3rd Annual Speech is not Free Festival!

3rdAnnual Speech is Not Free Festival

October 1st, 2016 at The Henry Miller Memorial Library

7:30 PM

Come join us in a benefit for Big Sur’s own literary press: Ping-Pong Free Press, published by the Henry Miller Memorial Library. The evening will feature a poetry reading by Brenda Coultas; a staged reading of Henry Miller and Anais Nin’s more salacious writing entitled Miller Out Loud! featuring local actors portraying the roles of Henry, June, Anais and Rimbaud. Chicago musician and Library friend extraordinaire, Al Rose, who just dropped a critically acclaimed CD entitled, Spin Spin Dizzy will close out the evening with a musical set featuring songs that put the free in free speech. Please join us in this celebration, because we believe that without free speech there can be no human rights. Doors open at 6:30, program begins at 7:30.

Poetry Reading by Brenda Coultas

Miller Out Loud! staged reading

Al Rose in performance

October 1^st, 2016 at The Henry Miller Memorial Library
7:30 PM
Come join us in a benefit for Big Sur’s own literary press: Ping-Pong Free Press, published by the Henry Miller Memorial Library. The evening will feature a poetry reading by Brenda Coultas; a staged reading of Henry Miller and Anais Nin’s more salacious writing entitled Miller Out Loud! featuring local actors portraying the roles of Henry, June, Anais and Rimbaud. Chicago musician and Library friend extraordinaire, Al Rose, who just dropped a critically acclaimed CD entitled, Spin Spin Dizzy will close out the evening with a musical set featuring songs that put the free in free speech. Please join us in this celebration, because we believe that without free speech there can be no human rights. Doors open at 6:30, program begins at 7:30.
 

Brenda Coultas is the author of four poetry collections, including The Tatters (Wesleyan University Press, 2014), The Marvelous Bones of Time (Coffee House Press, 2008), and A Handmade Museum (Coffee House Press, 2003). Her honors include a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship and residencies from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice, Italy, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.

Al Rose is a striking songwriter and musician with a unique and powerful vision that continues with his seventh and latest release (2016), “Spin Spin Dizzy”. His previous albums have received extensive airplay on AAA and Americana stations throughout the US along with a bevy of critical praise. He is a mesmerizing transformer when performing live as a solo or with any number of his band, The Transcendos, in any configuration. This drives the songs each night, but the songs have always been what drives the musicians in what The Chicago Tribune has called “one audaciously entertaining ride”.

Ron Genauer is an optometrist who has been involved in community theatre for many years. Some of his favorite roles have been Gelman, in Arthur Miller’s “Broken Glass”, the Player, in Tom Stoppard’s  “Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”, and Charley, in David Mamet’s “Speed the Plow.”

John Dotson is a writer/producer/director/multi-media artist with Carmel Bay Players. He also works with The Seventh Quarry Drama Group of Swansea, Wales. John’s first acting was in excerpts of Shakespeare directed by Charlotte Perry at Santa Catalina School. He performed at the Forest Theater in The Hollow Crown, directed by Marcia Hovick, and in Robinson Jeffers’ Medea, directed by Nick Zanides. At Cherry Hall in Carmel, John performed Willie in Beckett’s Happy Days, directed by Conrad Selvig. John’s three-act play, It’s Always Something, directed by Nancy Pridemore, was staged in Kingsport, Tennessee, his hometown, in 2001. He then wrote and played the leading role in Without Why, directed by Conrad Selvig. With Lisa Maroski, John has written two plays, Touching Distance and Dearly Departing, performed in the US and at the Dylan Thomas Theatre in Swansea.

Susan Roether Zsigmond (Director) is a writer and film maker. She is a friend of the San Francisco Library; North Beach Citizens: American Film Institute; The Actor’s Studio Playwrights Unit; and the Mecahnics Institute Library and Chess room. Her recent novel “Our Lady of West Hollywood” was listed among “Best of the Independent Press, 2014” by Kirkus Review. Susan is also a member of the board of directors of the Henry Miller Memorial Library.

Maria Garcia Teutsch (Producer) The Revolution Will Have its Sky, won the 2016 Minerva Rising chapbook competition, judge: Heather McHugh. She is a poet, educator and editor. She has published over 20 journals of poetry as editor-in-chief of the Homestead Review, published by Hartnell College in Salinas, and Ping-Pong journal of art and literature, published by the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California. She teaches poetry and creative writing online as a member of the faculty of Hartnell College. She serves as president of the board of the Henry Miller Memorial Library, and is the founder and EIC of Ping-Pong Free Press.

Deidre Mccauley has been doing theatre for over 50 years. In Philadelphia she began at Old Academy Players following in her mother's footsteps onto the stage.
She’s performed at Western Stage, Magic Circle Theatre, The Golden Bough, Outdoor Forest Theatre and Carl Cherry Center for the Arts. Recently she starred in a film called "Laces" which debuted at the Monarch Film Festival. She is part of The Actor's Collective which is a group of actors who love to fly without a net.

Marnie Glazier is a writer, theatre artist and educator. She holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing, and a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies. She has directed a number of productions – professional and academic – has taught Theatre, Writing, and Communication Studies for more than ten years, and currently serves as Theatre Faculty Lead at Hartnell College in Salinas. Her scholarly writing has been presented at numerous conferences and published in Laconics and the Texas Theatre Journal, and upcoming performances include: Transpiration, at the American Society for Theatre Research Conference this fall in Minneapolis, MN.   Her work is deeply embedded in social practice/physical/visual theatre, ecology, and ecofeminism.

River Atwood is a poet, photographer, philosopher and other things that begin with the letter “p.” At 20 years of age, he has helped found a press, published a book of poetry, and traveled to 5 countries, and that’s just in the past year.

The Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge Festival--the 3 Ps of poetry: Ping-Pong, Parachute and poetrycrush!

Big Sur in Brooklyn? Well, a little piece of the wonder that is the Henry Miller Memorial library happens May 12-19. For a full schedule of events go here: HENRY

Ping-Pong, Parachute, and Poetry Crush brings you the first night's offering of poetry, performance, and prose. (with apologies for the alliteration, but hey, we're all poets over here).

These amazing folks will be dazzling us with their brilliance:

Monday, May 13^th, 7:00 pm--til at the City Reliquary

Big Sur/Brooklyn Bridge night of poetry, prose and performance is hosted by Ping-Pong, a journal of art and literature published by the Henry Miller Memorial Library, the Coney Island performance festival Parachute, and the Brooklyn-based poetry blog: poetrycrush.

Jonathan Ames has varied his creative output in recent years to span numerous media. He published another well-received collection of autobiographical essays in 2006 entitled I Love You More Than You Know; in 2008, he collaborated on The Alcoholic, a semi-autobiographical graphic novel with artist Dean Haspiel and launched Bored to Death, an HBO series about a creatively-blocked Brooklyn writer named Jonathan Ames (played by Jason Schwartzman) who reinvents himself as a private investigator; and in 2009, Ames published yet another collection of gonzo essays, entitled The Double Life Is Twice as Good.

Todd Colby has published four books of poetry: Ripsnort, Cush, Riot in the Charm Factory: New and Selected Writings, and Tremble & Shine, all published by Soft Skull Press.  He was also the editor of the poetry anthology Heights of the Marvelous: A New York Anthology (St. Martin’s Press). Colby serves on the Board of Directors for The Poetry Project, where he teaches poetry workshops. Colby has given readings at The Poetry Project, The Rubin Museum, New York University, The New School for Social Research, Brooklyn Public Library, Cornell University, The Kingston Writers Conference, The Whitney Museum of American Art, PS 122, and more. He posts new work on

gleefarm.blogspot.com.      

Amanda Deutch’s poetry has appeared in Esque, Denver Quarterly, Delirious Hem, Boog City, 6x6, Watchword Press and elsewhere.  She is the author of four chapbooks:  Gena Rowlands (Sounds Nice) (forthcoming), Box of Sky: Skeleton Poems (Dusie Kollektiv 4), Motel Drift, and The Subway Series. As a poet, she has collaborated with musicians, video artists, installation artists, sculptors, theatre companies and her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Deutch is the recipient of a 2007 Footpaths to Creativity Fellowship to write in the Azores Archipelago. In 2009, she founded Parachute: the Coney Island Performance Festival, a literary non-profit that hosts a festival, free writing workshops, and innovative poetry happenings in Coney Island. www.ParachutePoetry.tumblr.com She lives in Brooklyn and plays skee-ball in her spare time.

  

Becca Klaver is the author of the poetry collection LA Liminal (Kore Press, 2010) and several chapbooks, including Nonstop Pop (Bloof Books, 2013) andMerrily, Merrily (Lame House Press, 2013). She co-founded the feminist poetry press Switchback Books and is a member of the outreach committee for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Becca is currently a PhD candidate in English at Rutgers University, where she is writing a dissertation on U.S. avant-garde women's poetry, feminism, and the everyday. She grew up in Milwaukee, WI, and now lives in Brooklyn, NY. 

J. Hope Stein is the author of the chapbooks [Talking Doll]:  (Dancing Girl Press 2012), Corner Office (H_NGM_N BKS 2012) and [Mary]:  (Hyacinth Girl Press 2012).   She is also the author of poetry/humor site eecattings.com, editor of poetrycrush.com.

Maria Garcia Teutsch is a poet and the editor-in-chief of Ping-Pong magazine published by the Henry Miller Memorial Library, and also The Homestead Review published by Hartnell College. She has been published in The Café Review, Southern Poetry Review, Poets and Writers, Prairie Schooner, Whole Beast Rag, The Cold Mountain Review, Two Review, and many others. She serves as President of the Board at Henry Miller Memorial Library. She spends half of her time in Penang, Malaysia and half in Santa Cruz, California. More here: marialoveswords.com

Edwin Torres is a bi-lingual poet rooted in the languages of both sight and sound. A native New Yorker, he's received a number of fellowships and acknowledgements over his lifespan as a poet and has traveled the world seeking like-minded mind-travelers. He has work in the forthcoming anthologies; "Postmodern American Poetry Vol. 2" (Norton) and 'Kindergarde: Avant Garde Poetry, Stories and Songs for Children" (Black Radish Press) and is the author of seven books of poetry including, “Yes Thing No Thing” (Roof Books), “One Night: Poems For The Sleepy” (Red Glass Books) and the forthcoming collection "Ameriscopia" (University of Arizona Press).

Los Angeles based artist TimYoud will be “performing” the entirety of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn over a two week period May 9-19 in New York, the setting for Miller’s classic and outrageous novel.  The performance consists of Youd reading aloud and typing the novel on an Underwood Standard, the same model typewriter used by Miller.  This sustained performance will begin on May 9 at the Pulse Art Fair in Manhattan and culminate over the course of the week long Henry Miller celebration at the City Reliquary in Brooklyn.  Youd is represented by Coagula Curatorial gallery in Los Angeles, in whose booth at Pulse the performance will commence and run through May 12.  He will move to the Reliquary from May 13-19.

Jenny Zhang is the author of the poetry collection, Dear Jenny, We Are All Find (Octopus Books, 2012.) Her fiction, non-fiction and poetry have been published or are forthcoming in Fence, Bomblog, HTMLGIANT, Glimmertrain, Altered Scale, Pen American, Coconut, Octopus, Pinwheel, Sink Review,Jezebel, The Guardian, and Vice. She writes for teenage girls at Rookie magazine, and teaches high school students in the Bronx. She's currently a writer-in-residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Rolling Stone Cover the year John Died-Annie Liebowitz

Patti Smith, 1978, Robert Mapplethorpe

(((folkYEAH!))) and the Henry Miller Memorial Library present:
Patti Smith and John Lennon at Golden State Theatre

and a review from last night's show:
Patti Smith at the Fillmore

Henry Miller in NYC (again) Ping-Pong East Coast Release Party!!!

Thaddeus Rutkowski and the late Cheryl Burke with friends at last year's reading

 

One and One Bar

Saturday, November 5 · 7:00pm - 10:30pm

76th East 1st Street, New York, NY 10009

A comedian, a burlesque dancer and 8 poets walk into a bar... It's the Ping-Pong East Coast Launch Party! One & One Bar (1st Ave & 1st St. on the LES), Sat., Nov. 5, 7PM. Featuring BRANDO! the funky No Cal band, Leta LeNoir, the fancy dancer, and Kathy Smith, the family-friendly comedian. With readings by Ping Pong contributors Cynthia Cruz, J. Hope Stein, Phyllis Wat, Sara Goodman, Joanna Fuhrman, Whitney Porter, Thaddeus Rutkowski,and Mark Lamoureux, as well as editors Maria Garcia Teutsch and Christine Hamm. Performances begin at 7:00. The event is free and open to the public. Pushing the envelope till it bleeds!


Bios:

Thad Rutowski: Thaddeus Rutkowski is the author of the novels Roughhouse, Tetched and Haywire. Haywire reached No. 1 on Small Press Distribution's fiction best-seller list. Both Roughhouse and Tetched were finalists for a Members' Choice Asian American Literary Award. He teaches literature at City University of New York and fiction writing at the Writer's Voice of the West Side YMCA in Manhattan.

Cynthia Cruz: Cynthia Cruz’s is the author of Ruin. Her second collection, The Glimmering Room, will be published in fall of 2012 by Four Way Books. Her poems have been published in the New Yorker, Paris Review, Boston Review, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review and others. She has been the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and a Hodder Fellowship. She currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

Joanna Furhman: Joanna Fuhrman is the author of four books of poetry, most recently
Pageant (Alice James Books 2009) and Moraine (Hanging Loose Press 2006.) A new chapbook The Emotive Function came out in June. To learn more, please visit her website JoannaFuhrman.com.

Mark Lamoureux: Mark Lamoureux lives in Astoria, NY. He is the author of thee full-length collections of poetry: Spectre (Black Radish Books 2010), Astrometry Orgonon (BlazeVOX Books 2008) and 29 Cheeseburgers / 39 Years (Pressed Wafer, Forthcoming 2012). His work has been published in print and online in Fence, miPoesias, Jubilat, Denver Quarterly, Conduit, Jacket, Fourteen Hills and many others. In 2006 he started Cy Gist Press, a micropress focusing on ekphrastic poetry. He holds an MFA from the New School and teaches in the CUNY system.

J. Hope Stein: J. Hope Stein is the author of the chapbooks Talking Doll (Dancing Girl Press) and Mary, both forthcoming in 2012, and her chapbook Light’s Golden Jubilee was a finalist in the 2011 Ahsahta Chapbook Contest. Her short film, The Inventor’s Last Breath, based on her full-length manuscript about Thomas Edison, was screened at the 2011 Cinepoetry Festival at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur. (More information
on this project is at http://jhopestein.wordpress.com/) J. Hope Stein is also the author of poetry/humor site eecattings.com, editor of poetrycrush.com, and a member of Calypso Editions artist co-op. Her work can be seen in various journals and anthologies,including Poetry International, The Boog Reader: Boog City Anthology of New York Poetry, Web Del Sol and Ping Pong. She is a member of the faculty at the Chicago School of Poetics.

Sara Goodman: Sara Goodman graduated from Purchase College in 2005 with a B.A. in Creative Writing with her concentration on poetry. Her poetry has been published in several journals and has been defined as a melding of the romantic with science fiction. She currently teaches workshops in New York for adults and children on poetry and art.

Whitney Porter: Whitney Porter is originally from Houston Texas; however for the last 17 years she has resided in Brooklyn. She has done undergraduate work at the University of Houston and Brooklyn College and finally after many years of slogging from one university to the next has just this last year received her Bachelors Degree in Journalism. She is now currently studying with Phillip Schultz at the Writers Studio, in Manhattan. She has publications in Battered Suitcase a quarterly webzine from Vagabondage Press, Ping Pong Literary Magazine, and Craniotomic, a webzine out of Chicago.

Phylis Wat: Phyllis Wat is the author of three poetry books, "Shadow Blue" (Hot Water, 1988), "The Fish Soup Bowl Expedition" (Ten Pell Books, 2000), and "The Influence of Paintings Hung in Bedrooms" United Artists, 2007), with a fourth on the way. She is a poetry co-editor of the online magazine "Press 1," and publisher of Straw Gate Books (distributed by spdbooks.org).

Maria Teutsch: Maria Garcia Teutsch is a Santa Cruz poet. She has recently been published and has forthcoming publications in anthologies Conversations at the Wartime Cafe, and Eighteens, and Two Review. She has been editor of the Homestead Review for the past eleven years. She also serves as president of the board of the Henry Miller Library where she is editor-in-chief of Ping-Pong journal of art and international literature. mariateutsch.blogspot.com

Christine Hamm: Christine Hamm is getting her PhD in English Literature, and teaches at CUNY. Nominated four times for a Pushcart, her poetry has been in Rhino, Stone Canoe, Pebble Lake Review, Women's Studies Quarterly, Blue Earth Review, Rattle, and many others. She has published three books of poetry, and the most recent, Echo Park, was just released from Blazevox. Christine is the east coast poetry editor for Ping*Pong, a literary journal published by the Henry Miller Library of Big Sur, CA.

(The Dancer) Leta LeNoir: Hailing from the great state of Michigan Leta LeNoir has been dancing on stage since she was five years old. She has been performing Burlesque and gogo in New York City for over three years. Miss LeNoir studied the great art of the strip tease at the New York School of Burlesque and can be seen showing off this exquisite talent at venues all over the city.

(The Music) Dan's Guerra's Band: Brando from California. We are gonna melt faces!

(The Funny) Kathy Smith: Kathy Smith has been doing stand up comedy for a little over 10 years. She’s performed regularly at Caroline’s on Broadway and Don’t Tell Mama’s. She’s currently a regular at the Laugh Lounge and has been a MC at office gatherings on request. Kathy’s comedy is good clean fun, sexy and relatable across generations.

Me and Christine Hamm

Beat Museum Loves Henry Miller!!! Ping-Pong journal Party!!!

PRESS RELEASE:  WEST COAST PING-PONG JOURNAL LAUNCH PARTY

The Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California is pleased to announce the annual publication of Ping•Pong, a journal of the arts.  The editors continue to serve up the best artists from the global art and literary scene by publishing a vibrant group of poets, writers, artists, and photographers. This issue continues Ping•Pong’s commitment to a cultural dialogue between contemporary artists and the aesthetics set forth by Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin.

Miller was and is as much an international literary figure as he was/is an American one; therefore, Ping•Pong reaches beyond our shores in order to bring unknown, or lesser known, writers from around the world into more prominence in English.

The 2011 issue of Ping•Pong features an interview with Ruth Stone, and international collections from French-Canadian poet Guy Jean as well as translations from Japanese. Ping•Pong offers the finest in American writers including Brian Henry, Eleni Sikelianos, Katie Farris, Bruce Covey, and Sesshu Foster, among many other luminaries.

Ping•Pong’s award winning writers and artists have been featured in Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s, Time, The New Yorker, and Newsweek and have exhibited at the J. Paul Getty Museum, The National Gallery of Art, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

The Ping•Pong West Coast Launch Party will take place at the Beat Museum on Saturday, October 22nd and will feature the notable MC Magnus Toren, with readings by Jesse Nathan, Dana Teen Lomax, Christine Hamm, Daphne Gottlieb and Sean Labrador Y Manzano, with a screening of Maria Garcia Teutsch's Cinepoem: Chronicles on Violence, based on poems published in the anthology: Conversations at the Wartime Cafe. Readings will begin at 7:30 pm. The event is free and open to the public.

Ping•Pong’s release party is in conjunction with Conversations at the Wartime Cafe anthology.

Come by and have a glass of wine with us and marvel at the wonder of the  Beat Museum,
and swing your hips to the music of DJ Dan Guerra.

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Book information:

Ping•Pong
A Literary Journal of the Henry Miller Library
2011
ISSN #1083-0944
Paperback, 220 pages, $12.00

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Contact Information:

Maria Garcia Teutsch, Editor-in-Chief


Highway One, Big Sur, CA 93920
www.henrymiller.org

Christine Hamm, Poetry Editor

Reader Bios:

Dana Teen Lomax is the author of Curren¢y (Palm Press), Room (a+bend press), and the co-editor of Letters to Poets: Conversations about Poetics, Politics, and Community (Saturnalia Books, 2008).  Her documentary poetics manuscript Disclosure is forthcoming from Black Radish Books in 2011.  Her work has most recently appeared in UbuWeb, Jacket, Poets & Writers, The Bay Poetics Anthology and will be included in Against Expression (Northwestern University Press, 2010).  She is working on a book of poems entitled Shhh! Lullabies for a Tired Nation, editing a Small Press Traffic-related project, Kindergarde: Avant-Garde Poems, Plays, & Stories for Children, and teaching writing at San Francisco State University and Marin Juvenile Hall.

Jesse Nathan’s poems have appeared in the Nation, Agriculture Reader, Hot Metal Bridge, and a number of other places. He is co-editor, with Dominic Luxford, of the McSweeney’s Poetry Series, and managing editor of the Best American Nonrequired Reading. He’s also poetry editor at California Northern. He was born in Berkeley, grew up in Kansas, and lives now in San Francisco.

San Francisco-based Performance Poet Daphne Gottlieb stitches together the ivory tower and the gutter just using her tongue. She is the author and editor of nine books, most recently the poetry book 15 Ways to Stay Alive as well as co-editor (with Lisa Kester) of Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in her Own Words.? She is the editor of Fucking Daphne: Mostly True Stories and Fictions and Homewrecker: An Adultery Reader, as well as the author of the poetry books Kissing Dead Girls, Final Girl, Why Things Burn and Pelt, and as the graphic novel Jokes and the Unconscious with artist Diane DiMassa.

Sean Labrador y Manzano has an MFA in Poetry from Mills College (2007). His column "Conversations at a Wartime Cafe" appears at http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/wartime/.  He is the poetry editor of Tea Party Magazine and the San Francisco literature editor for L.A.-based Forth Magazine. He is published in Beeswax, Leonard Cohen: You're Our Man, Chain, Bay Poetics, The Best American Poetry 2004, and elsewhere.
Dana Teen is the author of Curren¢y (Palm Press, 2006) and Room (a+bend, 1998), a chapbook which was awarded the San Francisco Foundation’s Joseph Henry Jackson Award. She is a is a fourth generation Californian who teaches poetry and writing at several institutions. Her writing has been supported by the California Arts Council, the Peninsula Community Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, the Marin Arts Council, and others. Currently she is making Q, a series of "home movies" about raising her daughter on the grounds of a prison. She lives with her family in northern California.

Christine Hamm, serves as Ping-Pong poetry editor. She is a PhD candidate in English Literature. She won the MiPoesias First Annual Chapbook Competition with her manuscript, Children Having Trouble with Meat.  She teaches English at CUNY, and has performed all over the country. She has three books, The Transparent Dinner, Saints & Cannibals, and her recent book is now out: Echo Park.  Christine was a runner-up to the Poet Laureate of Queens. 

Maria Garcia Teutsch is Editor-in-Chief of Ping-Pong magazine. She also serves as president of the board of directors of the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, Ca. She is widely published, and has four poetry chapbooks, Surrender Dorothy, Fractured Fortunes and there are no cars on this highway, and Chronicles on Violence. She is an MFA candidate at New England College.

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”- Anaïs Nin.

A Day of Poetry! A Night of Films! A day and night of poetic films!

Yesterday's poetry events reminded me of why I love this genre, why I love to teach, why I love to be involved with the Henry Miller Memorial Library, both as a board member and as editor of Ping-Pong magazine of art and literature.

The day started off with Christine Hamm, Francesco Levato and Jenn Hope Stein doing a poetry workhshop for my students. Christine introduced them to fragmentation, and many wonderful poems emerged from this exercise wherein they take five poems, exchange them with a partner, that partner picks out 3 lines from each poem, and then they create a poem out of the fragments. A rebirth of wonder for sure.

Next Francesco talked about Cinepoetry and then showed them this most amazing form through two short films, one made by yours truly (you can watch it below if you click the "Chronicles on Violence" link under the Verrückter Schwanz Cinépoetry schedule. We also watched J. Hope Stein's wonderful film based on her manuscript collection, The Inventor's Last Breath, that includes archival footage of the first moving pictures ever made.

Then we moved on to the Poetic Voices Poetry Festival, now in it's 11th year. This festival awards prize money to student poets. The Faith Webster Fraser award doles out 500.00 to two students, not bad. This year's recipients were Karina Hernandez and Alisa Rodriguez. Circo Award winners included Sergio Perez, Galdino Guijosa and Andrei Juezan. The student readings were followed by readings from Francesco Levato, J. Hope Stein and Christine Hamm.

Then we were off to Big Sur and an early dinner at Nepenthe. Big Sur is like this gift you give to everyone who's never been there before. No one can be unimpressed by the power of this beauty.
We went to the Henry Miller Memorial Library where we grooved to the band, Songs that Hotbox Harry Taught Us, munched on sushi, drank wine, and then watched the Cinépoetic masterpieces.

All in all and spectacular way to spend a day.