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2008 Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival
Saturday, August 23rd, 3:00 PM
Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn
Featuring Poet Laureates, Past and Present: Amiri Baraka, Quincy Troupe, Louis Reyes Rivera, and Hal Sirowitz reading alongside young people from our free workshops in Fort Greene Park! MC: Laurie Cumbo of MoCADA.
Extra Special Guest Performers: Indoda Entsha Percussion Ensemble!!!
Drawing upon the rich and diverse literary history of Fort Greene Park and its surrounding neighborhoods, The Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival provides a means for self-expression and creativity for area young people, and builds community through arts and literature. The Lit Fest consists of a six-week series of free Saturday creative writing workshops for young people and an end-of-summer reading featuring literary icons reading alongside our young writers. The Lit Fest honors the power of the written word to build inclusiveness and give voice to the thoughts and experiences of everyone, not just the privileged and powerful. Past readers include literary icons Sonia Sanchez, Sapphire, Gloria Naylor, and Jhumpa Lahiri.
The Lit Fest is a project of NY Writers Coalition, the Fort Greene Park Conservancy, Akashic Books and Global Talent Associates, with additional support from The Walt Whitman Project.
Sponsors include State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, the National Endowment For The Arts, Con Edison, Time Warner, the Hot Topic Foundation, Independence Community Foundation, the Pinkerton Foundation, the Valentine Perry Snyder Fund, the Brooklyn Arts Council through a grant received from the NY State Council For The Arts, Poets & Writers, Inc. through public funds from the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, and the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation.
Featuring:
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Amiri Baraka is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He was named Poet Laureate of New Jersey by the New Jersey Commission on Humanities, from 2002–2004. His most recent book, TALES OF THE OUT & THE GONE (Akashic, 2007), was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and won a PEN/Beyond Margins Award. His last two books of poetry, Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems and Un Poco Low Coup, received tremendous critical acclaim. He and his wife, Amina Baraka, have run the arts space Kimako's Blues People in Newark for the past fifteen years. In 2001, Mr. Baraka was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Letters. He also won the James Weldon Johnson medal for outstanding contribution to the Arts. Amiri and Amina Baraka live in Newark, New Jersey.
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photo: Jerry Jacks |
Quincy Troupe
is the author of 17 books, including eight volumes of poetry, two children’s books, and six non-fiction works. The Pursuit of Happyness, an autobiography of Chris Gardner, was a New York Times best-seller for 40 weeks; The Architecture of Language, a book of poems, won the 2007 Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement. Transcircularities: New and Selected Poems won the 2003 Milt Kessler Poetry Award and was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best books of poetry published in 2002. Troupe has written two books on jazz great Miles Davis; Miles: The Autobiography, Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe and Miles and Me, a memoir, by Quincy Troupe, soon to be a major motion picture, released in 2009. His second children’s book is Little Stevie and his third, Hallelujah: The Ray Charles Story, is scheduled for publication in 2009. He is editor of Black Renaissance Noire, a literary journal of the Institute of Africana Studies at New York University. He lives in Harlem, New York. |
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Known as the "Janitor of History," poet/essayist Louis Reyes Rivera has been studying his craft since 1960 and teaching it since 1969. The recipient of over 20 awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award (1995), a Special Congressional Recognition Award (1988), and the CCNY 125th Anniversary Medal (1973), Rivera has assisted in the publication of well over 200 books, including John Oliver Killens' Great Black Russian (Wayne State U., 1989), Adal Maldonado's Portraits of the Puerto Rican Experience (IPRUS, 1984), and Bum Rush The Page: A Def Poetry Jam (Crown Publishers, 2001).
Considered by many as a necessary bridge between the African and Latino American communities, he is a professor of Pan-African, African-American, Caribbean and Puerto Rican literature and history whose essays and poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Areyto, Boletin, The City Sun, African Voices, and in five award-winning collections: In Defense of Mumia, ALOUD: Live from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Of Sons And Lovers, Bum Rush The Page, and his own Scattered Scripture.
Since 1996, Rivera continues to host a bi-monthly 1st & 3rd Sundays Jazzoetry & Open Mic @ Sistas' Place (where he also conducts his writing workshop), in Brooklyn, and has appeared in Jazz clubs and festivals with The Sun Ra All-Stars Project, Ahmed Abdullah's Diaspora, and his own band, The Jazzoets. He has appeared on Russell Simmons' DEF POETRY on HBO. Currently, Louis Reyes Rivera can be heard every Thursday, at 2pm, on radio station WBAI (99.5 FM), hosting his own weekly show, PERSPECTIVE. |
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Hal Sirowitz is the author of six books of poems, including Mother Said, My Therapist Said (Crown) and Before During and After (Soft Skull Press). He is the recipient of a Frederick Delius Award and The Susan Rose Recording Grant for Contemporary Jewish Music. Mother Said was released on CD with music composed by Alla Borzova, sung by Paul Sperry. John Flansburgh of the rock group, They Might Be Giants, has recorded him for Hello Records, and the group spoke about him during their Mother's Day interview for NPR's Studio 360. Garrison Keillor has read his work on NPR's Writer's Almanac. Sirowitz has performed on MTV's Spoken Word Unplugged, PBS's Poetry Heaven, and NPR's All Things Considered. Awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a 2003 New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, Sirowitz is also the best selling translated poet in Norway, where Mother Said has been adapted for the stage and has been made into animated cartoons. Hal is the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York. He has a poem in Garrison Keillor's anthology, Good Poems, in Poetry in Motion from Coast to Coast (W.W. Norton), in Poetry After 9/11 (Melville House Publishing) and in 110 Stories: Writers Respond to 9/11 (NYU Press). He worked for 25 years as a special education teacher for the New York City public schools. Hal is married to the writer Mary Minter Krotzer. |
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Laurie A. Cumbo (MC) is the Executive Director and Founder of the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA). Ms. Cumbo is also an adjunct graduate professor in the School of Art & Design at Pratt Institute. Ms. Cumbo holds a Master of Arts degree from New York University in Visual Arts Administration. She completed her undergraduate studies at Spelman College where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Art History. Ms. Cumbo’s educational career has been bolstered by her extensive work experience in arts education as well as her travels abroad. She has worked at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Grey Art Gallery. She is also a member of ARTTABLE, the American Association of Museums, the National Alliance of African and African American Art Support Groups Conference, the Spelman College Alumni Association. Ms. Cumbo lives in Brooklyn.
MoCADA is Brooklyn’s first museum devoted to utilizing the visual arts as a medium to address, discuss, debate and resolve contemporary social, political and economic issues affecting the people of the African Diaspora. MoCADA offers several art related programs within the Borough of Brooklyn such as: the MoCADA Exhibition & Curatorial Program, Interactive Tours for School Groups and Families, The KidFlix Outdoor Film Festival of Bed Stuy, The FAMflix Film Fest of Brownsville, High School Internships @ MoCADA and the National Black Fine Art Show Educational Series. In the Spring of 2006, MoCADA reopened its doors in a newly renovated facility within the BAM LDC Cultural District, designed by the architectural firm of studioSUMO. MoCADA’s new facility is located within the Fort Greene community of Brooklyn, New York within the James E. Davis 80 Arts Building at 80 Hanson Place.
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| Musical Guests: |
Indoda Entsha Percussion Ensemble |
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