Hearing Voices with Marc McKee and Debra Brenegan

Join us at Orr Street Studios at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 6, for readings of fiction by Debra Brenegan and poetry by Marc McKee.

DEBRA BRENEGAN

Debra Brenegan grew up in the Milwaukee area and graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She worked as a journalist and taught at Milwaukee Area Technical College before beginning her graduate work. She earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she also taught. She teaches English and Women’s Studies at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. For her fiction, she has received a Ragdale residency and was a recent finalist for the John Gardner Memorial Fiction Prize, The Cincinnati Review’s Schiff Prose Prize, and the Crab Creek Review Fiction Prize. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Calyx, Tampa Review, Natural Bridge, The Laurel Review, RE:AL, The Southern Women’s Review, The Cimarron Review, Milwaukee Magazine, Phoebe, and other publications. Debra Brenegan’s novel, Shame the Devil, is a historical account of nineteenth-century American writer Fanny Fern (SUNY Press, Excelsior Editions). She is currently working on another novel, set in Missouri, and on a short story collection.

MARC MCKEE

Marc McKee holds an MFA from the University of Houston and a PhD at the University of Missouri at Columbia, where he lives with his wife, Camellia Cosgray. His work has appeared in various journals, such as Boston Review, Cimarron Review, Conduit, Crazyhorse, DIAGRAM, Forklift, Ohio, LIT, and Pleiades. His chapbook, What Apocalypse?, won the New Michigan Press/DIAGRAM 2008 Chapbook Contest, and his full-length collection, Fuse, is out now from Black Lawrence Press.

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.

Hearing Voices with Stephanie Kartalopoulos and Stacey Lynn Brown

Join us at Orr Street Studios at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 8, for readings of poetry by Stephanie Kartalopoulos and Stacey Lynn Brown.

STACEY LYNN BROWN

Stacey Lynn Brown was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, and studied at Emory University, Oxford University, and The University of Oregon, where she received her MFA in poetry. A poet, playwright, and essayist, her work has appeared in various literary journals, including Crab Orchard Review, Poetry Daily, The Cortland Review, Natural Bridge, Sou’wester, and The Southern Quarterly, as well as the anthology From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great. Her book-length poem in sections, Cradle Song, was published by C&R Press in January, 2009. Poems from Cradle Song have won awards from The Poetry Center of Chicago and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, where she lives with her husband, poet Adrian Matejka, and their daughter.

STEPHANIE KARTALOPOULOS

Stephanie Kartalopoulos is a creative writing fellow in poetry at the University of Missouri, where she also is studying toward a PhD in creative writing and literature. She holds an MFA In creative writing from the University of Florida and a BA in English from Harvard and has taught at Boston University, Lesley University, the educational non-profit Year Up, Cambridge College and The University of Florida in addition to Mizzou. Stephanie's poems appear in and are forthcoming from a variety of journals that include 32 Poems, Phoebe, Harpur Palate, Waccamaw, Barn Owl Review, Subtropics, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Fifth Wednesday and St. Katherine's Review.

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.

Hearing Voices with Sarah Heston and Jim Coppoc

Join us at Orr Street Studios Tuesday, Oct. 11, for readings of nonfiction by Sarah Heston and poetry by Jim Coppoc.

Sarah Heston

Sarah Heston earned an MFA in poetry from the University of California, Irvine in 2003 and has since published chapters of her current project, a memoir, in Hotel Amerika and American Literary Review. She is also the recipient of the 2009 Eda Kriseova Fellowship in creative nonfiction from the Prague Summer Program and the Mizzou Creative Writing Program 2011 Nonfiction Award. She is working on a Ph.D. in nonfiction at the University of Missouri.

Jim Coppoc

Jim Coppoc makes his living through some murky but evolving balance of poetry, pedagogy, playwriting, music and performance. In addition to his long history on spoken word and music stages, Coppoc recently has been getting a lot of good attention from the literary world, with four Pushcart nominations this year alone. Among other projects, Coppoc teaches English and American Indian Studies at Iowa State University; teaches poetry and spoken word in Chatham University's low-residency MFA in Writing program; serves as music coordinator for the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames; plays bass in the Gatehouse Saints; and lives in Ames, Iowa with his wife and two sons.

Seeing Visions with Matthew Ballou

Taming the Tongue by Matthew Ballou.

The best way to experience art is to have the artist who created it present it you! Come for a guided tour of artist Matt Ballou's work and an informal talk about his approach to the creative process.

Matthew Ballou is an artist and writer living in Columbia, Mo., with his wife, Alison, and daughter, Miranda. He is an assistant teaching professor of painting and drawing in the Art Department at the University of Missouri, where he has taught since 2007. Recently his work has been seen in solo shows in Boston and Seattle, as well as in a two-person show in Louisville, Ky. His extensive article on the work of Odd Nerdrum was the cover feature in Image Journal's 2006 summer edition. Ballou has been a contributor to Neoteric Art in Chicago since 2009, and Neoteric will release a collection of his essays in October 2011. See his work at www.eikonktizo.com.

A closing reception for Matt's show will be held during Artrageous Friday, 6-9 p.m. Oct. 7.

Hearing Voices/Seeing Visions Fall 2011

Welcome back! The fall 2011 season of the Hearing Voices/Seeing Visions visual art and literary reading series begins Sept. 27.

Join us for a reading of fiction by Gladys Swan at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 27, at Orr Street Studios.

Gladys Swan

Gladys Swan is a professor emeritus at the University of Missouri, a visual artist, a poet and a fiction writer. She teaches workshops about the the creative process throughout the United States and abroad.

Swan has published six collections of short stories and two novels, Carnival for the Gods in the Vintage Contemporaries Series and Ghost Dance: A Play of Voices, which was nominated by LSU Press for the PEN Faulkner and PEN West awards. Her fiction, poetry and essays have appeared regularly in literary magazines.

The Tiger's Eye: New & Selected Stories, is her most recent collection of short fiction. 

Learn more about Gladys Swan's work at gladysswan.com.

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.

Jim Coffman

Join us for a reading of poetry by Jim Coffman at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 10, at Orr Street Studios

Jim Coffman

Jim Coffman’s Gravel Dust and Dreams, a poetry collection about growing up in the ‘40s and ‘50s in east-central Illinois, was published in 2009 by Pudding House Publications. A sequel, Outside the Crowd, was published in 2010. His poetic works have appeared in several journals and anthologies since 2005.

Coffman retired after 40 years of ministry. Besides weekly sermons, he authored Communicate in Word and Deed for the United Church Press and Finding Myself in the Parables for The Christian Board of Publication.

He and his wife, Jan, an art photographer, are active in the Missouri Writers Guild.

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.

Genevieve Howard and Matt Dube

Join us for readings of fiction by Matt Dube and poetry by Genevieve Howard at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 26, at Orr Street Studios.

GENEVIEVE HOWARD 

 Returning to a public reading of poetry after a hiatus of 15 years, Genevieve Howard spends her professional life doing online communications. During the 1990s her poetry appeared in literary journals including Chinquapin and the Lavender Reader, on local radio in Santa Cruz and in underground zines throughout the Bay Area and the Twin Cities. She has continued to self-publish chapbooks in very limited amounts and will read from her newest one, titled Take.


MATT DUBE

Matt Dube teaches creative writing and American literature at William Woods University in Fulton, Mo.

His stories have appeared in Gulf Coast, 42 Opus, Pindeldyboz Web Edition, Iconoclast and elsewhere. He is the fiction editor of the online journal H_NGM_N.

 


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.