Scott Dalrymple | Rich Smith | Shane Epping

Join us at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 18, for science fiction by Scott Dalrymple, poetry by Rich Smith and photography by Shane Epping.

SCOTT DALRYMPLE 

Scott Dalrymple is the president of Columbia College in Columbia, Missouri. He grew up in in a small town in the western part of upstate New York. He worked in traditional liberal-arts-and-sciences colleges and spent four years as a dean at Excelsior College, an online-only institution in Albany, New York, before coming to Columbia.

Along with a master’s degree in business administration, Dalrymple has a PhD, a master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree in English, with specialties in Mark Twain, Shakespeare and turn-of the-century American novels. As dean of Excelsior College, Dalrymple encouraged the creation of English courses on zombies, and later, a course about vampires.

In 2010, Dalrymple earned Realms of Fantasy magazine’s Readers Choice Award for his short science-fiction piece “Queen of the Kanguellas,” which features sorcery and a tribe led by an immortal warrior queen. He has published several works of fiction in Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine.

 

RICH SMITH
 
Rich Smith is the author All Talk (Poor Claudia, 2014) and the chapbook Great Poem of Desire and Other Poems (Poor Claudia, 2013). His poems have appeared or will soon appear in Tin House, City Arts, Guernica, The Southeast Review, Hobart, Barrow Street, The Bellingham Review, Pleiades, Verse Daily and elsewhere.

He was a finalist for the Ruth Lilly Prize.

A native of Belton, Missouri, Smith is a poetry editor of Pleiades and the visiting professor of poetry at the University of Central Missouri.

SHANE EPPING
 
Shane Epping works as a photographer and adjunct faculty member at the University of Missouri, where learning about photojournalism as a graduate student saved him from continually wondering, “What if I did what I really wanted to do with my life?”

Epping began his formal photography education at the age of 32, after working as a high school teacher and wrestling coach for six years. He has a passion for telling stories. Employed to support his educational institution, he manages to compliment traditional public-relations work with documentary storytelling.
 
Epping holds a master's degree in journalism from the Missouri School of Journalism, a master’s degree in American Culture Studies from Washington University in St. Louis, and a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Chicago.

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

Mike Perkins | B. Noam Jacobson | Peter Anger

Join us at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 21, for creative nonfiction by Mike Perkins, poetry by B. Noam Jacobson and photography by Peter Anger.

MIKE PERKINS
Michael Ray Perkins was born in Harrisburg, Missouri. He worked on a ranch before serving as an Army medic and then as a Navy corpsman with the United States Marines. He studied history and political science at Columbia College and earned an MSW in social work from the University of Missouri. He has published more than poems, here and abroad, as well as one volume of poetry. His next work is a “fitness memoir” titled Running Ugly, which is due out this summer. Running Ugly is his story about personal and spiritual transformation, including losing more than 115 pounds.

B. NOAM JACOBSON
B. Noam Jacobson has been a volunteer in Israel for many summers. His travel experiences and poetry are published in Voices Israel (2012, 2013), Cyclamens and Swords and Tikkun. He currently teaches English to second-language learners at the University of Missouri. He has hiked in the Sinai desert and has more than 100 dives in the Red Sea.


PETER ANGER
Peter Anger has been a professional commercial photographer and art photographer for more than 30 years. He holds a bachelor’s degree in fine art, with cinema and photography specialization, from Southern Illinois University. A collection of his light paintings recently was on display in the show R*G*B at Columbia College’s Greg Hardwick Gallery. His work took honorable mention in the 2014 Photo Vision photography exhibition and competition, on display at Orr Street Studios through Oct. 25.

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

Richard Newman | Kathryn Nuernberger | Leandra Spangler

Join us at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 16, for poetry by Richard Newman and Kathryn Nuernberger and fiber art by Leandra Spangler.

RICHARD NEWMAN

Richard Newman is the author of the poetry collections All the Wasted Beauty of the World (Able Muse Press, 2014), Domestic Fugues (Steel Toe Books, 2009) and Borrowed Towns (Word Press, 2005). His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Boulevard, Crab Orchard Review, New Letters, The Sun and many other periodicals and anthologies. They have been featured many times on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. He lives in St. Louis, where he serves as editor of River Styx, co-directs the River Styx at the Tavern reading series, and plays in the junkfolk band The CharFlies.

KATHRYN NUERNBERGER 

Kathryn Nuernberger is the author of the poetry collection Rag & Bone and is one of the editors of the literary magazine Pleiades. She has received fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society and the Bakken Museum of Electricity in Life to research and write poems about cabinets of curiosities, Victorian science and medical oddities. She lives on a homestead near Warrensburg, Missouri.

LEANDRA SPANGLER
Leandra Spangler's passion for papermaking began in 1986 when she first plunged her hands into a vat of pulp. In the subsequent years, Leandra has explored numerous ways of making and using paper (handmade and found) as a medium in her creative artistic expressions. After 25 years of teaching art in the public schools, Leandra became a full-time studio artist in 2000.

Spangler creates an armature, woven from reed, lashed bamboo and/or wire, as the bones for her contemporary basketry. Highly textured handmade paper of black denim creates the skin. The paper exoskeleton is sealed and finished with layers and layers of color. These sculptural vessels are shown across the country at invitational and juried exhibitions.

Spangler teaches workshops in her studio, Bear Creek Paperworks, in Columbia, Missouri.



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

Melody Gee, Phong Nguyen + Sarah Nguyen, Aarik Danielsen + Amy Wilder

Join us at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 15, for poetry by Melody Gee, fiction by Phong Nguyen, paintings and illustrations by Sarah Nguyen and arts journalism by Aarik Danielsen and Amy Wilder.

MELODY GEE
Melody S. Gee is the author of Each Crumbling House (Perugia Press 2010), which won the Perugia Book Prize. Her poems and essays have appeared in Blackbird, Copper Nickel, Boxcar Poetry Review and Connotation Press. She teaches writing at St. Louis Community College and lives in St. Louis with her husband and daughters.



PHONG NGUYEN

Phong Nguyen is editor of Pleiades and author of Memory Sickness and Other Stories. He directs the Unsung Masters Series, for which he edited the volume Nancy Hale: On the Life and Work of a Lost American Master. Nguyen teaches fiction and American literature at the University of Central Missouri, where he lives with his wife, the artist Sarah Nguyen, and their three children.

SARAH NGUYEN
Sarah Nguyen is a painter living and working in rural Missouri. Her work has appeared in solo and group exhibits throughout the United States, including galleries in Chicago, Philadelphia, Kansas City and New York City. She earned a BFA in illustration from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in painting from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She works as an art instructor at the University of Central Missouri.

AARIK DANIELSEN

Aarik Danielsen is the features editor at the Columbia Daily Tribune. There, he has the privilege of writing and assigning stories about the things which matter most to him: culture and community. A native of the Southwest, he migrated to Missouri to study music at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar. Finding that the Midwest suited him, he remained, later earning a master's degree in journalism at the University of Missouri. Since coming to the Tribune in 2009, he has enjoyed opportunities to interview regionally and nationally recognized artists and musicians who create on scales both intimate and immense. His greatest joy as a journalist has come through chances to more deeply understand the particular passions of culture-makers, then convey those concerns in thoughtful and creative ways.

AMY WILDER
Amy Wilder is a features writer at the Columbia Daily Tribune and, since July 2012, has written stories profiling local artists and arts events, as well as the occasional visiting professional or musician. Amy was born in Columbia and raised in Fayette and attended the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, where she wrote her own degree, a BFA in visual culture, graduating in 2003. In addition to writing for the Tribune, Amy occasionally composes poetry and fiction (usually under a nom de plume), sells a painting now and then, dreams up performance-art pieces, plays clarinet and piano and enjoys listening to music. She has an avid interest in physics, engineering, mathematics and aviation. She's especially intrigued by the growing intersection between the arts and sciences, and potential applications of interdisciplinary research and collaboration.

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

Carl Kenney, Jenny McGee, Bob Hodgson

Join us at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 18, for prose by Carl Kenney and visual and literary art by Jenny McGee and Bob Hodgson.

CARL KENNEY

Carl Kenney is a novelist and columnist currently working as an adjunct professor at the Missouri School of Journalism. Affectionately known as “Kenney the voice of many,” Carl Kenney was named the best serious columnist of 2011 by the North Carolina Press Association for his work with the News & Observer's community paper The Durham News. He earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and a master of divinity from Duke University. He was named a fellow in pastoral leadership development at the Princeton Theological Seminary in 2005. He is a freelance writer whose commentary has appeared in The News & Observer, The Independent Weekly and The Durham Herald-Sun. Kenney is the author of two novels: Preacha’ Man and the sequel, Backslide. He has led congregations in Missouri and North Carolina. Before joining the University of Missouri faculty, he was an instructor at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies.

JENNY MCGEE AND BOB HODGSON

Jenny McGee
Jenny McGee is a professional artist who is passionate about helping people express their love to another through her abstract paintings. Jenny is a cancer survivor who is learning to love her freckles and life’s imperfections and to cherish each moment with her husband, David, and two children, Jonny and Ema Blue.

Jenny McGee's paintings hang in numerous private and corporate collections, and you can visit Jenny’s work at Orr Street Studios in Columbia,  at the Leopold Gallery in Kansas City, or at the World Trade Art Gallery in New York City.

Learn more about expressing and celebrating your love for another through her art at www.jennymcgeeart.com.

Bob Hodgson
As editor, writer, columnist and Missouri State University professor of religious studies, but also as translator and executive at American Bible Society in New York City, Bob Hodgson toggled between word and image all his professional life. At the society, he worked as senior producer and co-executive director of a 10-year long multimedia translation project that produced music and performance videos of biblical stories, garnering more than a dozen film, video and multimedia industry awards, including two CINDY and two CINE citations. Today, writing fiction or oil painting, he sets to work as a translator, walking alongside his original “texts” — story and memory, imagination and emotion, experience and attitude — nudging them across borders of language, time, space, culture and medium. Bob and his wife, MaryTim, live in Columbia close to two of three children and three of four grandchildren. Here Bob has found a diverse and nurturing creative community at Orr Street Studios and in workshops led by artist Hannah Hollister Ingmire and authors Keija Parsinnen and Bridget Buford. His short stories have appeared in Well-Versed, the literary magazine of the Columbia Chapter of the Missouri Writers Guild. Columbia Art League's 2013 Interpretations includes two poems he wrote. His paintings hang in private collections as well as at Orr Street.

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

Feb. 18: Walter, Bargen, Eric Praschan, Tiny Attic Productions

Join us at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 18, for poetry by Walter Bargen, fiction by Eric Praschan and film by Chelsea Myers and Paul Mossine of Tiny Attic Productions.

WALTER BARGEN

Walter Bargen was Missouri’s first poet laureate. Appointed by Gov. Matt Blunt in 2008, he served in the position until 2010, traveling around the state to share poetry with the masses.

He is the author of 16 books of poetry. His most recent, Trouble Behind Glass Doors, was published in 2013, and his next book, Too Quick for the Living, is set for publication in 2014.

Bargen's work has appeared in more than 100 journals and magazines, including American Literary Review, Missouri Review, American Letters and Commentary, Poetry Northwest, The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal and Prairie Schooner. Bargen is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry and winner of the William Rockhill Nelson Award. Other awards include the Quarter After Eight Prose Prize, the St. Louis Poetry Center’s Hanks Prize, and the Chester H. Jones Foundation Prize.

Bargen holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy and a master's degree in education from the University of Missouri. In January 2014 he retired from his position as senior coordinator for MU's Assessment Resource Center after 25 years of service.

ERIC PRASCHAN
Eric Praschan has been writing for more than 20 years, focusing on suspense fiction.  He is the author of the Amazon-bestselling James Women Trilogy, which includes Therapy for Ghosts, Sleepwalking into Darkness and The Reckoning. 

Praschan holds a bachelor's degree in English and a master's degree in theological studies. He has many years of experience in drama, music, teaching, and higher education.

Prashcan lives in Columbia with his wife, Stephanie, and he currently works in the Graduate School at the University of Missouri.

TINY ATTIC PRODUCTIONS
Chelsea Myers and Paul Mossine are the founders of the art, music and film collective Tiny Attic Productions. Their projects include a short documentary about Columbia music venue The Bridge, daily coverage of the True/False Film Festival and promotional videos for the Roots N Blues N BBQ Festival.

Chelsea Myers
First and foremost an artist, Chelsea Myers continuously derives her inspiration from the people she meets through her travels. She worked four jobs for four years to trot the globe like a vagabond queen because she believes the journey will always be better than the destination. Myers has studied video, information technology and advertising at the University of Westminster-London and the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

Paul Mossine
 Paul Mossine's goal is to travel the world doing what he loves: meeting new people, playing music and documenting the world around him. So far his spirit for adventure has taken him to France, South Korea, Mexico and Ukraine. His motto is that it's better to seek forgiveness than to seek permission. Paul studied photojournalism, art and international studies at the University of Missouri.

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

Jan. 21: Nina Furstenau, Lianuska Gutierrez and Drew Resnik

Join us at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 21, for creative nonfiction by Nina Furstenau, poetry by Lianuska Gutierrez and photography by Drew Resnik.  

NINA FURSTENAU

Nina Mukerjee Furstenau is a journalist and teacher.  She teaches food and wine writing for the University of Missouri Science and Agriculture Journalism program and the Missouri School of Journalism, and she received the International Regional Magazine Association’s Award for Food Writing in 2009. Her recent books are Savor Missouri: River Hills Food and Wine, celebrating the local flavors of food and wine in Missouri, and Biting Through the Skin: An Indian Kitchen in the Heartland, a memoir in food.

Furstenau earned a master's degree in English/creative writing in 2006 and a bachelor's degree in magazine journalism in 1984, both from the University of Missouri. She was in the Peace Corps in Tunisia from 1984 to 1986 and then began working life as a journalist and publisher/editor of three construction magazines beginning in 1987. She and her husband launched and published these magazines and two others until 2001. Since then, she has published numerous creative nonfiction pieces for journals such as Painted Bride Quarterly and Ploughshares as well as magazines such as Missouri Life. Furstenau was a month-long resident at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont, in 2008.

LIANUSKA GUTIERREZ
Lianuska Gutierrez studied at Harvard and Fordham universities, and she is currently a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Missouri. Her work can be found in Eratio Poetry Journal, Counterexample Poetics, Wicked Alice, Corazon Land Review, Yemassee, Gesture, The Prague Revue, Deluge and other journals. She is co-editor of an incipient literary journal called Medusa Talks Back. Her critical work explores excess as a channel to ethicality and also focuses on poetics of both corporeality and of selfhood constituted by the word, i.e. the Lacanian linguistic subject.

DREW RESNIK

Drew’s photography experience goes back many years to some undergraduate college courses. With his father’s old Petri 35mm film camera he began making images, and photography became part of his creative arsenal, which included painting, sculpture, and music. In 2004, Drew founded Lakeside Studio Photo. Lakeside Studio became a working portrait, fashion and fine-art studio, and he was one of the original artists involved in the Orr Street Studios venture. In 2009 he began concentrating solely on fine-art landscape photography. Since that time he has produced commissioned pieces in Columbia and Jefferson City hospitals, businesses and homes. The most current two years have been spent focused completely on film photography, using both antique and current analog equipment, as well as learning film-developing techniques. It is this passion for the organic nature of film emulsions and development chemistries, combined with his personal perspective, that is at the heart of his work.

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