Open Door Reading: Linda Pastan and Michael Salcman

Sunday, June 5, 2:00 P.M.
The Writer's Center
Bethesda, MD


Linda Pastan reads from Traveling Light, her new collection of poems. She is joined by poet Michael Salcman, who reads from his recent collection, The Enemy of Good Is Better. Register here.

Linda Pastan is author of several collections of poems, including Queen of a Rainy Country, The Last Uncle, Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998 (which was nominated for the National Book Award), The Imperfect Paradise (a nominee for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize), PM/AM: New and Selected Poems (which was nominated for the National Book Award), The Five Stages of Grief, and A Perfect Circle of Sun.

Michael Salcman is author of four poetry chapbooks. His first collection, The Clock Made of Confetti, was nominated for Poets’ Prize and was a finalist for the Towson Prize in Literature. He is former chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland. A past president of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, his essays on the relationship between the arts and sciences and the visual arts and the brain have appeared in Urbanite, Neurosurgery, Creative Nonfiction and online at such venues as PeekReview.net and Artbrain.org.

A Poetry Discussion: With Eyes and Soul: Images of Cuba by Nancy Morejón

Split This Rock and The Writer's Center present:

A Poetry Discussion:
With Eyes and Soul: Images of Cuba
by Nancy Morejón
Discussion led by poet and translator
Yvette Neisser Moreno


Wednesday, February 10, 7:00 pm
at Mt. Pleasant Neighborhood Library
3160 16th St. N.W., Washington, DC
(at corner of Lamont Street, near Columbia Heights Metro)
202-671-0200
Free and open to the public. The library is
wheelchair-accessible.

With Eyes and Soul is available for purchase for $19 at The Writer's Center (Bethesda) and Busboys and Poets (14th and V Streets NW) or online here. However, advance reading is not necessary. Please join us!! Check out our Facebook Event Page!

Please note, the author will not be at this event. To hear Nancy read, join us at Split This Rock in March!

Patricia Pego Guerra, Representative of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, will provide a brief introduction about Nancy Morejón, her poetry, and the Cuban context.


Nancy Morejón-one of the foremost Cuban writers and intellectuals-will be a featured poet at the 2010 Split This Rock Poetry Festival. With Eyes and Soul features poems by Morejón (Spanish with English translations) and photos by renowned photographer Milton Rogovin, offering a multi-dimensional portrait of the landscape and people of Cuba.




The Writer's Center cultivates the creation, publication, presentation, and dissemination of literary work. We are an independent literary organization with a global reach, rooted in a dynamic community of writers.

For more information: yvettenm at verizon dot net or 240-462-6458

A Poetry Discussion: Declension in the Village of Chung Luong

Split This Rock and The Writer’s Center present:

A Poetry Discussion:
Declension in the Village of Chung Luong by Bruce Weigl
“The book's locus is Chung Luong, birthplace of Weigl's Vietnamese daughter, Hanh, and one of the poorest and most beautiful places on earth.”

Discussion led by Katherine Howell and Yvette Neisser Moreno

Thursday, January 21, 7:15 pm
at the George Washington University
Rome Hall Rome 351
801 22nd St. NW, Washington, DC
(1 block East of Foggy Bottom Metro at I and 22nd Sts; For a campus map, click here.)

Free and open to the public. Rome Hall is wheelchair-accessible.


Declension is available for purchase for $14 at The Writer’s Center and Busboys and Poets.

Bruce Weigl—an award-winning poet, translator of Vietnamese poetry, Vietnam War veteran, and Distinguished Professor at Lorain County Community College in Ohio—will be a featured poet at the 2010 Split This Rock Poetry Festival. Declension in the Village of Chung Luong is his 13th book of poetry.

The Writer's Center cultivates the creation, publication, presentation, and dissemination of literary work. We are an independent literary organization with a global reach, rooted in a dynamic community of writers. www.writer.org

Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness invites poets, writers, artists, activists, dreamers, and all concerned world citizens to Washington, DC, for four days of poetry, community building, and creative transformation, March 10-13, 2010. Featuring Sinan Antoon, Jan Beatty, Cornelius Eady, Martín Espada, Andrea Gibson, Fady Joudah, Wang Ping, Patricia Smith, Arthur Sze, Quincy Troupe, Bruce Weigl, and many more. Readings, workshops, panel discussions, film, a book fair, and public action. www.SplitThisRock.org

For more information: yvettenm at verizon dot net or 301-879-1959

Interview with Fady Joudah

The Writer's Center and Split This Rock Present: Thursday Night Live

In connection with Thursday's Poetry Discussion of The Earth In the Attic, I interviewed Fady Joudah about his work. The following is an excerpt from the Writer's Center interview. The full interview can be found here.

KH: Your work as a doctor shows up in the content of your work. Other than providing material, how do medicine, or science in general, and poetry intersect for you? What comes of those intersections?

FJ: The language of medicine, with its Greek and Latin obsessions, is fascinating. It was also quite metaphorical in its nascent days, in the 18th century for example; even if it likes to denounce that flowery lexicon and pretend a kind of certain specificity, it was originally bound to metaphor and translation in order to achieve a sense or illusion of inevitability, of objectivity, of truth. In that manner it resembles many aspects of poetry. Of course medicine is far more utilitarian than poetry is. Still medicine is a window into the dialogue between power and knowledge, and the politics of knowledge, from which poetry is not exempt. I think Foucault’s The Birth of the Clinic or Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor are each a case-in-point.

Fady Joudah's The Earth in the Attic won the Yale Series for Younger Poets in 2007. Contest judge Louise Glück describes the poet in her foreword as, “that strange animal, the lyric poet in whom circumstance and profession ... have compelled obsession with large social contexts and grave national dilemmas.” He is the winner of the 2008 Saif Ghobash – Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for his translation of poetry by Mahmoud Darwish collected in The Butterfly’s Burden, published in a bilingual edition by Bloodaxe Books in the UK and by Copper Canyon Press in the US. The US edition was short-listed for PEN America’s poetry in translation award in 2009. His most recent translation is of If I Were Another: Poems by Mahmoud Darwish, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009). He was a field member of Doctors Without Borders in 2002 and 2005.

Katherine Howell is a poet, the Communication and Development Assistant for Split This Rock, and a Lecturer in Writing at the George Washington University. She lives, writes, and teaches in Washington, D.C. You can read her reviews of Split This Rock featured poets here.

Yvette Neisser Moreno will lead the discussion on Thursday, November 19. She is a poet and translator whose work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including The International Poetry Review, The Potomac Review, Tar River Poetry, and Virginia Quarterly Review. Her translation (from Spanish) of Argentinian poet Luis Alberto Ambroggio's Difficult Beauty: Selected Poems was published by Cross-Cultural Communications earlier this year. In addition to working as a professional writer/editor, Moreno teaches poetry and translation at The Writer’s Center and has taught poetry in public schools in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

A Poetry Discussion: The Earth in the Attic by Fady Joudah

Split This Rock and The Writer's Center present:

The Earth in the Attic by Fady Joudah
A Poetry Discussion
Led by poet and translator Yvette Neisser Moreno

Thursday, November 19, 7 pm
at The Writer's Center
4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD
(5 blocks south of Bethesda Metro)
301-654-8664

Free and open to the public.
The Writer's Center is wheelchair-accessible.
The Earth in the Attic is available for purchase for $16 at The Writer's Center and Busboys and Poets.

Fady Joudah - an award-winning poet, translator of Mahmoud Darwish (most recently of the work If I Were Another), and member of Doctors without Borders - will be a featured poet at the 2010 Split This Rock Poetry Festival. The Earth in the Attic won the Yale Series for Younger Poets in 2007.

The Writer's Center cultivates the creation, publication, presentation, and dissemination of literary work. We are an independent literary organization with a global reach, rooted in a dynamic community of writers.

For more information: yvettenm at verizon dot net
or call 301-879-1959

Upcoming November Events

Two upcoming events sponsored by Split This Rock:





Poets in the (Think) Tank: ROCKPILE Symposium
Cosponsored by Split This Rock and the Institute for Policy Studies

Tuesday, November 3, noon-1:30 pm
Brown bag lunch
The Institute for Policy Studies
1112 16th Street, NW, Suite 600
Washington , DC
Farragut North or Farragut West Metro
For more info: info@splitthisrock.org, 202-787-5210

In anticipation of what is sure to be a music and poetry extravaganza at Busboys and Poets November 4, ROCKPILE artists David Meltzer and Michael Rothenberg host an open discussion on Art and Activism, Poetry, Music and The Troubadour Tradition, Censorship and The Academy, Community and Collaboration. With additional guest poets to be announced.

ROCKPILE is a collaboration between David Meltzer, legendary poet, musician, and essayist, and Michael Rothenberg, poet, songwriter and editor of Big Bridge Press. In the tradition of the troubadour and with the spirit of improvisation and collaboration, the duo will journey through eight U.S. cities and perform poetry, composed on the road, in a spontaneous fusion with local musicians in each city. Washington DC is the 4th stop of the ROCKPILE journey.

David Meltzer was an important figure in the 1950s San Francisco Renaissance and appeared in Donald Allen’s “The New American Poetry,” a seminal work of that era. “Beat Thing” a book-length, poetic journal, published by La Alameda Press in 2004, won the Josephine Miles PEN Award in 2005. His books, Reading Jazz, Writing Jazz and No Eyes, Lester Young all reflect his deep connection and dedication to music throughout his career. His complete publication history is at http://meltzerville.com/.

Michael Rothenberg is a poet, songwriter, and editor and publisher of Big Bridge magazine online at www.bigbridge.org. His poetry books include The Paris Journals (Fish Drum Press), Monk Daddy (Blue Press), Unhurried Vision (La Alameda/University of New Mexico Press) and most recently CHOOSE, Selected Poems (Big Bridge Press). He is also editor for the Penguin Poet series, which includes selected works of Phillip Whalen, Joanne Kyger, David Meltzer and Ed Dorn. He has recently completed the Collected Poems of Phillip Whalen for Wesleyan University Press. Complete publication history can be found at http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/Rothenberg m/

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Split This Rock and The Writer’s Center present:

The Earth in the Attic by Fady Joudah
A Poetry Discussion
Discussion led by poet and translator Yvette Neisser Moreno

Thursday, November 19, 7 pm
The Writer’s Center
4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda , MD
(5 blocks south of Bethesda Metro)
301-654-8664
Free and open to the public. The Writer’s Center is wheelchair-accessible.

The Earth in the Attic is available for purchase for $16 at The Writer’s Center and Busboys and Poets.


Fady Joudah—an award-winning poet, translator of Mahmoud Darwish, and member of Doctors without Borders—will be a featured poet at the 2010 Split This Rock Poetry Festival. The Earth in the Attic won the Yale Series for Younger Poets in 2007.

Opportunites from the Writer's Center

The Writer’s Center, established in 1976, is one of the nation’s oldest and largest literary centers. It provides over 60 free public events and more than 200 writing workshops each year, sells one of the largest selections of literary magazines in its on-site bookstore, and publishes Poet Lore, America’s oldest continually published poetry journal.

Emerging Writer Fellowships: Call for Submissions

The Writer’s Center, metropolitan DC’s community gathering place for writers and readers, is currently accepting submissions for several competitive Emerging Writer Fellowships. Emerging Writer Fellows will be selected from applicants who have published up to 2 book-length works of prose and up to 3 book-length works of poetry. We welcome submissions from writers of any genre, background, or experience. Emerging Writer Fellows will be featured at The Writer’s Center as part of their Emerging Writers Reading Series. The readings, held on Friday evenings, bring together writers in different genres with a backdrop of live music. The Writer’s Center book store will sell titles by the Emerging Writers throughout the season in which they appear in an effort to promote them and their work to a wide audience.

Selected Fellows are invited to lead a special Saturday workshop at The Writer’s Center, with compensation commensurate with standard Writer’s Center provisions.

Fellows receive an all-inclusive honorarium to help offset their travel costs in the amount of $250 or $500, depending on their place of departure.

Fellows for Fall 2009 include novelist Alexander Chee (Edinburgh), novelist Lisa Selin Davis (Belly), poet Suzanne Frischkorn (Lit Windowpane), poet Aaron Smith (Blue on Blue Ground), Canadian fiction writer Neal Smith (Bang Crunch), poet Srikanth Reddy (Facts for Visitors), and poet Nancy Krygowski (Velocity).

Their events will be held in September, October, and December. See events calendar for more information.

Spring 2009 events will be held in February, March, and April/May.

To be considered, please send a letter of interest, a resume or CV that details publication history and familiarity facilitating group discussions, and a copy of your most recent book. Self-published or vanity press titles will not be accepted. A committee comprised of The Writer’s Center board members, staff, and members will evaluate submissions on behalf of our community of writers.

The deadline to submit is August 15, 2009.

Applicants are encouraged to call Charles Jensen, Director, for more information at 301-654-8664.

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Undiscovered Voices Fellowship: Call for Applications

The Writer’s Center seeks promising writers earning less than $25,000 annually to apply for our Undiscovered Voices Fellowship. This fellowship program will provide complimentary writing workshops to the selected applicant for a period of one year, but not to exceed 8 workshops in that year. We expect the selected fellow will use the year to make progress toward a completed manuscript of publishable work.

The Writer’s Center believes writers of all backgrounds and experiences should have an opportunity to devote time and energy toward the perfection of their craft.

The selected fellow will be able to attend writing workshops offered by The Writer’s Center free of charge. In addition, the fellow will give a reading from his or her work at the close of the fellowship period (June 2010) and will be invited to speak with local high school students on the craft of writing.

To apply, candidates should submit
a) a cover letter signed by the candidate that contains the statement: “I understand and confirm I meet all eligibility requirements of the Undiscovered Voices Fellowship.” The cover letter should include information on the impact this fellowship would have on the candidate.
b) contact information for two references who can speak to the candidate’s creative work and promise
c) a work sample in a single genre:
• 8 pages of poetry, no more than one poem per page
• 10 pages of fiction, double-spaced, no more than 1 work or excerpt
• 10 pages of nonfiction (essay, memoir, etc), double-spaced, no more than 1 work or excerpt
OR
• 15 pages of a script or screenplay

These items should be sent in hard copy to The Writer’s Center, Attn: Undiscovered Voices Fellowship, 4508 Walsh St, Bethesda MD 20815. The deadline is September 15, 2009.