Big Tent
BIG TENT: Stories and Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, September 23 7PM
@ The Raven
Pricsilla Howe
Chloé Cooper Jones
Gary Lechliter
Chloé Cooper Jones teaches writing and literature classes at The University of Kansas and The Kansas City Art Institute. Her writing has appeared in Spring Formal and The Black Warrior Review and is forthcoming from West Branch. Chloé wishes that Harold Brodkey was alive and was editing a literary journal. Chloé would actively seek publication in Harold Brodkey’s literary journal.
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Thursday, October 28 7 PM
@ The Raven
Big Tent: Stories and Poems in Three Acts
Aliki Barnstone, poetry
Angela Glover, prose/poetry
Jeff Koterba, memoir
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PAST BIG TENT EVENTS
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BIG TENT: Stories and Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, August 26 7PM
@ The Raven
Clancy Martin, fiction
Kevin Rabas, poetry
Rachel Gray, prose
Amanda Frost, poetry
Clancy Martin is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at The University of Missouri in Kansas City. He specializes in ethics and nineteenth century philosophy, and has published six books in philosophy, a novel, and more than a hundred essays, reviews, and short stories. A frequent contributor to
The London Review of Books, Clancy¹s work has also appeared in Harper¹s, The New York Times, Esquire, and many other popular and academic venues. He has won a Pushcart Prize and was a finalist in fiction for the National Magazine Award. He is also a translator of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, and is presently working on his second novel and a nonfiction book, LOVE, LIES AND MARRIAGE (FSG, 2012).
Kevin Rabas co-directs the creative writing program at Emporia State University and is co-editor of FLINT HILLS REVIEW. He has two books, BIRD’S HORN and LISA’S FLYING ELECTRIC PIANO.
Rachel just Graduated from KU where she edited Kiosk Magazine. Her writing has appeared in The Pitch, Coal City Review and the online magazine Bastards and Whores. In high school she won an essay contest in defense of banned books and used the award money to buy a digital Canon Rebel, which she is probably going to have to sell to pay for her flight to Spain. She is looking forward to teaching ESL there in the fall.
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BIG TENT: Stories and Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, July 22 7PM
@ The Raven
Mary Wharff (fiction)
Joe Harrington (poetry)
Mary Klayder (prose)
Mary Wharff loves short stories — writing them, reading them, trying to get her friends to read them and buy them. While daydreaming of the return of a viable market for short stories, she also helps to
coordinate Big Tent at The Raven and edits fiction (short!) for Coal City Review. She’s also a judge (particularly of short fiction) for the Langston Hughes Writing Awards. Her work has been published in Room of One’s Own (Canada), Connecticut Review, Mohila Review and others, and she’s currently studying with the Dangerous Writer’s Workshop and novelist Tom Spanbauer (Portland OR). She and her husband, Andy Bloomer, have an adopted four-legged family, gardens instead of grass and shelves of novels she thinks she’ll read once she gets over her thing with short stories.
Joseph Harrington is the author of Things Come On: An Amneoir (forthcoming 2011 from the poetry series of Wesleyan University Press) and Poetry and the Public (Wesleyan 2002). His chapbook earth day suite is forthcoming from Beard of Bees Press in Chicago. His creative work also has appeared recently in Hotel Amerika, Otoliths, Fact-Simile, With+Stand, Cricket Online Review, and P-Queue, amongst others. He teaches at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, USA.
Mary Klayder is a poet and essayist and author of “Painted Ponies”, a memoir. She has also won many awards for teaching, including six Mortar Board Outstanding Educator Awards, and the Hope Award, the Del Shankel Outstanding Educator Award, Emily Taylor Outstanding Woman Educator of
2009 and Woman of Distinction 2009-2010.
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BIG TENT: Stories and Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, June 24 7PM
@ The Raven
Judith Roitman (poetry)
Denise Low (poetry)
10-minute plays written by Feloniz Lovato-Winston and Emily Laut (playwrights)
Denise Low, Kansas poet laureate 2007-2009, received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Kansas and her M.F.A. in poetry from Wichita State University. She has been visiting writer-in-residence at the University of Richmond and the University of Kansas. Her book Words of a Prairie Alchemist is a 2007 Notable Book of Kansas, and Thailand Journal: Poems was a Kansas City Star Notable book. She has published essays, reviews, academic articles, and poetry widely. She is vice president of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs national board. She comments on literature regularly on her blog: http://deniselow.blogspot.com. A book of critical essays about contemporary Great Plains writers, Natural Theologies, is forthcoming from Backwater Press, and she is the editor of Kansas Poems of William Stafford, 2nd ed. (Woodley Press).
Judith Roitman’s work has appeared in a number of journals, including First Intensity, Skanky Possum, FO A RM, Black Spring, Locus Point, and Bird Dog. Her book No Face: Selected and New Poems was published in 2008 by First Intensity Press. Her chapbooks include Slippage from Potes and Poets Press.
Emily Laut is a freelance science journalist and grant writer for the American Academy of Family Physicians. She writes creatively in her spare time and started writing plays in 2005 after taking Paul Lim’s intro to playwrighting course at the University of Kansas. She also likes to swing dance, practice American Sign Language and walk on stilts.
Feloniz Lovato-Winston is a recent KU graduate who has had the good fortune to work with playwriting professor Paul Lim for three semesters. “Emilia’s Lover” is one of the first plays she wrote for Paul. She currently works for KU’s Audio-Reader Network and hopes to write many more plays in the future.
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BIG TENT: Stories and Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, May 27 7PM
@ The Raven
The 2010 Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award Winners
Jeff Tigchelaar (poetry)
Amy Stuber (fiction)
Amy Haake (fiction)
Jeff Tigchelaar is a former newspaper editor and current stay-at-home dad in Lawrence, Kansas. He was awarded a fellowship in poetry from the Ohio Arts Council, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Margie, Natural Bridge, Redactions: Poetry & Poetics, Harpur Palate and Quarter After Eight.
Amy Haake is a writer, graphic designer, wife and mother. She lives and works in Lawrence, Kansas, where she received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Journalism from the University of Kansas. In 2007, she started Amy Haake Creative, providing writing and graphic design services for Carlson Hotels, AmericInn, Target, Commerce Bank and other fine companies. She has tried to do other things over the years, like yoga and her own taxes, but has failed miserably. Writing is where she belongs and so she has started to take it seriously.
Amy Stuber’s short fiction has been published in numerous national literary journals, including Ploughshares, The Antioch Review, and Other Voices. She received a PhD in English and has taught writing and literature at universities in Kansas and Rhode Island. After serving as Director of Writing Programs for a D.C.-based education company, she returned to Kansas where she lives with her husband and two children.
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BIG TENT: Stories and Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, April 22
7PM @ The Raven
Grant Jenkins poetry
Cheryl Pallant poetry
Nate Barbarick fiction
Grant Matthew Jenkins, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Writing Program, teaches contemporary literature and creative writing at the University of Tulsa. He has published two books of poetry, Joy of God and Other Series (Blackbird, 2003) and the most recent in collaboration with Cheryl Pallant, Morphs (Cracked Slab 2009). His poems appear in Birddog, Cannibal, Sugar Mule, Syntax, Action Yes, and Big Bridge. Other creative projects include work with digital flash poetry, image, and sound and can be found online at Turbulence.org and YouTube
Tasha Haas fiction Act 1: Stephen Lewis (Poet)
Cheryl Pallant is a writer and dancer with three poetry books, three chapbooks, and a book on dance. Her highly acclaimed books include Uncommon Grammar Cloth, Into Stillness, and Contact Improvisation. Her recently released work is the poetry collection Morphs, collaboratively written with Tulsan Grant Jenkins. Although Pallant calls Richmond, VA home, this year she holds the Lubell Visiting Assistant Professorship and teaches creative writing in the English Department at the University of Tulsa. See her website for more information http://cherylpallant.com/
Nathan Clay Barbarick (pictured right) is a name I use in literary situations because it takes up the right amount of space. I study and teach writing at the university of the 2008 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Champions. Am also seeking summer 2010 employment. Not that I am desperate to work; I am only desperate to stay living. The human contains only so much fluid that can be sold, and if you wear a disguise or use a fake ID they will notice you anyways and turn you away. At the Raven I will read small pieces of (non)fiction, that is, fictions that shouldn’t be nor should have ever been, but somehow are.
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BIG TENT: Stories and Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, March 25
7PM @ The Raven
Kelly Barth prose
Tasha Haas teaches creative writing, literature, and composition at Kansas City Kansas Community College, and taught fiction writing at the University of Kansas for eight years. She received an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Bowling Green State University in 1998. In 2004, she was awarded the Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award in Fiction from the Lawrence Arts Center. In 2006 and 2009 she earned writing residencies in Costa Rica at the Julia and David White Artists’ Colony and Pachamama Retreat Center. Her stories and prose poems have recently appeared in Web Conjunctions, Coal City Review, Stickman Review, South Dakota Review and other literary journals. She is also an artist and musician and is currently at work on her second CD.
Kelly Barth lives on very little money in a very small house with her partner Lisa Grossman in Lawrence, Kansas. She was a fiction fellow in the University of Montana’s creative writing program and has received fellowships from the Missouri Arts Council and the Kansas Arts Commission. Her work has been published in anthologies and literary journals, most recently The Literary Bird Journal. She is currently at work on a memoir.
————————————————————————————–Fourth Thursdays
BIG TENT: Stories and Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, February 25
7 PM @ The Raven
Act 2: Dennis Etzel (Poet)
Act 3: Brian Blevins and Nick Medved (Playwrights)
Stephen Lewis graduated from KU in 2008 and edits the online magazine Robot Melon. He likes to eat and to read at the same time even though it is often difficult.
Dennis Etzel Jr. is a recording artist with 30 years of music behind him. Dennis is a guitarist. Dennis is the top finisher for the Buckeyes in 10th place. Dennis is also very involved in planting trees and sustainable forestry. Dennis is a male first name derived from the Greco-Roman name Dionysius meaning “servant of Dionysus”. Dennis is now among the rest of these freedom hating liberal kooks. Dennis is the only one talking about shutting down the nuclear war machine. In 2006, Dennis was being pursued by the Attorney General in Washington. Dennis is a jungle menace. We need drastic solutions, like the ones Dennis is pushing. Dennis is leading positively by example, e.g. his vegan lifestyle. Dennis has engaged in interfaith dialogue with Catholics at the Vatican. Dennis has also written and produced three best-selling comedy videos on values. Dennis has played guitar on over 100 soul music gold albums. Dennis has experience handling cases from all parts of Alaska. Dennis has worked with the vanguard of New York’s dance studios. Dennis has the courage to say what many are wondering. Dennis will be in Sierra Madre, CA, Sunday the 21st, 9am. Dennis will be appearing on Comedy Central’s ‘The Colbert Report’ this Tuesday. How do I know Dennis will be able to photograph my child? By taking the time to get to know you and your taste, Dennis will be able to. Dennis will be leading out the Halloween fun ride tonight at Willowdale. Dennis will be adding a second class at Yoga Within on Tuesday evenings. Dennis will be given a sedative to relax.
Brian Blevins will be presenting “Horse Trading”, read by Jim Carothers and Jake Smith. Brian was born November 16, 1960 in Wichita Kansas, where he began writing at an early age and participated as a singer, songwriter in Wichita, and even tried his hand at acting once. However the opportunity to pursue it seriously never manifested itself. Brian visited Lawrence in 2003 as part of a business expansion project, where he met Kathy and fell in love. He moved here shortly afterward. Returning to college in 2007, Brian discovered writing again while taking a playwriting course instructed by Paul Lim. Brian says, “The future is uncertain, yet I do not intend to let my love for writing escape me again.”
Nick Medved will be presenting “The Gazelle”, read by Amy Devitt and Caleb Hall. Nicholas Medved is an award-winning playwright. His play “The Gazelle” won the regional ten-minute playwriting award at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in 2008, and another play, “The Late-Nite Horrorshow,” won an award for excellence in playwriting in 2009. He is a KU graduate.
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Fourth Thursdays
BIG TENT: Stories and Poems in Three Acts
Thursday, January 28
7PM @ The Raven
Act 1: Judy Bauer fiction
Act 2: Dixie Lubin poetry
Act 3: David Ohle fiction
David Ohle’s novel, Motorman, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1972 and re-released by 3rd Bed Press in 2004 with an Introduction by Ben Marcus. Its sequel, The Age of Sinatra, was published by Soft Skull in 2004, followed in 2008 by The Pisstown Chaos. In 2009, two novellas, Boons and The Camp were published by Calamari Press under one cover. He has edited two non-fiction books, Cows are Freaky When They Look at You: An Oral History of the Kaw Valley Hemp Pickers (Watermark Press, 1991) and Cursed From Birth: the Short, Unhappy Life of William S. Burroughs, Jr. (Soft Skull, 2006). His short fiction has appeared in Harper’s, Esquire, theParis Review, TriQuarterly, the Missouri Review, the Pushcart Prize and elsewhere. He has taught fiction writing at the University of Texas in Austin, the University of Missouri in Columbia and currently both fiction and screenwriting at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
Judy Bauer won the 2009 Langston Hughes Award and has been published twice in Coal City Review. She’s an MFA grad of University of Kansas and is currently writing a mystery novel tentatively titled The Hesitation of Olivia Austin. She lives in Lawrence with her husband, Gene, their cats and hundreds of photos of their two grown kids.
Dixie Lubin is a long-time Lawrence resident. She has been reading and writing poetry for more than thirty years. Her publications include poems in The Carbon Chronicle-Harvest of Arts Poets 1992-1996, Kaw, Kaw, Kaw, as the Poets Fly from Lawrence, Kansas (a CD), and Slightly Tilting Toward the Void/Rabid Doggerel, poems by Dixie and Fred Lubin. Dixie has facilitated community writing and creativity workshops. She was a member of Medusa women’s writing group, and has been published in several local ‘zines. She is a two-time winner of Poetry.com’s daily poetry contest. Dixie has been an alternative grade school teacher. She is an outsider artist, and a founding mother of the Bizarre Bazaar.
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Fourth Thursdays
BIG TENT: Stories & Poems in Three Acts
7PM @ The Raven
BIG TENT in OCTOBER
Thursday, October 22
7PM @ The Raven
Act 1: Adam Desnoyer prose
Act 2: Krista Gammper prose
Act 3: Jennie James poetry
Adam Desnoyers’ work has appeared in The Idaho Review, Fence, Lit, Black Warrior Review, and the O. Henry Prize Stories and has also received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention.
Kristin Gammper is a fifth year senior at the University of Kansas studying English with an emphasis in creative writing. Women’s, gender, and sexuality studies captivate a lot of her interest as well even though it’s not part of her “official” degree. If she’s not reading a book or telling inappropriate stories about her family, Kristin is probably outside (possibly doing either of those things anyway).
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Fourth Thursdays
BIG TENT: Stories & Poems in Three Acts
7PM @ The Raven
BIG TENT in SEPTEMBER
Thursday, September 24
7PM @ The Raven
Act 1: Cyrus Console poetry
Act 2: Mark Cunningham prose
Act 3: Nancy Hubbell poetry
Cyrus Console is from Topeka, Kansas. He holds degrees in poetry and biology from Bard College and the University of Kansas, and is completing a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Kansas. Recent poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, Critical Quarterly, and Lana Turner, among other places. Recent readings include the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church and the Holloway Series at University of California, Berkeley. His first book, Brief Under Water, was published last year by Burning Deck press. He teaches at the University of Kansas and the Kansas City Art Institute.
Mark Cunningham has three chapbooks out—Second Story and nightlightnight (with photographs by Mel Nichols), both from Right Hand Pointing, and 10 specimens from Gold Wake Press—and three books, Body Language from Tarpaulin Sky Press, 80 Beetles from Otoliths, and 71 Leaves, an ebook from BlazeVox.
Nancy Hubble has a degree in Education and French from the University of South Florida in Tampa. She has taught in public schools, alternative ‘one room’ multi-grade schools, in Gifted Education classes and at KU. She completed Master’s work in English as a Second Language and Anthropology, and has worked on archaeological digs, in ornithology labs and as a drug counselor. For the last 11 years, she has sold art, books and antiques on eBay. She loves writing, listening to poetry and playing with paints and clay. She has had poetry published in the Journal World, a variety of small zines and Imagination and Place’s publication: The Wakarusa Wetlands in Word & Image. She has a CD and chapbook Dharma Dog.
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Fourth Thursdays
BIG TENT: Stories & Poems in Three Acts
7PM @ The Raven
BIG TENT in AUGUST
Thursday, August 27
7PM @ The Raven
Act 1: Karen Ohnesorge poetry
Act 2: Katie Oberthaler prose
Act 3: Diane Glancy poetry
Karen Ohnesorge was born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and she has lived mostly in Lawrence, Kansas since 1986. She currently serves as Dean of Instruction for Ottawa University, Ottawa, Kansas.
Katie Oberthaler is a senior at The University of Kansas studying creative writing. She works as a science journalist for The Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets and as a student assistant at the KU Natural History Museum. Her interests include non-fiction writing, geosophy, salsa dancing, racquetball, and using her automated bread maker to dazzle friends and avoid washing dishes. She spent last summer traveling and studying in India and is currently adapting the experience into a series of essays.
“Writing is a conversation,” observes Diane Glancy, a Cherokee/English/German writer from Kansas City. Her poetry, scripts, essays, and fiction have earned her numerous literary prize including an American Book Award, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Native American Prose Award and a Sundance Screenwriting Fellowship. “My students and I come together to take risks and reach new frontiers.” For Glancy, writing has also been a journey. As artist in residence for the State Arts Council of Oklahoma she traveled the state for a decade, teaching the skills of writing, oral communication and critical thinking. Her growing reputation as a writer opened the door to a fellowship at the prestigious University of Iowa Writers Workshop.
Glancy was a professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she taught Native American Literature and Creative Writing. Glancy also taught in the Bread Loaf School of English M.A. program on the campus of the Native American Preparatory School in Rowe, New Mexico, in 1999. She was the 1998 Edlestein-Keller Minnesota Writer of Distinction, University of Minnesota, where she taught Topics in Advanced Poetry. Glancy also was the Native American Inroads Mentor at The Loft in Minneapolis where she taught Creative Nonfiction in 1997.
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Fourth Thursdays
BIG TENT: Stories & Poems in Three Acts
7PM @ The Raven
BIG TENT in JULY
Thursday, July 23
7PM @ The Raven
Act 1: Becca Evanhoe prose
Act 2: Jackie McClenny prose
Act 3: Jillian Hishaw poetry
From relationships to environmental issues, Jillian Hishaw is as diverse as her interests. She has been featured at the American Jazz Museum’s Blue Room and competed in the Regional University Spoken Word Finals in Houston, 2006. Her current focus has been developing Kansas City’s National Youth Spoken Word Team. As co-coach of the Youth team, Kansas City placed eighth in the Nation making it to the Semi-Finals in Washington DC, 2008. As an environmental attorney, professor, poet and advocate of various causes, Jillian’s diverse personality, heritage and wit are expressed uniquely in her poetry and on her first CD entitled “Life Lessons”. Please join Jillian in her debut performance at the Big Tent!
Rebecca Evanhoe is a native Kansan and former student at the University of Kansas, where she studied chemistry, journalism, and creative writing. Now she waitresses, cleans houses, and does freelance writing work. Rebecca’s work has appeared in NOON annual, Chemical and Engineering News, Mote magazine, and the Spencer Art Museum’s elevator.
Jackie McClenny has lived in Lawrence since 1986. She received a B.A. in English from KU in 2007, and now teaches there while pursuing her MFA. Her current project is a book-length collection of essays entitled The House That Catfish Built.
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Fourth Thursdays
BIG TENT: Stories & Poems in Three Acts
7PM @ The Raven
BIG TENT in JUNE
Thursday, June 25
7PM @ The Raven
Act 1: Peter Wright poetry
Act 2: Amy Haake prose
Act 3: Linda Rodriguez poetry
Focusing on the shadows that feed and motivate this symphony of existence Peter Wright has been writing poems for seventeen years. He lives with his partner thirty miles north of Lawrence. As this small stretch of land on a rise in the middle of nowhere is a new arrangement, he looks forward to the continued evolution of his work influenced by the giant whispering Kansas sky. He has self-published one chapbook of short poems called Spray.
Linda Rodriguez is proud to be a Tia Chucha Press author in their 20th year of publishing with her book of poetry, Heart’s Migration. She also has published a cookbook, The “I Don’t Know How To Cook” Book: Mexican (Adams Media, 2008) and a chapbook of poetry, Skin Hunger (Potpourri Publications, 1994; Scapegoat Press, 2007). She is vice president of the Latino Writers Collective, a wonderful group of Midwestern writers who are like family. Linda is a long-time feminist, activist, and unashamed liberal and lives with her husband, dog, cat, and about three million books.
Amy Haake is a poet, author, freelance copywriter, wife and mother. She lives and works in Lawrence, Kansas, where she received a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from the University of Kansas. Currently, she is working on a memoir about autism, as well as a series of comical shorts about growing up in Kansas.
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