Monday, May 23, 2011

Standard Issues storytelling May 24 at 8 pm.

This month's Standard Issues features all BTK Performers.

Leslie "Sideshow" Goshko
Rory "The Pope of Ropy Popy" Scholl
Jeff "Cancer Face" Scherer
"Handsome" Brad Lawrence
Alex "Candle In The Wind" Gallafent
Peter "The Jersey Strangler" Aguero
&
Cyndi "BeauTK Cherry Pitz" Freeman

Come early and see ten minutes of sobriety!

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Chin Music poetry June 2 at 7 pm.

Please join us for our upcoming Chin Music season finale featuring three fine poets: Marilyn Nelson, Ross Gay, and James Best. Series curated by Bryan Patrick Miller.

FEATURED POETS

Poet Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of fourteen books and five chapbooks. Her book The Homeplace won the 1992 Annisfield-Wolf Award and was a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award. The Fields Of Praise: New And Selected Poems won the 1998 Poets' Prize and was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Award, the PEN Winship Award, and the Lenore Marshall Prize. Carver: A Life In Poems won the 2001 Boston Globe/Hornbook Award and the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award, was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award, a Newbery Honor Book, and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. Fortune’s Bones was a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and won the Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. Her young adult book, A Wreath For Emmett Till, won the 2005 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and was a 2006 Coretta Scott King Honor Book, a 2006 Michael L. Printz Honor Book, and a 2006 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor Book. Nelson is a professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut; was (2004-2010) founder/director and host of Soul Mountain Retreat, a small non-profit writers' colony; and held the office of Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut from 2001-2006.

Ross Gay’s books of poems include Against Which (CavanKerry Press, 2006) and Bringing the Shovel Down (University of Pittsburgh Press, January 2011). His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, MARGIE, Ploughshares and many other magazines. He has also, with the artist Kimberly Thomas, collaborated on several artists’ books: The Cold Loop, BRN2HNT and The Bullet. He is an editor with the chapbook press Q Avenue, whose recently published books include Chromosomory by Layli Long Soldier, Amigos by Matthew Dickman, Ad Hoc by Chris Mattingly, and Dolly by Kimberly Thomas and Simone White. Ross Gay is also on the board of directors of the Bloomington Community Orchard.

James Best lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife, Valerie, and their terminally ill bonsai, Moonlight Graham. Besides poetry, he writes for television and humor websites. He has poems published or forthcoming in RATTLE, Cold Mountain Review, South Carolina Review, decomP Magazine, Limestone and the anthology, Fire in the Pasture, due out this summer. Also this summer you can see a poem of his on a girl's t-shirt at American Eagle. He knows this calculated maneuver into mainstream fashion will bring him the large audience of tweens every poet craves.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Toni Margarita Plummer book launch June 9 at 7 pm.

Please join us for a special event, the launch of Pacific Standard neighbor and regular Toni Margarita Plummer’s new book The Bolero of Andi Rowe: Stories (Curbstone). It has already been praised by Sandra Cisneros as "heartfelt stories of girls who ache to live in any other world than the one given them and who disastrously believe falling in love is the only way to get there. American tales for the new millenium." Publishers Weekly appreciated the detail of “Plummer's characters, [who] anchored in a crass present, hanker for a sweeter world of their own imagining,” while Booklist observes that“her poignant stories bring alive one multicultural family yet speak universally.”

Toni Margarita Plummer grew up in South El Monte, California. She attended the University of Notre Dame and the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. Her first book, The Bolero of Andi Rowe, is a winner of the Miguel Mármol Prize. Toni is a fellow of the Macondo Foundation, an association of socially-engaged writers. An editor at a New York publishing house where she publishes mostly crime fiction and multicultural fiction, Toni lives in Brooklyn.

Mimsy Storytelling Monday, June 13 at 8 pm.

Hi Everyone!
We want to thank you all for the incredible support you have given MIMSY
We are so excited to end Season 2 with a bang and have a really new form that we have all fallen in love with.
This will be our last show before we take a little break for the summer.

Our guest is Lydia Catherine!!!

The show's theme is Favorites! and will reflect what we as a team think is hysterical.
We will tell some of our Favorite past or shorter stories, in a brand new way.

We hope you will be there to share with us!

MIMSY was also shouted out in BBC Travel.com! Super Cool!!! http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20110404-new-york-stories/1
Our Moms were all really excited!

After the show we will be having a little party after, with cake and cookies and plenty of huggs!

Love,
mimsy team

Friday, May 13, 2011

A quick note on the mix CD contest.

To all those of you who submitted mix CDs for our contest, thank you! We're currently working our way through the impressive pile of CDs and hope to have results to you by the end of the month, but bear with us. And of course all of the CDs, winners or not, will be working their merry ways onto our playlist shortly after we announce the results.

Monday, May 9, 2011

The Non-Motivational Speaker Series on Thursday, June 23 at 7:30!

The Non-Motivational Speaker Series comes to Pacific Standard on Thursday, June 23, at 7:30 p.m.

Image Description

Get inspired—even if only a smidgen—as three men of modest achievement deconstruct the relatively smooth path to minor success. Joining us will be Matt Timms, guerrilla foodie and organizer of the Chili and Cookie Takedowns; Kyle Petersen, unicycle advocate and Colbert Report "Enemy Within;" and Roy Preston, proprietor of The Little Lebowski apparel shop in Greenwich Village.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Chin Music Thursday, May 19 at 7 pm.

Please join us for our upcoming Chin Music reading featuring three fine poets: Meena Alexander, Adrianne Kalfopoulou, & Nicole Sealey. Series curated by Bryan Patrick Miller.

FEATURED POETS

Meena Alexander is considered one of the foremost Indian poets of her generation. She has published six volumes of poetry including Illiterate Heart, which won the PEN Open Book Award, Raw Silk and Quickly Changing River. She is the editor of Indian Love Poems. Her memoir Fault Lines was picked as one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of the year. Poetics of Dislocation appeared in the Poets on Poetry Series, University of Michigan Press. Her prose includes two novels, Nampally Road and Manhattan Music. Her awards include those from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Arts Council of England. She is Distinguished Professor of English at the City University of New York, teaching in the MFA program at Hunter College and the Ph.D. program at the Graduate Center.

Adrianne Kalfopoulou is the author of two collections of poetry, Wild Greens (2002), a Red Hen first book award finalist, and Passion Maps (2009). She has had chapbooks and essays published in a variety of venues including Hotel Amerika, WLT (World Literature Today), Prairie Schooner, and Room magazine where she won the 2009 creative non-fiction prize for "April the Cruelest". She is on the faculty of Hellenic American University in Athens, Greece, and is on the adjunct faculty in the Creative Writing Program at NYU. She is currently involved in research that connects Sylvia Plath's poetry to Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophy.

Nicole Sealey, born in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. and raised in Central Florida, is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and Hedgebrook alumna. A finalist for the 2011 Third Coast Poetry Prize, her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming to Callaloo, Harvard Review, The Los Angeles Review and Third Coast, among others.

Mimsy storytelling May 9 at 8 pm.

This month Mimsy will explore the theme of "caught" -- as in, with your pants down, red-handed, in the act, etc., etc. -- in its signature Mome Rath form.

As usual, our second half will be improvised backline storytelling, a delight for young and old.

We will be joined by special guest ELLENA CHMIELEWSKI of UCB harold team CAPTCHA!

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What in god's holy name is Mimsy?

It's a storytelling show in Brooklyn. It's awesome. It's free. It's at 8 PM every second Monday of the month. And the only house storytelling team in the city.

Mimsy is:
Ben Lillie
Caitlin Brodnick
Erin Barker
Hanuman Welch
Joe Evans III
Miguel de Leon
Olivia Henderson
Sarah Jewell

Monday, May 2, 2011

Story Collider: Body Plans, May 18 at 8 pm.

They come with two legs, with six legs, some long, some skinny, with fins or jaws or antennae. Their extraordinary forms of life can be feared and loved and derided and misunderstood. The most alien bodies can captivate us in awe, and sometimes, the most alien bodies are our own.

Join The Story Collider, May 18th, for six stories about the absurdity, and the grandeur, in our views of life.

Stories by:
...
Scott Bolohan, Writer
Cammi Climaco, Visual artist and Co-host of Ask Me Stories
David Crabb, Actor, writer, and sound designer
David Dickerson, Writer and storyteller
Tracy Rowland, Video Editor
Diana Spechler, Novelist

(Poster design by Lena Groeger. Larger version, and more show info, here: http://storycollider.org/shows/2011-05-18)

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Scott Bolohan is an internationally published and potential award-winning writer. He writes a regular column with the Chicago Tribune's RedEye and Playboy's The Smoking Jacket. You might also recognize him as Ed Westwick's hands on "Gossip Girl." He still becomes visibly angry when people call apatosaurus 'brontosaurus.'

David Crabb is currently a producer of the storytelling podcast RISK! and co-produces the Ask Me storytelling series with Cammi Climaco. He has been a member of the critically acclaimed Off-Broadway Axis Company since 2001, starring in and developing plays with the company in Paris and Edinburgh. David is a recent Moth StorySLAM winner and his one-peson show "Bad Kid" will open later this year.

Cammi Climaco is a visual artist and co-host of the monthly storytelling variety show Ask Me Stories. She has exhibited her mixed-media sculpture, performances and videos nationally and internationally in both solo and group exhibitions. She has appeared on The Moth, Risk!, and Told!. She teaches at Pratt Institute of Art. Cammi likes science as long as it doesn't touch her.

David Dickerson is a storyteller in the New York area who is a regular on NPR’s “This American Life” and at shows around the city. His book, House of Cards: Love, Faith, and Other Social Expressions, was published in October 2009 by Riverhead. For fun, he also does a regular video blog on YouTube called “Greeting Card Emergency.”

Tracy Rowland is that rare New Yorker who likes to talk. Except she's from New Jersey, which makes her rarer still. She has appeared onstage with The Moth, The Liar Show and the notorious BTK Band. Tracy makes her living as a TV promo writer/editor, and is responsible for that Dateline spot involving 50-year-olds who want to hook up with your teenage daughter. Her mom is so proud.

Diana Spechler is the author of the novels Who By Fire (Harper
Perennial, 2008) and Skinny (Harper Perennial, 2011). She has written for The New York Times, GQ, O Magazine, Esquire, Self, Details.com, the Wall Street Journal online, Nerve, Glimmer Train Stories, Moment, Lilith, and elsewhere. She received her MFA degree from the University of Montana and was a Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University. She teaches writing in New York City.