Writers Tisa Bryant (author of Unexplained Presence) and Douglas Kearney (author of The Black Automaton)
will be visiting us for two events (see below for details and book
plugs). On Tuesday (11/5), our guests will read from their creative
work, and this will be followed on Wednesday (11/6) with each writer
presenting a talk/presentation on some aspect of their creative
practice.
Unexplained Presence
Tisa Bryant.
Fiction.
Essays. African-American Studies. By remixing stories from novels and
films to zoom in on the black presences within them, Tisa Bryant's
UNEXPLAINED PRESENCE ruminates on the sublime power of history to shape
culture in the subconscious of both the artist and the reader/viewer.
Moving from interrogations of Francois Ozon's "8 Femmes" and Virginia
Woolf's "Orlando" to the machinations of the "Regency House Party"
reality TV show, UNEXPLAINED PRESENCE weaves threads of myth, fact and
fiction into previously unexplored narratives lurking in our collective
imagination. "This is truly a bold book, one that combines scenes of
rich technicolor with the light of truth, at once invoking and
dissolving cultural myths and faux histories" -Brenda Coultas.
The Black Automaton
Douglas Kearney
Poetry.
African American Studies. Winner of the National Poetry Series,
selected by Catherine Wagner. From ambivalent animals thriving after
Katrina to party chants echoing in a burning city, THE BLACK AUTOMATON
troubles rubble, cobbling a kind of life. In this collection bodies at
risk seek renewal through violence and fertility, history and myth,
flesh and radios. "First,
you have to see Douglas Kearney's visual poems, which cheekily diagram
cultural memes as if they were parts of speech (as they are). THE BLACK
AUTOMATON has its share of sharp, tender lyrics, too...these exploit the
political possibilities of puns and the way meanings hinge on inexact
resemblance. Kearney's poems tweak and skewer pop culture and literary
sources from Paul Laurence Dunbar to T. S. Eliot to traditional ballads
and blues...Kearney's work turns poetic and cultural conventions
disquietingly inside out."—Catherine Wagner
No comments:
Post a Comment