The creative writing program will sponsor two free events this semester.
On Wednesday, September 16, at 8 p.m., City College poets will read poetry at the Atkinson Art Gallery to celebrate the exhibition entitled "The View from Here."
On Friday, September 25, at 7 p.m. in the Fé Bland Forum, SBCC faculty members Chella Courington, Christina Pages and David Starkey, will join Laura Collector and David Peacock in a staged reading of SBCC student Mary Rose Betten's play Give It to an Actor, which is based on her new book of poems, Finding Your Best Angle.
Spring 2009 Readings
On Saturday, February 28, at 8 p.m., poets Diana Raab and Paul Willis read from their new collections.
On Friday, March 20, at 7 p.m., SBCC faculty member and Independent columnist Starshine Roshell read from her new book Keep Your Skirt On.
On Friday, May 1, at 8 p.m., Detroit poet M. L. Liebler was joined by poet and musician friends to perform his jazz-inflected verse.
Fall 2008 Readings
Reading to celebrate the publication of Solo Café magazine, Friday, September 26, 8 p.m., A-160.
Readers will include Southern California contributors to issue 4/5 of the journal, including Carol Decanio, Gerald Locklin, Elijah Imlay, Shelley Savren, Kevin Patrick Sullivan, Florence Weinberger and Jackson Wheeler. The event will be hosted by Solo Press publisher Glenna Luschei.
Poetry Reading by Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Perie Longo, Thursday, October 16, 8 p.m., Atkinson Art Gallery.
Santa Barbara's second Poet Laureate writes poems that are by turns tender, funny, moving and wry. Don't miss this extended reading by one of our city's most beloved literary figures in a event sponsored by a generous donation from Glenna Luschei
Poetry Reading by Santa Barbara poets Diana Raab and Paul Willis, Thursday, November 13, 8 p.m., Humanities 111 (First Floor Lecture Hall).
Two widely-published local authors will read from their new books of poems. Both Diana Raab's Dear Anaïs: My Life in Poems for You and Paul Willis's Visiting Home are exciting and accessible introductions to contemporary poetry. READING CANCELLED DUE TO TEA FIRE. CHECK BACK SOON FOR A MAKE-UP DATE.
Poetry reading at Carpinteria Arts Center, featuring Terre Ouwehand, David Starkey, and SBCC creative writing students, Sunday, November 16, 2 p.m., 855 Linden Avenue, Carpinteria, CA.
Join SBCC English faculty Terre Ouwehand and David Starkey, along with some of our many talented creative writing students for an afternoon of creative writing in Carpinteria (http://www.artscarp.org/index.htm).
Fiction Reading by Aimee Bender, Thursday, November 20, 8 p.m., Atkinson Art Gallery.
City College is in for a treat when fiction writer Aimee Bender comes to town in another reading sponsored by a generous donation from Glenna Luschei. Aimee is the author of three books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) which was a NY Times Notable Book; An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000) which was an L.A. Times pick of
the year; and Willful Creatures (2005) which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year.
Her short fiction has been published in Granta, GQ, Harper's, Tin House, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, and many more, and has been heard on PRI's This American Life and Selected Shorts. She's received two Pushcart prizes, and was nominated for the TipTree award in 2005.
Aimee Bender lives in Los Angeles, and teaches creative writing at USC.
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News from Spring Semester, 2008
SBCC Faculty Reading, Saturday, May 3, 2008
APRIL, 2008
Martín Espada, finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry will read from his work on Friday, April 25, at 8 p.m., in the Fé Bland Auditorium on SBCC's West Campus. The reading is FREE.
Called“the Latino poet of his generation” and “the Pablo Neruda of North American authors,” Martín Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1957. He has published sixteen books in all as a poet, editor and translator. His eighth book of poems, The Republic of Poetry, was published by Norton in 2006, received the 2007 Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Another collection, Imagine the Angels of Bread (Norton, 1996), won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other books of poetry include Alabanza: New and Selected Poems (Norton, 2003), A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen (Norton, 2000), City of Coughing and Dead Radiators (Norton, 1993), and Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover’s Hands (Curbstone, 1990). He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Robert Creeley Award, the Charity Randall Citation, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Premio Fronterizo, the PEN/Revson Fellowship and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. His poems have appeared in the The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Harper’s and The Nation. He has also published a collection of essays, Zapata’s Disciple (South End, 1998); edited two anthologies, Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination from Curbstone Press (Curbstone, 1994)and El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry (University of Massachusetts, 1997); and released an audiobook of poetry called Now the Dead will Dance the Mambo (Leapfrog, 2004). His work has been translated into ten languages. A former tenant lawyer, Espada is now a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he teaches creative writing and the work of Pablo Neruda.
The one hour Creative Community special in celebration of National Poetry Month is now airing on Channel 21 at the following times:
Saturday, 4/12 at 9 PM
Sunday, 4/13 at 5:30 PM
Thursday, 4/17 at 8:30 PM
Saturday, 4/19 at 3:30 PM
Monday 4/21 at 6 PM
Tuesday 4/22 at 8 AM and 3 PM
Wed. 4/23 at 1 AM, 3 PM and 6 PM
Thursday, 4/24 at 8 AM and 3 PM
Friday 4/25 at 1 AM and 6 PM
Saturday 4/26 at 10:30 AM
Sunday 4/27 at 8:30 PM
Additional air times will mostly likely continue the week of 4/28 at the same times reflected for the week of 4/21.
MARCH, 2008
Barry Spacks Reading, Tuesday, March 18
Former Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Barry Spacks will read his poetry on Tuesday, March 18, from 8-9 p.m. in the Atkinson Art Gallery in the Humanities Building on SBCC's East Campus. The event is sponsored by Glenna Luschei, and a podcast of the event will be available soon on the Luschei page of this Website.
Women Writers of SBCC, Friday, March 14
To celebrate Women's History Month, a reading by women writers associated with Santa Barbara City College will be held on Friday, March 14, from 7-9 p.m. in the Atkinson Art Gallery in the Humanities Building on SBCC's East Campus. The event is sponsored by Glenna Luschei. Photos by Nell Campbell and a podcast of the event will be available soon on the Luschei page of this Website.
FEBRUARY, 2008
The Diana and Simon Raab Foundation Awards
The Diana and Simon Raab Foundation generously funds several awards at Santa Barbara City College.
The Raab Award in Creative Nonfiction is presented annually to a writer with a distinguished body of work in that genre.
The 2008 winner of the $1,000 Raab Award is Phillip Lopate, who is generally credited with being one of the most important figures in the recent resurgence of literary nonfiction writing.
Mr. Lopate will give a free public reading of his work at Santa Barbara City College on Friday, February 22, at 7 p.m., in the Atkinson Art Gallery in the Humanities Building on SBCC's East Campus.
Phillip Lopate was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1943, and received a BA from Columbia in 1964, and a doctorate from the Union Graduate School in 1979. He has written three personal essay collections -- Bachelorhood (Little, Brown, 1981), Against Joie de Vivre (Poseidon-Simon & Schuster, 1989), and Portrait of My Body (Doubleday-Anchor, 1996); two novels, Confessions of Summer (Doubleday, 1979) and The Rug Merchant (Viking, 1987); two poetry collections, The Eyes Don't Always Want to Stay Open (Sun Press, 1972) and The Daily Round (Sun Press, 1976); a memoir of his teaching experiences, Being With Children (Doubleday, 1975); a collection of his movie criticism, Totally Tenderly Tragically (Doubleday-Anchor); an urbanist meditation, Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan (Crown, 2004); and a biographical monograph, Rudy Burckhardt: Photographer and Filmmaker (Harry N. Abrams, 2004.) In addition, there is a Phillip Lopate reader, Getting Personal: Selected Writings (Basic Books, 2003).
Poetry Reading by former Santa Barbara Poet Laureate David Oliviera
On Saturday, Feb. 23, at 7 p.m., in the Fé Bland Auditorium on SBCC's West Campus, David Oliveira will give a FREE poetry reading. The event is sponsored by a generous grant from Glenna Luschei.
David Oliveira is a native of California’s San Joaquin Valley. He attended California State University-Fresno, where he studied poetry with Philip Levine. He was publisher and editor of Mille Grazie Press in Santa Barbara, California, and inventor of Poet Cards, trading cards featuring poets instead of sports figures. He was also a founding editor of Solo, an award winning national journal of poetry. In 1998, he and Phil Taggart, founded the Santa Barbara Poetry Series. He is a recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the Santa Barbara Arts Commission, and in 2000, was chosen Santa Barbara’s poet laureate.
David Oliveira’s first full-length book of poems, A Little Travel Story, published in January 2008 by Harbor Mountain Press. In addition, he has published one chapbook, In the Presence of Snakes, and is one of three featured poets in A Near Country: Poems of Loss (with Glenna Luschei and Jackson Wheeler). His poems have appeared in many journals and magazines and several important anthologies, among them: How Much Earth: The Fresno Poets (which he co-edited with Christopher Buckley and M. L. Williams); California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present; In a Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare; and The Geography of Home: California’s Poetry of Place.
In 2002, he moved to Phnom Penh where he is now professor of English at Paññāsāstra University of Cambodia.
NOVEMBER, 2007
B.H. Fairchild will read his poetry at the Fé Bland Forum on Friday, November 30, at 8 p.m. The event is FREE and is sponsored by the Creative Writing Program's Glenna Luschei Visiting Writing Series.
B. H. Fairchild grew up in small towns in Texas, Oklahoma, and southwest Kansas. He is the author of The Arrival of the Future, Local Knowledge, and The Art of the Lathe, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, the California Book Award, the PEN Center West Poetry Award, and an award from the Texas Institute of Letters. He is the recipient of Guggenheim, Rockefeller/Bellagio, and NEA Fellowships, and recently received the Arthur Rense Poetry Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in California.
The Fé Bland Forum is located on SBCC's West Campus. Friday evening parking is free and plentiful.
B.H. Fairchild photo credit: Joanna E. Morrissey
Read Beth Taylor-Schott's interview with B.H. Fairchild in The Independent.
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OCTOBER, 2007
On October 25, 2007, 8 poets came together to celebrate the publication Solo Café: central coast poets say what needs to be said.
Videos of each of the poets has been posted on YouTube. You can watch their readings by clicking on their names below:
Glenna Luschei / Dan Gerber / Perie Longo / Barry Spacks/ Kevin Patrick Sullivan / Marsha de la O / Phil Taggart / David Starkey
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SEPTEMBER, 2007
The First Reader in the Glenna Luschei Visiting Writers Series was Maria Melendez, who visited classes and read at the Atkinson Art Gallery on September 18, 2007.
María Meléndez has canvassed for political organizations and worked as a wildlife biology field assistant. In 2000 she was awarded an Artists-in-Communities grant from the California Arts Council to support her work as writer-in-residence at the UC Davis Arboretum, where she taught environmental poetry workshops for the public. She has authored one chapbook of poetry, Base Pairs, and edited two anthologies, Nest of Freedom and Moon Won’t Leave Me Alone, and is currently assistant professor of English at Saint Mary’s
College in Notre Dame, Indiana. Her latest book is How Long She'll Last In This World.
