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Delta Mouth Night 2: The Fabulousness Continues

Night two of Delta Mouth 2011 will feature the following fabulous artists:

Jen McClanaghan--

Jen McClanaghan grew up in New Canaan, Connecticut. She earned her undergraduate degree from Antioch College then moved to New York City where she worked in publishing for seven years, including a job as a photo editor for the National Audubon Society Field Guides. She graduated from Columbia University with an MFA (2004) and Florida State University with a PhD (2009).

Her manuscript, The Cairo Letters, was a 2009 finalist for The Dorset Prize, The National Poetry Series and Saturnalia Books. Her poem, “River Legs” won The Georgetown Review poetry prize.

She lives in Baton Rouge where she is a Resident Scholar at The Southern Review, and teaches in LSU's English department.


Blake Butler--

Blake Butler is the author of the novella "EVER", released in January 2009 by Calamari Press, and the novel-in-stories SCORCH ATLAS, from Featherproof Books.

Blake edits the literature blog HTML Giant, and two journals: Lamination Colony, and concurrently with co-editor Ken Baumann, No Colony. His other writing has appeared in The Believer, Unsaid, Fence, Willow Springs, Opium Magazine, Gigantic and Black Warrior Review.

His writing has been shortlisted for Best American Nonrequired Reading.

Blake has a forthcoming book, The Copy Family due in 2010 from Harper Perennial.


Kate Bernheimer--

Kate Bernheimer is an American fairy-tale scholar, author, and editor of the journal Fairy Tale Review as well as a number of fairy-tale anthologies, including Mirror, Mirror on the Wall (Doubleday, 2002) and Brothers and Beasts (Wayne State University Press, 2007). Her first two novels, The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold (2001) and The Complete Tales of Merry Gold (2006), were published by Fiction Collective 2. She is also the author of an acclaimed book for children, The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum, chosen as a best picture book of the year by Publishers Weekly in 2008.

Kate Bernheimer has been a George Bennett Fellow in Creative Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and has taught in the Summer Writing Program at Harvard. She teaches at University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. She currently serves as writer-in-residence at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.


Ronaldo V. Wilson--

Ronaldo V. Wilson serves as the Visiting Assistant Professor in English at Mount Holyoke College.
His specialties include 20th Century African American Poetry & Poetics, African American Literature, Creative Writing, The Black Body in 20th Century and Contemporary Visual Culture.
He is the author of Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, from University of Pittsburgh Press in Fall 2008; and Poems of the Black Object, published in the Futurepoem Books annual series in Spring 2009.

Mark Brosseau--

Mark Brosseau received his MFA in Painting from the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA) in 2001 and his BA in Studio Art from Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH) in 1998. He also spent a year painting and printmaking in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar. He has participated in numerous exhibitions including solo shows at Bridgette Mayer Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), St. Joseph’s University (Philadelphia, PA) and Galleri Skuggi (Reykjavik, Iceland) and group shows at The Painting Center (New York, NY), The State Museum of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, PA), Hopkinson House Gallery (Camden, NJ), and the Washington Art Association (Washington Depot, CT). His work is included in many private collections. Brosseau works as a curator at a Philadelphia art gallery and has served as a visiting artist and critic at various undergraduate art programs. He recently moved to Baton Rouge with his wife, Jenny, who is in LSU's Creative Writing MFA program.

“I want to take visual experiences that mystify me, and explore them through painting, creating a new world – a new space – informed by the world around me, but driven further by the fantastical possibilities of imagination and invention. The beauty of the abstract qualities of what I am observing moves me to explore the possibilities of those relationships through a painting. As the painting takes shape, each decision causes a re-evaluation of what has come before. Each action balances careful consideration of how it will affect the space of the painting against the sensation of spontaneity and exploration that planted the impulse for that decision in the first place. This tension between calculation and intuition is always present: I want to remain true to my intuition without decisions becoming arbitrary, and I want choices to be specific and purposeful without becoming overwrought. Play and the enjoyment of putting color against color are united with exploration and the desire to communicate experience through the use of an abstract visual language. The spaces I create are meant to be not only enjoyed, but inhabited and felt. The evolution of a space progressing on canvas is constantly fed by curiosity – questions are infinitely more important than answers.”

http://www.bridgettemayergallery.com/artist_brosseauhome.htm

Bryce Dishongh--

Bryce Dishongh is a self-taught illustrator from Houston, Texas. Though he always drew, he chose to pursue his other passion: writing. He received a bachelor's degree in English and Philosophy and a master's degree in Technical Communication from Texas State University - San Marcos.

After graduating, Bryce wrote technical manuals and did graphic design for a few years in Austin, Texas, until he moved with his MFAing girlfriend to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Despite only doing the art thing for eight months, Bryce has developed a personal style that has been influenced by the likes of Ralph Steadman, Maxfield Parrish, Carne Griffiths, Josh Keyes, Caitlin Hackett, Eric Nyquist, and Mcbess. He has created several commissioned works, including the art for this year's Rouge Roubaix 13 bicycle race.

www.brycedishongh.com

+ OH NO BOOKS RELEASE PARTY!!!

Delta Mouth Night 1, Chelsea's Cafe, 3/17, 7 PM, FREE

Night one of Delta Mouth 2011 will feature the following fabulous artists:

Frank Giampietro--

Frank Giampietro's first book of poems Begin Anywhere was published by Alice James Books in 2008. He is the editor and designer of the online poetry journal, La Fovea (www.lafovea.org) and Poems by Heart (www.poemsbyheart.org). His poetry, short short fiction, nonfiction, and book reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in journals including 32 Poems, American Book Review, Barrow Street, Black Warrior Review, Cimarron Review, CutBank, FENCE, Hayden's Ferry, Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Poetry International, Subtropics, and Rain Taxi. Awards for his writing include a Florida Book Award, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and fellowships from The Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. He earned his PhD in English from Florida State University in August, 2010 and is the 2010-2012 resident scholar at The Southern Review. He lives in Baton Rouge with his wife and two children.


Cara Blue Adams--

Cara Blue Adams’s stories have appeared in Narrative, The Kenyon Review, and The Sun, among other places. The recipient of a Bread Loaf waiter scholarship and The Kenyon Review Short Fiction Prize, her work is anthologized in Readings for Writers. She is the managing editor of The Southern Review.


Johannes Goransson--

Johannes Göransson was born in Sweden, but has lived around the US for several years. He is the author of: Dear Ra (Starcherone, 2008), Pilot (Fairy Tale Review Press, 2008) and A New Quarantine Will Take My Place (Apostrophe Books, 2007)—and the chapbook Majakovskij en tragedy (Dos Press, 2008). He is also the translator of: Collobert Orbital by Johan Jonsson, Gingerbread Monuments by Victor Johansson & Klara Kallstrom, Remainland: Selected Poems by Aase Berg and Ideals Clearance by Henry Parland. He is the co-editor of Action Books and the online journal Action, Yes.

Joyelle McSweeney--

Joyelle McSweeney is the author of the novels Flet (Fence) and Nylund the Sarcographer (Tarpaulin Sky Press) and the poetry books The Red Bird and The Commandrine and Other Poems. She teaches in the MFA Program at Notre Dame and is a co-founder of Action Books.

w/ a performance by Benjamin Haas!
Benjamin Haas lives in Baton Rouge, and is a graduate Student at LSU. His poems have recently appeared in The New Delta Review, Ditch, Clockwise Cat, Allography, and Kerouac's Dog.

DELTA MOUTH POSTER 2011

Poster by Payton Boyer (paytonboyer@gmail.com)

Mark your calendars! LSU’s New Delta Review cordially invites the Baton Rouge community to the third annual Delta Mouth Literary Festival, a two-day event on Thursday, March 17, and Friday, March 18, 2011. Delta Mouth 2011 will showcase an eclectic amalgamation of award-winning poets, novelists, short story writers, performance artists, and raconteurs—local, out-of-state, and international—that are certain to satisfy all tastes. Thursday’s kickoff event will be held at the Chelsea’s Cafe and will feature readings and performances by Benjamin Haas, Frank Giampietro, Cara Blue Adams, Johannes Göransson, and Joyelle McSweeney. Friday’s featured event will be held at the Ephemeral Gallery (521 N. 19^th St.) and will feature readings by Jen McClanaghan, Blake Butler, Kate Bernheimer, and Ronaldo V. Wilson, and artwork by Mark Brosseau and Bryce Dishongh. OH NO BOOKS will host a launch party celebrating the release of its first issue following Friday’s performances. The authors will be available for chatting and book signings following the readings and will have their newest releases, along with other titles, available for purchase. Both evening events will begin promptly at 7:00 p.m. and are FREE of charge!

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Delta Mouth Drag Ball / Fri Oct 29 / 9 PM

Delta Mouth 2010 was a huge success, so we've got some pretty big shoes to fill.

That's why we're slipping into some high heels and strutting our stuff for Delta Mouth 2011.

NDR presents ...
DELTA MOUTH DRAG BALL

Fri Oct 29
Red Star Bar
Doors open 9:00 PM
$7 at the door/ $6 if you dress in drag*

w/ Drag Bingo, featuring Liza Minnelli!
the return of Poetry Kissing Booth!

Music by: Lady of the Barge & Polly Pry!

*No slackers. A woman wearing jeans and a t-shirt is not in drag, nor is a man in a coconut bra!

See you there, Divas!

3 DAYS TO GO!

Thursday Evenings Readers

Marthe Reed has published a book, Tender Box, A Wunderkammer (Lavender Ink) and two chapbooks, (em)bodied bliss (Dusie Kollektiv 3) and zaum alliterations(Dusie Kollektiv 4); a new book, Gaze, is due out April 2010 from Black Radish Books. Her poetry has appeared in New American Writing, Golden Handcuffs Review, New Orleans Review, HOW2, MiPoesias, and Exquisite Corpse, among others, and is

forthcoming from Fairy Tale Review. Her manuscript, an earth of sweetness dances in the vein, was a finalist in Ahsahta Press’ 2006 Sawtooth Poetry Contest. She teaches at UL Lafayette.

Andrew Ervin’s first book, Extraordinary Renditions: 3 Novellas, will be published on Sept. 1 by Coffee House Press.

Chancelier “Xero” Skidmore is a poet, educator and organizer from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Born in Plaquemine, Louisiana, Xero grew up involved in a love affair with language that has never lost its spark. When early fatherhood forced him out of school and into the workforce after his second year of college, he continued to fervently read and educate himself. He also never stopped writing and performing.

From 2004 to 2006 he served as Artistic Director of the non-profit theater-based youth organization, City at Peace-Baton Rouge. He is one of the primary organizers of a weekly open-mic and poetry slam, The Eclectic Truth and has represented Baton Rouge at the National Poetry Slam since 2000, serving both a coach and team member. He has been ranked twice among the top five slam poets in the United States through that competition. He has facilitated writing workshops for youth and adults in Louisiana and throughout the country over the past seven years. You can find his work published in the anthology, Spoken Word Revolution Redux by Sourcebooks mediaFusion.

Currently, Xero teaches poetry to teens in Baton Rouge and its surrounding areas through the WordPlay Teen Writing Project. At WordPlay he serves as Program Manager and Writer-Mentor. He is also semi-dilligently working on a one-man show entitled Openings.

Delta Mouth Schedule Announced!

**All readings and performances are free and open to the public.

KICK OFF CELEBRATION at CHELSEA'S CAFE-

Thursday, Februrary 11th

7:00 Reception Dinner

with Featured Readers*

8:30 Readings & Performances

Andrew Ervin

Marthe Reed

Xero Skidmore

10:00 Kick off Concert featuring

Dream/Work

Lady of the Barge

Eli Andrew

DELTA MOUTH FESTIVAL at the SHAW CENTER for the ARTS -

Friday, February 12 Doors open @ 7 PM

7:00 Catered Reception

8:00 Featured Readings by

Susana Chavez-Silverman

Ariana Reines

Laurie Lynn Drummond

Peggy Shinner

Akilah Oliver

*Tickets for the Reception Dinner are available. Contact deltamouthfestival@gmail.com for more information.

Word of Mouth Success!

The Word of Mouth Fun(draiser) at the Redstar Bar in down town Baton Rouge was a huge success! Thank you to everyone for coming out and showing support for the Delta Mouth and The New Delta Review-- and a special thanks to Redstar Bar, Polly Pry, DJ Twenty*Six, and RMONIC.

We couldn't have done it with out you!

Featured Reader: Laurie Lynn Drummond

Laurie Lynn Drummond’s collection of linked stories, Anything You Say Can and Will be Used Against You (HarperCollins 2004), was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and won the Best Book Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and the Violet Crown Award from the Writers’ League of Texas, and has been translated into Finnish, Japanese, and French. A story from her collection, “Something About a Scar,” won the 2005 Edgar Award for Best Short Story. Her fiction has appeared in journals such as The Southern Review, New Delta Review, Story, New Virginia Review, Black Warrior Review, and Fiction. Her essays, several of which have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and cited in Best American Essays, have been published in Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Brevity, and River Teeth. A recipient of a 2008 Oregon Literary Fellowship in Literary Nonfiction, she is working on a memoir, Losing My Gun, and a novel, Memories of the Living, Lives of the Dead. A former police officer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Drummond received her MFA from LSU in 1991. She now teaches fiction and memoir in the MFA Program at the University of Oregon, where she also directs the Kidd Tutorial Program.

Featured Reader: Susana Chavez-Silverman

Susana Chávez-Silverman is professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Pomona College in California. She is coeditor of Tropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of Latinidad and Reading and Writing the Ambiente: Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American, and Spanish Culture. Her latest book Scenes from la Cuenca de Los Angeles y otros Natural Disasters will be out in March 2010

Chávez-Silverman grew up (at least) bilingually and biculturally between Los Angeles, Madrid and Guadalajara, México, the daughter of a Jewish Hispanist and a Chicana teacher. Her book, Killer Crónicas:Bilingual Memories, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2004. This collection of chronicles began in 2001, after Susana was awarded a fellowship by the US National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for a project on contemporary Argentine women's poetry. She spent thirteen months in Buenos Aires where, in addition to research and writing on her official (academic) book, she began to send bilingual, punning "letters from the southern [cone] front" to colleagues and friends by email.

Featured Reader: Ariana Reines

Ariana Reines is a contemporary poet, playwright, and scholar whose work is on the cutting edge of poetry and theatre. She graduated suma cum laude from Barnard College and was a doctoral candidate in French from Columbia University. She is the author of The Cow (Alberta Prize, FenceBooks 2006) and Coeur de Lion (Mal-O-Mar 2007). Two volumes of translation appeared in 2009: My Heart Laid Bare by Charles Baudelaire, for Mal-O-Mar, and The Little Black Book of Grisélidis Réal, by Jean-Luc Hennig, for Semiotext(e). In addition to her numerous conference appearances, Ms. Reines has contributed to coconut, Action! Yes Quarterly and tema celeste. TELEPHONE,her first play, was commissioned and produced by The Foundry Theatre. TELEPHONEpremiered in February 2009; The New York Times called it 'inspired and utterly original'; it is forthcoming in 2009 in PLAY: A JOURNAL OF PLAYS.

In Spring 2009, Ms. Reines taught a class at UC Berkeley as Holloway Lecturer in Poetry. Several sources have referred to Ms. Reines as one of the “crucial voices in” our generation.

Featured Reader: Peggy Shinner

Peggy Shinner's stories and essays have appeared in The Southern Review, Daedalus, The Gettysburg Review, Fourth Genre, TriQuarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, Western Humanities Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Bloom, River Styx, and others. One of her stories, “Jack’s Things, ” was selected as one of the 100 Distinguished Stories in the Best American Short Stories 2007. She's been awarded two Illinois Arts Council Fellowships, several Pushcart Prize Special Mentions, and residencies at the Ucross and Ragdale Foundations. Currently, she's working on a book of essays about the body.

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/fourth_genre_explorations_in_nonfiction/v009/9.1shinner.html

Featured Reader: Akilah Oliver

A poet, performer, and teacher, Akilah Oliver is the author of the she said dialogues: flesh memory, recipient of the PEN Beyond Margins Award, and her performance with collaborator Anne Waldman can be heard on the new CD, Matching Half.

Oliver has been artist-in-residence at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Los Angeles, was curator for the Poetry Project’s Monday Night Reading Series, co-founder of the avant-garde feminist performance group The Sacred Naked Nature Girls, and is on the faculty of the Summer Writing Program at Naropa University. A Toast in the House of Friends is dedicated to her son, Oluchi McDonald (1982-2003).

She currently lives and teaches in Brooklyn.

Photo by
Theresa Hurst

Help Raise Funds for Delta Mouth 2010 Oct. 23 @ Redstar Bar

Red Star will join with The New Delta Review – the all graduate student-run literary magazine out of Louisiana State University – on Friday, October 23, 2009 in hosting “Word of Mouth: An Evening of Music, Drinks and Fun(draising).”

The New Delta Review aims to raise $800 or more to support Delta Mouth Literary and Music festival. Last year, Delta Mouth brought together 30 regional and national writers and artists for a weekend of music, readings, and art exhibits. This year’s event hopes to continue expanding Baton Rouge’s literary arts community by bringing even more national writers in connection with writers and artist from the local area. Delta Mouth is scheduled for Thursday and Friday, February 11 & 12, 2010.

The event will start at 9:00 PM at Red Star bar located at 222 Laurel Street downtown Baton Rouge. Come show your support for the literary arts in Baton Rouge!

Delta Mouth Festival 2010

This year's Delta Mouth Literary Festival is set for

Thursday & Friday, February 11th and 12th, 2010

Featured readers will be announced soon!