Travels with Pen Reading Sunday

This summer, a group of artists, designers and writers are heading to Detroit for the First Annual Seminole Street Artist’s Colony and Exhibition. We plan to transform an historic house, with a literary past, into a residence for artists and writers—not unlike Casa Libre. Part of our mission is to disrupt the poor image that Detroit has earned, over time, as the nation’s failure—and in this spirit, our first Tucson event this spring will be an attempt to raise awareness about the ways in which we conceptualize of our environments: “Travels with Pen: Five Minute Sketches on Place.” Please join us! If you’d like to learn more about our endeavor, scroll down! We’ll be hosting various events, and an art auction/fundraiser in the coming months.

Here are some of the bios of writers participating... stay tuned as the list will grow!

Arianne Zwartjes' first book, The Surfacing of Excess, won Eastern Washington University's 2009 Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry and a box of copies just arrived at her house. Her 2008 chapbook of prose poems (Stiched) A Surface Opens: Essays was published by Diagram/New Michigan Press, and her writing has appeared in literary magazines including The Pinch, Cue, Caketrain, Front Porch, Diagram, Blue Fifth Review, and Word for/Word. Zwartjes teaches at the Poetry Center and in the English Department at the University of Arizona; she is also an EMT and wilderness medicine instructor, and has just completed a book-length collection of lyric essays entitled (Detailing Trauma).

Simmons B. Buntin is the founding editor of Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments. His first book of poetry, Riverfall, was published in 2005 by Ireland's Salmon Poetry; his next collection, Bloom, is due from Salmon in late 2010. Recent work has appeared in Mid-American Review, Isotope, Orion, Hawk & Handsaw, and Southwestern American Literature. Look for new work in High Desert Journal, ISLE, Freshwater, Spiral Orb, Salamander, and Versal. Catch up with him at www.SimmonsBuntin.com.

Leftrick Herd had to leave Oregon one year after his birth because his parents feared he might be getting "webbed feet" from all the rain. He grew up on an 80-acre ranch in western Colorado where his main sources of transportation were horses and an old Willy's Jeep. Joining the Navy only whetted his appetite for adventure and he has been on some sort of trip ever since.

Ben Quick served as Beverly Rodgers Fellow in creative nonfiction on his way to a master of fine arts degree from the University of Arizona in 2008. He lives with his son in Tucson where he writes and teaches at the U of A. The recipient of a 2010 Pushcart Prize for Nonfiction, his work appears in Orion Magazine, Hotel Amerika, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments and other publications. He smokes. And he likes it. Especially after coffee, sex, food, exercise and any combination thereof. He doesn't like lectures. He will live to be 100.

Beth Alvarado, who has lived in Tucson since 1968, loves the desert and often writes about it. Her stories are collected in Not a Matter of Love (New Rivers Press). Newer work has been published recently in Seattle Review, Ploughshares, Cimarron Review, and Third Coast.

Timoteio Padilla is a universal artist who is not from one particular place. He is of the stars, and the red dirt, and all the elements. He is here and he is there. He was physically conceived in this plane in New Mexico, and was raised in Tucson. He is an artist who utilizes the medium of Hip-Hop, and lives what he speaks.

Lauryn Bianco would live her life to a soundtrack of music from the 70's and 90's if it were possible. This bio, in fact, should be read to the tune of Salt-n-Pepa's "Shoop" or any track recorded by TLC. Lauryn once ran a half marathon while wearing a tiara and hoop earrings. She has since completed a full marathon, and she no doubt will run her next one backwards and in heels. Lauryn is from New York, which you might not notice until she gets angry or drives. Lauryn has a BA in English from SUNY Fredonia, a master's degree in Gender and Women's studies from the U of A, and a black belt in femme fatale from an undisclosed credentialing agency.

TC Tolbert is a genderqueer, feminist poet and teacher committed to social justice. S/he earned his MFA in Poetry from UA in 2005 and currently teaches Composition at Pima Community College. TC is the Assistant Director of Casa Libre en la Solana and is a member of Movement Salon, a compositional improvisation group in Tucson. S/he is a collective member of Read Between the Bars, a books-to-prisoners program, and s/he spends his summers leading wilderness trips for Outward Bound. TC's poems can be found in Volt, The Pinch, Drunken Boat, Shampoo, A Trunk of Delirium, and jubilat.

Daisy Pitkin lives in Arizona, grew up on a farm in Ohio, and at fourteen coerced her friends to read "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Tempest" on a roof. Her job as a union organizer kept her moving around the world, and for ten years she rarely spent more than five days in the same place. Her most recent nonfiction manuscript contemplates themes of memory, maps and family.

Lisa O'Neill is a writer, teacher of writers, and a graduate of the University of Arizona's program in Nonfiction Creative Writing. In addition to teaching students pursuing undergraduate degrees, she co-teaches writing workshops with incarcerated writers in Pima County, Arizona through the program Inside/Out. Although she lives in Tucson, Lisa often centers her writing on the place where she grew up and the geography closest to the heart, Louisiana. She recently completed a nonfiction manuscript, Vessels, which explores the physical, cultural and historical landscapes of her home state as well as her home town, New Orleans. Lisa appreciates people who experiment and play with sound, language, color, texture and light in whatever form this play takes.

Manuel Munoz is the author of the short story collections Zigzagger and The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue. He has received numerous honors, including the 2008 Whiting Writer's Award, a 2009 PEN/O. Henry Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. A graduate of Harvard University and Cornell, his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Rush Hour, Swink, Epoch, Glimmer Train and on NPR. He teaches creative writing at the University of Arizona.

Gillian Drummond is a Tucson-based freelance writer. Her articles appear every Sunday in the Arizona Daily Star and on her blog, www.homeisafourletterword.com. Gillian came to Tucson in 1998 from London, where she had spent nine years working on business and consumer magazines, and freelancing for national newspapers. Her credits include The Guardian, The Scotsman, The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times Scotland. She is working on her first novel.

Cesar Diaz lived the fragmented life of a migrant boy: divided. conflicted. uprooted. in-between. in constant argument. unforgiving and in a bind. His work is not a figment of his imagination but a construction of the imagination of a boy (now a man) who uses language, memory, and his own words as a glue to understand the situation he was in. Cesar Diaz is a writer. A journeyman. An essayist with an urge to work with language as a method of searching. He strongly believes in the power that writing has on youth and has worked as a creative writing teacher and mentor for outreach nonprofits such as Badgerdog Literary Publishing, Breakthrough Collaborative, The Austin Academy and The GEARUP project. He is a second-year MFA candidate in nonfiction at the University of Arizona, and hopes that some of his journeys find their way into a literary magazine. In the meantime, he'll settle for introducing undergrads to the power and fecundity found in essays.

Ruth Hillman is a third generation Tucsonan and has been a semi-secret writer and artist since the fourth grade. She has worked to help people most at risk or living with HIV/AIDS for the last eight years and is starting a soon-t0-be famed new business, The Paper Theory.

Lucy Simpson grew up in East Yorkshire and Buckinghamshire, England. Since then she has lived in Paris, Geneva, New York City, Long Island, Dayton, Ohio, Charleston, SC and lately, Tucson, where she intends to stay awhile because moving is hard work and Tucson is nice and warm and slightly weird, which is good. Lucy has a degree in French from the College of Charleston and an MFA in Fiction from the University of Arizona. She is currently working on final revisions of her first novel, and teaching English at Pima Community College. The glamor and mystery just never stop. Lucy lives with two unruly stray children, three beautiful, inspiring, talented dogs, one cute fluffy husband and a wonderful, gruffly sexy, supportive hamster.

Remember! Casa Libre, Sunday March 28th at 4pm.