Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Hearing Voices with Alex George and Tony Mena

Join us at Orr Street Studios at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb 28, for readings of fiction by Alex George and poetry by Tony Mena.
ALEX GEORGE
 
Alex George is a writer and a lawyer. He was born in England but presently lives in Columbia, Missouri.

Alex has been named as one of Britain's top ten "thirtysomething" novelists by the Times of London, and was also named the Independent on Sunday's "face to watch" for fiction in its Fresh Talent feature.

His most recent novel, A Good American, was published by Penguin Books in February and has received rave reviews.

Alex studied  law at Oxford University and worked for eight years as a corporate lawyer in London and Paris. He moved to the United States in 2003, and re-qualified as a US attorney. He now runs his own law firm in Columbia.

He is proud to be president of the board of the Voluntary Action Center, a leading nonprofit organization in mid-Missouri. 


Alex has two young children. His hobbies include listening to obscure jazz albums, playing his saxophone and cooking (and eating) complicated meals.

He is now hard at work on his new novel.


TONY MENA

Gerardo "Tony" Mena is a decorated Iraqi Freedom veteran who spent six years in the Special Operations community with the Reconnaissance Marines as a Special Amphibious Reconnaissance Corpsman (SARC).  During his tour in Iraq he was awarded a Navy Achievement Medal with a V for Valor for multiple acts of bravery.
 
He is currently a wrestling coach at Hickman High School and is studying at MU to be a high school English teacher. He was awarded the 2011 Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Leadership, as well as the 2011 U.S. Bank/Mizzou Student Veterans Association Scholarship.
 
His poem, "So I Was a Coffin," was the winner of the "2010 War Poetry Contest" sponsored by Winningwriters, and his multimedia version was featured in the online portion of Poets & Writers Magazine. He was selected for inclusion in the Best New Poets 2011 anthology series featuring fifty poems from promising emerging poets. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize as well as a "Best of the Net 2011" award. He won the "2011 Penumbra Haiku Contest" sponsored by the Tallahassee Writers Association. He has poems published in Diagram, Burner Magazine, The Medulla ReviewBarely South Review, Spillway, The San Pedro River Review, Sleetmagazine, Protest Poems.org, The New Mexico Poetry Review, a non-fiction essay published on the Veterans Association's website, two songs featured in the Nashville Review, and a third song featured in The Blue Lotus Review.
 
He has poems and essays forthcoming from Raleigh Review, Prairie Schooner Digital Online Project, Chautaqua, Cider Press Review, Hawai'i Review and War, Literature and the Arts. He has just completed his first full-length manuscript of war poetry.


Orr Street Studios is located at 106 Orr St. in downtown Columbia, Mo. Join us every Tuesday evening during the academic year for literary readings and visual-arts presentations.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Hearing Voices with Keija Parssinen and Thom Dawkins

Join us at Orr Street Studios at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb 14, for readings of fiction by Keija Parssinen and poetry by Thom Dawkins.


KEIJA PARSSINEN

Keija Parssinen was born in Saudi Arabia and lived there for 12 years as a third-generation expatriate. She earned a degree in English literature from Princeton University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she held a Truman Capote Fellowship and a Teaching & Writing Fellowship. She lives with her husband on the edge of a quarry in Columbia, Mo., where she directs the Quarry Heights Writers' Workshop and writes at a desk made of 19th-century Missouri barn wood. The Ruins of Us, Parssinen's debut novel, was published in January 2012 by Harper Perennial in North America and Faber & Faber in the U.K., Ireland, Australia and South Africa. It won a Michener-Copernicus award.


THOM DAWKINS

Thom Dawkins serves as the reviews editor for Weave magazine and contributes regularly to the Los Angeles Review. His recent work as a poet and critic has also appeared in Pleiades, New Orleans Review, DMQ Review and Puerto del Sol. He earned an MFA at Chatham University and studied theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Thom lives in Columbia, Mo., where he teaches poetry and composition.









Orr Street Studios is located at 106 Orr St. in downtown Columbia, Mo. Join us every Tuesday evening during the academic year for literary readings and visual-arts presentations.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Seeing Visions with Chris Morrey

Join us at Orr Street Studios at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 7, for an evening with sculptor Chris Morrey.

Cat 1, bronze, 2010. By Chris Morrey.

CHRIS MORREY

Chris Morrey's bronze sculptures combine plant and animal forms into delicate, primeval, humorous and menacing figures that can seem half-glimpsed and elusive even on close inspection. Since completing his MFA in sculpture at the University of Missouri in 2009, Chris has been building public commissions for the university's new student center, the Boone County Hospital and City Hall  and has completed a permanent installation at Missouri Valley College in Marshall. He has also opened Dogwood, a low-cost studio space for local artists in downtown Columbia. 
See Chris Morrey's work.




 
 
Orr Street Studios is located at 106 Orr St. in downtown Columbia, Mo. Join us every Tuesday evening during the academic year for literary readings and visual-arts presentations.