Four Writers with Musical Interludes

Four New Mexico writers–John Brandi, Renée Gregorio, Anne Valley-Fox, and Tom Ireland–read from their work, with musical interludes, on Sunday, November 16 from 4-6pm. Admission is free.

Renée Gregorio’s published poetry collections include The Skins of Possible Lives, The Storm That Tames Us, Water Shed and Road to the Cloud’s House (with John Brandi, 2008). She is a co-founder of the publishing collective, Tres Chicas Books. She is also a certified somatic coach who has created the poetry dojo, which combines body-awareness practices with writing. She will be reading from Drenched, due out from Fish Drum Press in 2009.

Tom Ireland is the author of four books of nonfiction, including Birds of Sorrow: Notes from a River Junction in Northern New Mexico. He was awarded an NEA grant and a Jeffrey E. Smith Award for nonfiction. One of his essays was published in Best American Travel Writing, and two others have been cited as “notable” in Best American Essays. Tom will read prose poems—“essays in miniature.”

Anne Valley-Fox is the author of the poetry collections Sending the Body Out, Fish Drum 15, and Point of No Return. Pat Schneider has written, “What she helps us to see is not always comfortable, but it is almost always surprising.” Her nonfiction books are Your Mythic Journey (coauthor Sam Keen) and Outlaws and Desperados: A New Mexico Federal Writers’ Project Book (coedited with Ann Lacy). Anne will be reading poems from her new collection, How Shadows Are Bundled (forthcoming).

John Brandi, author of three dozen books of poetry, essays, modern American haiku, and limited-edition chapbooks, has read his poetry throughout the U.S. and internationally. Recent travels to Cuba, India, Vietnam, and China have informed much of his writing and political outlook. He was awarded an NEA fellowship and has received numerous Witter Bynner Foundation awards to teach poetry in Santa Fe schools. In his introduction to one of Brandi’s books of essays, Reflections in the Lizard’s Eye, novelist John Nichols wrote of his “bittersweet, loving vision . . . a heartfelt swansong to the disappearing vestiges of a more truthful way of life.” John will read from his new book, Facing High Water.