poetry and peace activism as well as her ongoing advocacy of women's creativity. Mendy's diverse creativity spans poetry, memoir, playwriting, editing, songwriting, spoken-word and screenwriting. Mendy was honored as North Carolina Poet in Residence to South Africa... learn more
Luke Hankins has served as an Associate Editor at Asheville Poetry Review since 2006. His chapbook of translations of French poems by Stella Vinitchi Radulescu is forthcoming from Q Ave Press. His poetry, translation, and prose have appeared in numerous publications, including Connotation Press, The Cortland Review, New England Review, Poetry East, Southern Poetry Review, The Writer's Chronicle, and on the blog of the NPR program "Being." He regularly posts reviews, interviews, and other commentary at his blog, A Way of Happening... learn more
Britt Kaufmann lives in Burnsville, North Carolina with her husband and three elementary-aged children. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Binnacle, Kakalak Poetry Anthology (2007 & 2008), Main Street Rag, literarymama.com, Now & Then, WNC Woman, and Solander among others. Her first chapbook of poems, Belonging, was published in 2011 by Finishing Line Press and her play An Uncivil Union: The Battle of Burnsville will be performed in June at the the Parkway Playhouse. She has served prominently on the planning committee of the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival for the last six years. Also, upon poet Mendy Knott’s move to... learn more
Landon Godfrey was born and raised in Washington, DC, and now lives in Black Mountain, NC. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies, including The Southeast Review, Lyric, Chelsea, POOL, and Best New Poets 2008. Landon’s work has been featured as a collaborative project at Broadsided and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In selecting her book, Second-Skin Rhinestone-Spangled Nude Soufflé Chiffon Gown, for the Cider Press Review Book Award, David St. John writes, “Never has the sumptuous materiality of language felt more seductive than in Landon Godfrey’s remarkable debut collection, Second-Skin Rhinestone-Spangled Nude... learn more
Justin Bigos is a poet and teacher. He has lived in New York City, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he was raised. His poems have appeared most recently in The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, and The Collagist. He lives in Weaverville, North Carolina, with his wife, the writer Erin Stalcup. learn more
Hobey Ford, Two Time Winner of puppetry's highest honor, the UNIMA Citation of Excellence, and recipient of three Jim Henson Foundation grants, Hobey Ford is known for excellence in puppetry performance and craft. Hobey's intricate shadow puppetry work and creation of the original rod puppets, the "Foamies", have earned him a place on stages across the world. Hobey's performances incorporate a variety of puppetry styles including Bunraku, rod, marionettes, "Foamies", and shadow puppetry. Hobey adapts folk tales from various cultures for many of his performances, always adding a special "Golden Rod" twist. He uses his own voice to create characters learn more
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please make your check payable to Asheville Wordfest/ MAIN and send to:
Asheville Wordfest
c/o Laura Hope-Gill
101 Christ School Road
Arden, NC 28704
This project is made possible in part by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.  |