LGBT Arts Festival Hosts Women's Poetry Event November 4th at Jan Hus Church in NYC

The 9th Annual All Out Arts' Fresh Fruit Festival presents a Women’s Poetry Invitational, Fri., Nov. 4 at Jan Hus Church - Masyrik Hall, 351 E. 74th St., NYC 10021 Showtime: 8pm. Admission: $12. Special guests plus open mic. Emcee: Roxanne Hoffman.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New York, NY (Oct 31, 2011) -- The 9th annual All Out Arts' Fresh Fruit Festival continues with a new Harvest Fruits Festival this fall. On Friday November 4th, Fresh Fruit presents a Women’s Poetry Invitational, an evening of women writers, inspiration and empowerment -- with special guests and an open mic -- followed by a meet-and greet-reception. This event will be hosted by Roxanne Hoffman, publisher of Poets Wear Prada and will feature four local area writers known for their outspokeness and activism -- Dorothy Friedman August, Vittoria repetto, Chocolate Waters, and Chavisa Wood -- plus an open mic.

The event takes place at the Jan Hus Church - Masyrik Hall, 351 E. 74th St., New York 10021, between 1st and 2nd Avenues. Showtime is 8PM. Tickets are $12. Advance tickets can be ordered online at the Fresh Fruit Festival website (http://www.freshfruitfestival.com/) or at OvationTix dot com (http://www.ovationtix.com/). The closest subway station is the 77th Street Station of the number 6 train.

Emcee for the event, Roxanne Hoffman, has run Poets Wear Prada, a small literary press, since 2006. Her work appears in several anthologies including "The Bandana Republic: A Literary Anthology by Gang Members and Their Affiliates" (Soft Skull Press) and "It All Changed In An Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure" (Harper Perennial).

Dorothy Friedman August founded "The Helen Review," a literary magazine and was the poetry editor of "Downtown," a magazine of the arts for ten years. She is currently working on a memoir, "The Bastard Heirs," an excerpt of which is being published in Clayton Patterson‘s "Jews: A People’s History of the Lower East Side" (Seven Stories Press). Poets Wear Prada is publishing her third poetry collection, "L-Shaped Room."

Vittoria repetto is the author of two books, "Head For the Van Wyck" (Monkey Cat Press) and "Not Just A Personal Ad" (Guernica Editions, 2006) , host of the Women‘s & Trans‘ Poetry Jam at Bluestockings Bookstore since its opening in 1999, and Vice President of the Italian American Writers Association (IAWA).

Chocolate Waters, “Poet Laureate of Hell‘s Kitchen,” is one of the first openly lesbian poets to publish in the U.S. during the second wave of feminism, and her contribution is documented in "Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975" (U of Il. Press, Barbara Love, ed.). Founding mother of the radical women‘s newspaper, "Big Mama Rag," author of "Take Me Like A Photograph" (Eggplant Press), a classic of the early women‘s movement, she is celebrating the release of her 4th book, "The Woman Who Wouldn’t Shake Hands" from Poets Wear Prada.

Chavisa Woods’s debut collection of short stories, "Love Does Not Make me Gentle or Kind" (Fly By Night Press, 2008) was a Lambda Literary Award Nominee for Debut Fiction. Chavisa Woods is the recipient of the 2009 Jerome Foundation Award for emerging writers.

This year marks the 9th anniversary of the All Out Arts’ Fresh Fruit Festival created in 2002 to support and present LGBT Art and Artists to fight intolerance. The Festival’s refreshing, innovate approach to LGBT arts allows audiences to sample a wide range of events from performing and fine artists representing different ages, ethnicities, sexualities, and gender orientations. Attendees are certain to find something fresh and innovative to inspire them.

The Fresh Fruit Festival prides itself on the diversity of its performers and equally diverse audiences. All are welcome and encouraged to attend. The mission of the All Out Arts’ Fresh Fruit Festival is "to fight prejudice and homophobia by celebrating LGBT art and artists." For more about the Fresh Fruit Festival visit http://www.freshfruitfestival.com/ .

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Poets Wear Prada is a small literary press based in Hoboken, New Jersey, devoted to introducing new authors through high-quality chapbooks primarily of poetry, since October 2006. Please visit us at: http://pwpbooks.blogspot.com/. "Have you had your poetry today?"

Mon. Oct 24: Saturn Series: Sarah Bedell & Roxanne Hoffman 7pm Nightingale Lounge NYC

Saturn:
A NYC Poetry Periodical

 ~ Poetry Open Mic every Monday nite for 18 years ~

Featuring Sarah Bedell and Roxanne Hoffman

 Hosted by Su Polo

Date: Monday, October 24th

Time: 7pm - 9pm. (Open mic sign up starts at 6:30pm.)

Place: Nightingale Lounge, 213 Second Avenue,  New York, NY 10003 ( NW corner of East 13th & 2nd Ave) 212.473.9398 http://www.nightingalelounge.com/

Directions: By subway take 4, 5, 6, N, Q, R to Union Square/14th St. or L to 3rd Avenue or 1st Avenue. NJ PATH to 14th Street and head west.

Admission: 2 Drink/$10 Minimum + $3 Suggested Donation. 21+.


About the Featured Poets:

Sarah Bedell is a poet who has been a New Yorker since college. By day she works in a law firm, and in the evening she teaches English as a Second Language and leads The Riverside Poets Workshop with Anthony Moscini. Her poems have appeared in the annual anthology of The Riverside Poets Workshop, including Volume 13 which was published this fall.

Roxanne Hoffman worked on Wall Street, now answers a patient hotline for a New York home healthcare provider. Her work appears in several anthologies including The Bandana Republic: A Literary Anthology by Gang Members and Their Affiliates (Soft Skull Press), Love After 70(Wising Up Press), and It All Changed in a Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure (Harper Perennial). She's run the small independent literary press, Poets Wear Prada, since 2006.





About the Host:

Su Polo is a multi-talented artist. A native New Yorker, her songs and stories convey unusual insights and surprises found in life's everyday events and encounters. She is a singer/songwriter with guitar and dulcimer, Jazz vocalist, photographer, painter and sculptor, set designer, computer graphic artist specializing in print production and created her website http://www.supolo.com/ . Her book, Turning Stones, a collection of poems and stories is available at St. Marks Books.

She is the founder and host of the Saturn Series poetry reading in it’s 18th year every Monday night at Nightingale Lounge. She hosts the Artists' Lounge Music Showcase & Open Mic, also at Nightingale Lounge. Su is the set designer for the last 6 years of the New Years Day Poetry Extravaganza held at the Bowery Poetry Club. You can find her on Facebook and Myspace.

Su is currently working on her second book and her one woman show.

Friday 11/18: Friedman, La Prade, Held, Lisella and Torrence-Thompson Read Poetry at Left Bank Books in Greenwich Village NYC

New York, N.Y., October 18, 2011 -- On Friday, November 18th,  Left Bank Books of New York invites book lovers and poetry lovers to celebrate the November birthdays of poets Stephen Crane (11/1), Marianne Moore (11/15), J.P. Dancing Bear (11/17), Sharon Olds (11/19), Paul Celan (11/20), William Blake (11/28), and Celia Lisset Alvarez  (11/30) with a late evening poetry reading by five noted local poets. 

Poets Wear Prada's founder and managing editor, Roxanne Hoffman, will host the poetry reading at Greenwich Village's Left Bank Books in New York City. Special guest, the prose poet David Joel Friedman, author of  The Welcome (National Poetry Series, University of Illinois Press. 2006) will introduce Erik La Prade (Chelsea), George Held (Greenwich Village), Maria Lisella (Astoria), and Juanita Torrence-Thompson (Flushing).  Each poet will each read work by a favorite November birthday poet, as well as from their own recent books and  new work.

The reading will start at promptly at 8 p.m. and will be followed by a brief Q&A.

Ms. Hoffman who lived in Greenwich Village for several years while attending NYU, says she was literally walking north west down her "memory lane" -- Bleecker Street, which ends at 8th Avenue -- and found herself browsing the shelves and stalls inside Left Bank Books.  She purchased a used 2nd edition of "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Dog" a collection of autobiographical stories by Dylan Thomas and inquired if the store would entertain a poetry reading.  The store has in fact hosted several previous literary events including a recent poetry reading, featuring Barry Wallenstein and Eve Packer, and an  annual Bloomsday Celebration.  During her conversation with Zeke Finkelstein, the store manager, she learned that one of the poets she has published, Erik La Prade, frequents the store on almost a daily basis. Mr. La Prade has recently completed a memoir regarding his time as an employee of the now closed Gotham Bookstore and will be reading an excerpt from this memoir, as well as his poetry and a poem by Stephen Crane, on November 18th.

Left Bank Books is located in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan between Bank and West 12th Streets at No. 17 8th Avenue, New York, NY 10014.

Directions: By subway, take the A, C, E, L trains to 14th Street at 8th Avenue and walks south on the west side of 8th Avenue. (Note: The L train connects with the N, R, Q, F, D trains at 14th Street.) Or take the 1, 2 or 3 to 14th Street at 7th Avenue, exit at West 12th Street and head west.


About the Readers:

David Joel Friedman, a native of Washington, D.C, is a graduate of Cornell University and Columbia University and currenty lives and teaches in New York City.  Friedman won the 2004 National Poetry Series open competition, selected by Pulitzer Prizewinner Stephen Dunn; his book of prose poems, The Welcome, was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2006 and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Dunn describes Friedman's book The Welcome as "full of pleasures, both linguistic and ideational ...  David Friedman blends surreal hijinks with gestures toward the serious.  [These poems] give you, if you let them, one of literature's underrated virtues: a good time."  The book's title poem has been featured on Poetry Daily.

Erik La Prade has a B.A and an M.A. from City College. His most recent poetry collection, a chapbook titled False Confessions, was published by Alternating Current in 2011.  Breaking Through: Richard Bellamy and the Green Gallery 1960-1965, published by Midmarch  Arts Press in 2010, traces the history of Dick Bellamy's celebrated gallery through a collection on 23 interviews with artists Claes Oldenberg, James Rosenquist, Frank Stella among many others. A chapbook SWATCHES was released in 2008 from Poets Wear Prada. His first book, Things Maps Don't Show, was published in 1995, and his second, Figure Studies, was published in 1999. Some of his poems have appeared in Fish Drum, Night Magazine, The Hat, The Reading Room, The New York Times, and Artist and Influence. He also has articles and interviews in The Brooklyn Rail, Captured: A History of Film and Video On The Lower East Side, and The Outlaw Bible of American Essays.

George Held, a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, will be reading from his new sonnet collection, After Shakespeare (Červená Barva). A teacher, translator, writer, and poet, he has had work in such places as The Philadelphia Inquirer, Confrontation, Notre Dame Review, New York Quarterly, and Rattle, as well as on NPR and in two dozen anthologies. Among his chapbooks is Phased (Poets Wear Prada, 2008).

Maria Lisella's Pushcart Poetry Prize-nominated work appears in Amore on Hope Street (Finishing Line Press) and Two Naked Feet (Poets Wear Prada). Her poetry has appeared in The New York Quarterly, Skidrow Penthouse, Paterson Literary Review, and New Verse News, among others; her latest short story appears in Sweet Lemons 2, Writing with a Sicilian Accent (Legas Press). She co-curates the Italian American Writers Association monthly literary readings at Cornelia St. Cafe on the second Saturday of each month. She is a travel writer by profession.

Juanita Torrence-Thompson is the owner, Editor-in-Chief and publisher of the 29-year old international literary magazine, Möbius, The Poetry Magazine -- named one the best magazines of 2007, 2008. 2009 and 2010 by Small Magazine Review.  Poems from her 6th poetry book, Breath-Life, (Scopcraeft Press 2009) were nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  New York and African Tapestries (Fly By Night Press, 2007) was a Small Press Review “Best Pick.”  Her poetry was recently published in the anthologies The Cento (Red Hen Press, 2011) and Forgotten Borough: Writers Come to Terms with Queens (SUNY Press, 2011). Juanita also writes fiction for children and adults, and edits a poetry column for several newspapers, and taught as an adjunct professor at the College of New Rochelle. 

About the Host:

A graduate of NYU Stern School of Business, and a retired Wall Street banker, Roxanne Hoffman has run the small independent literary press Poets Wear Prada, since 2006. Described as "a publisher who is one miracle short of sainthood," by Angelo Verga, Poetry Curator of The Cornelia Street Cafe, she personally and meticulously designs and lays out each book, occasionally providing cover art and illustrations.  Nominated for a 2010 Pushcart Prize by House of Horror Magazine, her work appears in several anthologies including The Bandana Republic: A Literary Anthology by Gang Members and Their Affiliates (Soft Skull Press), Love After 70 (Wising Up Press), and It All Changed In An Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure (Harper Perennial). Her vampire poetry can be heard during the 2005 indie flick  Love and the Vampire, directed and produced by Dave Gold.  Born in Manhattan, where she stills spends much of her time, she now resides across the Hudson River in Hoboken, NJ.

About the Bookstore:

Left Bank Books specializes in literary first editions (especially fiction, poetry, drama, and literary non-fiction), photography, art, music, and film, but we buy and sell quality used books of all kinds in all categories.  Their inventory runs from first editions of literary highlights, many of which are signed, to an impressive number of fascinating works on a variety of subjects.  "And don't be put off by the words 'first editions' or 'rare books';  our stock is not merely a collection of the expensive and eminent--- we have quality books to suit all tastes and pocketbooks" says Lauren Taylor of  Left Bank Books.

"Our staff is knowledgeable and book-loving.  Come in to buy, browse, or talk about books.  We like what we do, and we're there to help you find what you want."

For more information visit the store's website, http://www.leftbankbooksny.com/, or call 212.924.5638.

Mon Oct 3 Saturn Series: Richard Marx Weinraub & Kyle Benjamin 7PM Nightingale Lounge NYC

MONDAY, Oct. 3 at 7PM

Saturn Series
Poetry Reading & Open Mike

Featuring...

Richard Marx Weinraub  & Kyle Benjamin

Two Fine Poets!

NEW EARLIER START AT 7 PM

@ Nightingale Lounge
213 2nd Avenue at 13th Street
New York, NY

A short walk East of Union Square - Every Monday night at 7:00 pm
By Subway: Take 4, 5, 6, N, Q, R to 14th Street Union Square.  Take the L to 1st Avenue.

Open Mike + 1 or 2 features - Sign up at 6:30 pm, Reading 7:00pm to 9:30pm

Hosted by Su Polo - 2 Drink/$10 minimum at the bar, $3.00 donation

Age 21 and up.

http://www.supolo.com/

http://www.supolo.com/Saturn_Series_Poetry

http://www.nightingalelounge.com



About Richard Marx Weinraub:

Related to the Marx Brothers through his mother, Richard Marx Weinraub was born in New York City in 1949; he was a Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico from 1987 through 2010. A book of his poetry entitled Wonder Bread Hill was published in 2002 by the University of Puerto Rico Press. His poetry has appeared in many journals including The Paris Review, Asheville Poetry Review, South Carolina Review, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Green Mountains Review, North American Review, Measure, The Evansville Review, Slate, and River Styx. A Spanish translation of Wonder Bread Hill was recently published by Terranova Press. A chapbook of his poetry entitled Heavenly Bodies was published in 2008 by Poets Wear Prada Press, and a poem from it was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize.

About Kyle Benjamin:

We welcome back this impressive voice in the poetry world. Kyle Benjamin is a poetic storyteller weaving tales of his experiences told in lyrical form, with his unique voice and meter adding rich texture and intensity to emotional encounters.



Thanks for your support, tell a friend, please forward!

Also - Featuring... MON.Oct 10 - Elizabeth J. Coleman and Mitch Corber



SATURN SERIES POETRY & SPOKEN WORD. . .

U P C O M I N G ... F E A T U R E S. . .



* MONDAY Aug 8 - Marty Levine and Norman Stock

* MONDAY Aug 15 - Adrienne Rooney and Erik Richmond

* MONDAY Aug 22 - Kathleen Crisci and Walt

* MONDAY Aug 29 - Cindy Hochman and Bob Heman

* MONDAY Sept 5 - Pui Ying Wong and Andy Gerenraich

* MONDAY Sept 12 - William Duke and Grace Weaver

* MONDAY Sept 19 - Josh Joffen and Barrett Wolf

* MONDAY Sept 26 - Joseph DeMasi and Bernard Block

* MONDAY Oct 3 - Kyle Benjamin and Richard Marx Weinraub

• MONDAY Oct 10 - Elizabeth J. Coleman and Mitch Corber

* MONDAY Oct 17 - Mary Orovan

* MONDAY Oct 24 - Roxanne Hoffman

* MONDAY Oct 31 - NO Reading Happy Halloween !!!

* MONDAY Nov 14 - Bruce Weber

* MONDAY Nov 28 - Demassi Bros. and Bernard Block

... and more....every Monday night !

Nightingale Lounge Poetry and Music Performers



Be the happiness you are today!

Poems Published in Literary Anthology Celebrating William Carlos Williams

I am pleased to announce that 3 of my poems "Life With Clocks," "The Family Tree," "The Pursuit of Progeny" appear in the 4th edition of the The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow.  The literary journal also includes 6 poems and an excellent essay by John J. Trause, author of Seriously Serial (Poets Wear Prada, 2007) and several poems by Brant Lyon, author of  Your Infidel Eyes (Poets Wear Prada, 2006).

The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, No.4 - 2011 reflects a diversity of voices and styles rarely combined in one book. The fourth annual edition of the literary journal was published last month by the Red Wheelbarrow Poets.  A open call to poets connected with the William Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative Reading of South Bergen County, past features including guest poets from the Tri-State region and regulars open mic readers, as well as participants of the peer-to-peer poetry workshops at the GainVille Learning Center and Café. Thirty poets are featured: John Barrale, Céline Beaulieu, Sondra Singer Beaulieu, Marian Calabro, the late George de Gregorio, Milton P. Ehrlich, Mark Fogarty, Thomas Fucaloro, Davidson Garrett, Elissa Gordon, Roxanne Hoffman, Jim Klein, Melanie Klein, Janet Kolstein, Kathy Kuenzle, Brant Lyon, Zorida Mohammed, Rick Mullin, Mike O’Brien, Jane Ormerod, George Pereny, S. Gili Post, Tony Puma, Dan Saxon, Claudia Serea, Francesca Sphynx, Madeline Tiger, John J. Trause, Dorinda Wegener and Don Zirilli.


In addition to the poetry, four essays give insight into the life and work of the Rutherford doctor/poet: "William Carlos Williams and the Baroness" by John J. Trause; "The Poetry Reading" by Madeline Tiger; "Friendship and ‘The Figure 5’" by Marian Calabro and "Medicine, Languages, a River and the American Muses in the Work of William Carlos Williams" by Céline Beaulieu. Noted poet Jim Klein, who leads the Gainville poetry workshop, shares his thoughts on creating a painting in "Don’t Talk Unless You Can Improve the Silence," and Mark Fogarty gives a preview of his novel in excerpts from "It’s So Easy to Fall in Love."


The journal was launched on Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 7PM at the Williams Center in Rutherford, New Jersey.  Copies are available online at Lulu.com (http://www.lulu.com/content/10922431) and will be available through Amazon.com by the end of the year. For more information and mailorders contact the Editors.