The Immigrant Rapid Response hotline is up and running in the San Francisco Bay Area. We now have teams with hundreds of volunteers ready to converge whenever an ICE raid is taking place in our neighborhoods. The teams are trained to witness and record the event and ensure that the rights of immigrants are protected. Now, we need to make sure our neighbors in the immigrant community are aware of the hotline.
Help distribute the rapid response hotline information in UUSM’s own neighborhood. We will meet at UUSM on Saturday and spread out to canvass the neighborhood with posters and cards. For questions, email rapidresponse@faithinactionba.org. Please RSVP HERE.
MEET AT: Unitarian Universalists of San Mateo, 300 E. Santa Inez Avenue, San Mateo, CA 94401 @ 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 6th.
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“PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide.”
“Join more than 150 writers and artists from 40 countries as PEN World Voices takes on today’s restive relationship between Gender and Power in the age of Trump. In this moment of unprecedented threats to freedom and truth and of emboldened mobilization and resistance the Festival will use the lens of literature to examine bigotry, misogyny, and xenophobia. Celebrate the transcendent power of art to enable people to see beyond their differences with conversations, readings, and workshops taking place throughout New York City.”
PEN America has announced that leading Russian and American journalist and author Masha Gessen, will deliver the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture, followed by a conversation with comedian and political commentator Samantha Bee on the closing night of the PEN World Voices Festival (May 7, 5 pm, Cooper Union Office of Continuing Education and Public Programs, NYC. Tickets/Details HERE).
My apologies for the late alert on this. I just found out about it. However, there are three more days left on the schedule for PEN World Voices Festival. For a complete schedule of events, visit: penworldvoices.org (Programming and participants subject to change.) J.D.
MARSHA GESEEN TO DELIVER ARTHUR MILLER LECTURE
May 7, 5 pm, Cooper Union Office of Continuing Education and Public Programs, NYC
by
Angelo Piro, the Digital Communications Assistant at PEN America.
This year the thirteenth annual Festival, taking place in New York from May 1-7, will address some of the vital issues of the Trump era, with a special focus on the fractious relationship between gender and power. At a moment of historic threats to freedom and truth, Ms. Gessen and Ms. Bee, both activists in their own rights, will speak to Gessen’s experience with Russian censorship and suppression of dissent, and parallels between the current administration and other authoritarian regimes.
Named for playwright Arthur Miller, an ardent advocate for free expression and longtime leader of PEN, the annual lecture is a hallmark of the Festival. In past years, the Freedom to Write Lecture has been delivered by Umberto Eco, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, Wole Soyinka, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The event will take place at The Great Hall at Cooper Union on Sunday, May 7 at 5pm. Tickets for this and all Festival events are available at worldvoicesfestival.org
Masha Gessen (b. 1967): Russian-American journalist, author, translator and activist, outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump
Masha Gessen is the author of ten books of nonfiction, most recently The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, coming from Riverhead in October. [The book is available for preorder.] Ms. Gessen is a contributing opinion writer to The New York Times and a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, among other publications.
Samantha Bee (b. 1969) is a Canadian-American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actress, media critic, and television host
Samantha Bee has quickly established herself as having one of the most unique and sharp comedic voices on television. Bee departed The Daily Show in 2015 and currently holds the title for being the longest-serving regular Daily Show correspondent of all time. In 2016, Bee received global and critical recognition from the success of her very own award-winning weekly late night comedy series, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.
These are just a few of the other 150+ writers and poets presenting at this year’s Festival. If you are reading this post by way of an email subscription, it’s likely you’ll have to link through to the site to view the slide show.
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About PEN America
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.
About the PEN World Voices Festival
Founded in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, by Salman Rushdie, Esther Allen, and Michael Roberts with the aim of broadening channels of dialogue between the U.S. and the world, PEN World Voices is the only international literary festival in America, and the only one in the world with a human rights focus. The Festival attracts the best-known writers from across the globe and has garnered international acclaim as a premier literary event. Since its founding 13 years ago, PEN World Voices has presented more than 1,500 writers and artists from 118 countries speaking 56 languages.
The Village Voice serves as official media sponsor of the 2017 PEN World Voices Festival.
The Festival is made possible in part through the generosity of Kaplen Brothers Fund, Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Embrey Family Foundation, Amazon Crossing, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Thanks to PEN America and Angelo Piro for this piece, to Isabelle Deconinck for the slide show photographs and to reader Maureen D and to Tatyana at http://www.arts-ny.com for the heads-up; photo credits, Masha Geeson courtesy of Bengt Oberger under CC BY-SA 4.0 license and Samantha Bee courtesy of Justin Hoch under CC BY-SA 2.0. Slide show photographs are under author or photographer copyright.
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APRIL 24, 2017 HALI Poetry Workshop with NEW YORK poet, Russ Green – This monday evening Russ will be leading a workshop Hands Across Long Island. Russ and attendees will discuss some poems and explore personal creativity with words in a safe, inclusive, non-judgemental environment with the goal of creating excitement and inspiration to write. It is open to to all levels. Beginners are very welcome. Admission is FREE. Facebook Event Page Russ’s poem Firesongwas featured in the January issue of The BeZine.
RUSS GREEN is a Graduate of Hofstra University. Over the years he has been co-editor at Great Weather for Media and has put on poetry and arts events around Long Island and NYC in addition to hosting and curating poetry stages at various festivals. Russ has read his work from New York to New Orleans to Santa Fe and cities in between. He is currently focusing on humanitarian based events. His first book, Gimme Back My Radio, is out with Night Ballet Press. In addition, Russ has been published in a number of anthologies. He can usually be found communing with the mountains in Vermont with interesting artist friends or roaming the docks of Port Jefferson Harbor at night looking for signs of life in the starry night sky.
EARTH DAY 2017 Tomorrow is Earth Day and scientists are implementing a march on Washington D.C. and people all over the world are marching in support of science. To REGISTER FOR A MARCH IN YOUR AREA and to find out where there is one in your area link HERE.
There is no Planet B. Join the #MarchForScience.
RISE Anthology, an anthology of Power and Unity is scheduled for this evening from 7 pm to 10 pm in San Francisco at The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway at Columbus Aven., San Francisco 94133 Bay Area poets include: Jack Hirschman, Dorothy Payne, Nina Serrano, Fred Dodsworth, Dee Allen, Ike Torres, Tim Kahl, Mahnaz Badihian, Karen Melander-Magoon. A painting Via Ferlinghetti will be unveiled. The event is hosted by Vagabond Books.
In accord with the wish of the ALSCW to foster and recognize excellence in literary criticism at the secondary school level, the ALSCW invites students in grades 9 through 12 to submit essays on works of recognized literary merit. Papers may examine style, characterization, rhetorical technique, structure, and so on, and may be about individual poems, short stories, novels, plays, or essays. Papers may also compare two carefully selected works.
The judges value lucid and lively expression, conceptual maturity, and argumentation that is developed from compelling and careful attention to specific passages. They do not seek term/research papers, but hope to receive carefully crafted interpretive and analytical essays of 1500 to 2500 words. Essays written in fulfillment of school assignments are welcome.
The winning essay will be published in Literary Matters, the online journal of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. The winning contestant will receive an award of $1,500, and the first and second runners-up will receive an award of $250 each.
To be eligible for the prize, students must be a member of the ALSCW or be sponsored by a teacher or high school that is an ALSCW member. For information about joining the ALSCW, go to www.alscw.org.
Entries must be postmarked no later than June 15, 2017. Three copies of each entry (only one with the student’s name on it) must be sent with proof of ALSCW membership and WITH THE DOWNLOADABLE ENTRY FORM (see below):
ALSCW Meringoff Writing Awards
Marist Hall
The Catholic University of America
620 Michigan Ave. NE
Washington, DC 20064
The ALSCU extends congratulations to last year’s winner, Nicole Woch for Melville, Anti-Transcendentalism, & Democracy: Moby Dick as a Cautionary Tale and her sponsor, Dr. Margaret Lamont of Stanford Online High School. Nicole’s essay was published in Literary Matters: http://www.literarymatters.org/issue-9-2/
The University of California announced the 50th Anniversary Edition of Jerome Rothenberg’s Technicians of the Sacred in honor of National Poetry Month. It is available for pre-order HERE. This third edition will launch on August 8, 2017.
Jerome Rothenberg is an internationally acclaimed poet and anthologist. His more than ninety books include the multi-volume Poems for the Millennium, coedited with Pierre Joris, Jeffrey Robinson and John Bloomberg-Rissman. He is Professor Emeritus of Visual Arts and Literature at the University of California, San Diego.
Go to art, not war.
Poem on …
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Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 