This month Sunday Salon is honored to host the NY Writers Coalition to celebrate community and the publication of What If Writing Is Dreaming Together? Eight exciting writers from NYWC will read from their work in this just published beautiful anthology. At Jimmys no. 43. 7pm.
NYWC will donate all proceeds from book sales at this event to typhoon relief in the Philippines.
About What If Writing Is Dreaming Together?
Since emerging in 2002, NY Writers Coalition has brought thousands of creative writing opportunities to communities filled with stories that reflect the richness and heart of a city like New York. Stories full of hope, incarnations of family and home, perseverance, humor, lessons learned, and so much more are brought to the forefront by NYWC’s network of volunteer workshop leaders, talented artists and diligent leaders in the struggle for social justice. In this moving anthology of poetry, prose, and art, Tamiko Beyer, Deborah Clearman, Elizabeth Keenan, Angela M. Lockhart, Derek Loosvelt, Avra Wing, David Winter and others ponder the creative process and the gaps bridged by this community-building art: What if writing is dreaming together?
About NY Writers Coalition: NYWC is one of the largest community writing organizations in the country. NYWC creates opportunities for formerly voiceless members of society to be heard through the art of writing by providing free and powerful creative writing workshops throughout New York City for people from groups that have been historically deprived of voice in our society, including at-risk, disconnected, and LGBT youth, the homeless and formerly homeless, the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, war veterans, people with disabilities, cancer and major illness, immigrants, seniors and others. For more info, visit www.nywriterscoalition.org.
Yvonne Garrett is pursuing an MA in Irish Studies (NYU) and an MS in Library & Information Science (Palmer/LIU). She holds an MA in Humanities & Social Thought (NYU), an MFA in Fiction (The New School), and a BA in English (Smith College). She is Associate Editor at Black Lawrence Press and edits Sapling, the Black Lawrence Press weekly newsletter. Her work has been published in Alternative Press, Thrash Metal, the Brooklyn Rail, Raleigh Quarterly, and the Baltimore Review among others, and her third poetry chapbook with Mary Ellen Sanger And the waxing moon: back country skiing in Afghanistan is now out. She has lead NYWC workshops at the Brooklyn Veterans Center.
Elizabeth Keenan wrote a regular column for the New York Inquirer about everything from insomnia to going Scientology. She’s also been published in an anthology about growing up in New Jersey called Living on the Edge of The World (Touchstone-Fireside). She is a NYWC workshop leader and led writing groups at Serendipity, a group home for formerly incarcerated women in drug and alcohol treatment center in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. She is currently an Executive Director of Publicity at Penguin Random House and is working on a short story collection and a YA novel.
Chelsea Lemon Fetzer is a poet and fiction writer. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. Her work has appeared in literary journals such as Stone Canoe, Callaloo, Tin House, and the Mississippi Review. It can also be found online at Poets for Living Waters, and Sugar Mule. She is the founder of The Create Collective, a community arts non-profit organization, and leads writing workshops across New York City for PEN American Center’s Reading and Writing Program, NYWC, and independently.
Angela Lockhart is a poet and performance artist with a day job as a content expert in addiction and disabilities. Her poetry is published in the anthology From the Web (2004), and she self-published a chapbook, What Is It You Think You See? (2006). A NYWC Workshop leader since 2010, Angela leads writing workshops with recovering homeless women and men who live in shelters and community residences.
Derek Loosvelt was born in South Carolina and raised in Michigan. His writing has appeared in Paper magazine, The Independent, Brill’s Content, SmokeLong Quarterly, Pindeldyboz, Taj Mahal Review, Dig Deep, blue magazine, ARTINFO, and, most recently, the NYWC anthology What If Writing Is Dreaming Together? He is the recipient of a New School Chapbook Award and was named a One World Scholar by the Pan African Literary Forum in Accra, Ghana. Since 2008, he has led creative writing workshops for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated adults and teenagers on Rikers Island, at the Queensboro Correctional Facility in Long Island City, and at the Osborne Association in Brooklyn Heights. A graduate of University of Pennsylvania and The New School, Derek lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
Patrick Mathieu majored in dance at the City College of New York, where he was awarded a certificate to the Lavender Hill Mob for “distinguished service…and outstanding contributions.” His off-Broadway debut at the Public Theatre was in George C. Wolfe’s production of Caucasian Chalk Circle. And then, the children arrived. Currently, Patrick seeks to publish his book Incarcerated Thoughts – One Man’s Journey, is putting the final touches on his video art piece Multicultural Democracy in Action, and produces the television program Unknown Artists for Queens Public Access Television. Patrick leads creative writing workshops for NYWC on Rikers Island and at the Fortune Society.
Melissa Tombro is a writer and avid antiquer living in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. She teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and runs volunteer writing workshops for at-risk and underserved populations with NYWC.
Publishers Weekly called Avra Wing’s new young adult novel, After Isaac, “an emotionally complex story of life, love, grief, and recovery.” Her first novel, Angie, I Says, a New York Times notable book, was made into the movie Angie starring Geena Davis and James Gandolfini. Avra’s poetry collection, Recurring Dream, won the 2011 Pecan Grove Press national chapbook competition, and she has published poems in numerous journals, including Hanging Loose and Michigan Quarterly Review. She was an adjunct professor of English at Kingsborough Community College and has led a workshop for NYWC at the Center for Independence of the Disabled-New York.
