Women Write Resistance Poets read at IWC

Reading of Women Write Resistance
with Shevaun Brannigan, Sara Henning, Laura Madeline Wiseman, Larissa Shmailo, Jill Khoury, Meg Day, & Mary Stone Dockery
Indiana Writers’ Consortium’s 2014 Creative Writing Conference and Book Fair
4:00-5:10 PM, Saturday, October 11, 2014
Salon A, Hilton Garden Inn, 7775 Mississippi Street
Merrillville, Indiana

Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Violence (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013), edited by Laura Madeline Wiseman, views poetry as a transformative art. By deploying techniques to challenge narratives about violence against women and making alternatives to that violence visible. Poetry of resistance distinguishes itself by a persuasive rhetoric that asks readers to act. The anthology’s stance believes poetry can compel action using both rhetoric and poetic techniques to motivate readers. In their deployment of these techniques, poets of resistance claim the power to name and talk about gender violence in and on their own terms. Indeed, these poets resist for change by revising justice and framing poetry as action. This IWC Conference reading will include an introduction by the editor and feature Women Write Resistance poets who will read their poems and others from Women Write Resistance.

The featured Women Write Resistance poets

“When you sit down to write a poem, I think you’re making a really brave and bold statement that is at once insistent upon your own existence and also wildly generous in the sacrificing of that existence to the possibility of a reader. To be a person—to insist on personhood—is a right we see refused to the majority of the people in this country (and other countries, with our country’s help) on a daily basis, even when we aren’t hearing about it on the news or social media.” - Meg Day, Blotterature

Meg Day, selected for Best New Poets of 2013, is a 2013 recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Poetry and the author of Last Psalm at Sea Level, winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize (forthcoming 2014), When All You Have Is a Hammer (winner of the 2012 Gertrude Press Chapbook Contest) and We Can’t Read This (winner of the 2013 Gazing Grain Chapbook Contest). A 2012 AWP Intro Journals Award Winner, she has also received awards and fellowships from the Lambda Literary Foundation, Hedgebrook, Squaw Valley Writers, the Taft-Nicholson Center for Environmental Humanities, and the International Queer Arts Festival. Meg is currently a PhD candidate, Steffensen-Cannon Fellow, & Point Foundation Scholar in Poetry & Disability Poetics at the University of Utah. www.megday.com

“I also do not think of poems or poets as static—just because someone writes poetry, does not mean they cannot be an activist. In fact, poetry, which is a vital form of connecting with others, may predispose someone to be more in tune with the world’s injustices.” - Shevaun Brannigan, Blotterature

Shevaun Brannigan is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, as well as The Jimenez-Porter Writers’ House at The University of Maryland. She has had poems appear in such journals as Best New Poets 2012, Lumina, Rhino, Court Green, and Free State Review. She has been an Arts & Letters Poetry Prize finalist, received an honorable mention in So to Speak’s 2012 Poetry Contest, as well as a Pushcart nomination by Rattle.

“Sometimes, the attempt at truth is all that one can muster, and that is its own truth.” - Sara Henning, The Conversant

Sara Henning is the author of A Sweeter Water (Lavender Ink, 2013), as well as a chapbook, To Speak of Dahlias (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her poetry, fiction, interviews and book reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as Willow Springs, Bombay Gin and the Crab Orchard Review. Currently a doctoral student in English and Creative Writing at the University of South Dakota, she serves as Managing Editor for The South Dakota Review.

“Poetry has been revolutionary and transformative for me since I became interested in poetry.” - Jill Khoury, Blotterature

Jill Khoury earned her Masters of Fine Arts from The Ohio State University. She teaches writing and literature in high school, university, and enrichment environments. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals, including Bone Bouquet, RHINO, Inter|rupture, and Stone Highway Review. She has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net award. Her chapbook Borrowed Bodies was released from Pudding House Press. You can find her at jillkhoury.com.

“Poetry transformed me… into a powerful woman…Poetry continues to mold and shape my life by offering new possibilities each day.” - Larissa Shmailo, Blotterature

Larissa Shmailo is the editor of the anthology Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry, poetry editor for MadHat Annual, and founder of The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses. She translated Victory over the Sun for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s landmark restaging of the multimedia opera and has been a translator on the Bible in Russia for the American Bible Society. Her books of poetry are #specialcharacters (Unlikely Books), In Paran (BlazeVOX [books]), A Cure for Suicide (Červená Barva Press), and Fib Sequence (Argotist Ebooks); her poetry CDs are The No-Net World and Exorcism (SongCrew).

“There have been times in my life where poetry gave me all the answers about myself and about the world and about what it means to be a woman.” - Mary Stone Dockery, Blotterature

Mary Stone Dockery is the author of One Last Cigarette and Mythology of Touch, and two chapbooks, Blink Finch and Aching Buttons. Her poetry and prose have appeared in many fine journals, including Mid-American Review, Gargoyle, South Dakota Review, Arts & Letters.

“As I wrote in the critical introduction to Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence, I believe poetry is power. Poetry is action.” - Laura Madeline Wiseman, Blotterature

Laura Madeline Wiseman is the author of more than a dozen books and chapbooks and the editor of Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013). Her recent books are American Galactic (Martian Lit Books, 2014), Some Fatal Effects of Curiosity and Disobedience (Lavender Ink, 2014), Queen of the Platform (Anaphora Literary Press, 2013), Sprung (San Francisco Bay Press, 2012), and the collaborative book Intimates and Fools (Les Femmes Folles Books, 2014) with artist Sally Deskins. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Margie, Mid-American Review, and Feminist Studies. www.lauramadelinewiseman.com

More recent interviews with poets from Women Write Resistance:

“An Interview with Poets from Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence,” Blotterature, October 2014

“‘To make a new whole of the fragments’: A Roundtable Discussion with poets in Women Write Resistance,” The Conversant, October 2014

“‘We invent the forms of resistance we wish to see‘: A Roundtable Discussion with Poets in Women Write Resistance,” Les Femmes Folles, September 2014

“Blot Lit Reviews: An Interview with Writers from Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence,” Blotterature Literary Magazine, by Julie Demoff-Larson with Sarah Chavez, Tyler Mills, Jennifer Perrine, Carly Sachs, Monica Wendel, and Margo Taft Stever, May 2014, Part I & Part II

“‘their words make this possible‘: A Roundtable Discussion of Poetics of Emplacement with Poets from Women Write Resistance,” Spoon River Poetry Review, April 2014