Boo! It's a Nor'easter...

Friday, Oct. 12th

7:00-9:00 PM

Nor'easter Open: Two Features

& an Open Mic!

Big Blue Marble Bookstore

551 Carpenter Lane

Philadelphia, PA 19119-3402

(215) 844-1870

Join us for our 9th Nor’easter Open, Nor’easter Exchange’s monthly open mic series that takes place at Mt. Airy Philadelphia’s Big Blue Marble Bookstore, co-hosted by Nina Sharma and Quincy Scott Jones.  Each series kicks off with readings by two feature authors, followed by an hour of open mic.  Our October features are Trapeta B. Mayson and Charan P. Morris Nor’easter Exchange welcomes and is proud to support both emerging and established writers, at a bookstore with a truly independent heart.  Come read your work or just support that of your friends and neighbors.
 

For open mic, please arrive at least 15 minutes early (6:45 pm) to sign up, and allot 3 minutes for your reading.

Trapeta B. Mayson is a native of Liberia who immigrated to the United States in 1975. She considers herself to be richly blessed to understand the roots of her culture in both Africa and America. She grew up in North Philadelphia and currently resides in Germantown as part of the Greene Street Artists Cooperative, www.greenestreetartists.org.  In partnership with highly regarded and supremely talented jazz guitarist Monnette Sudler, Trapeta and Monnette founded Sisters in Music and Poetry in early 2000. The two have collaborated to blend original poetry and music to create a unique and poignant experience for audiences around the country and beyond through poetry and music workshops, residencies and performances.  Her publications include Mocha Melodies and submissions in The American Poetry Review, The Margie Review, and Aesthetica Journal to name a few. A second book of poetry She Was Once Herself was released in the Spring of 2012.  For further information and/or book purchase, please visit: http://trapetamayson.com/

Charan P. Morris is a poet/educator transplanted from Chicago to New York.  A 2011-12 LAMBDA Literary Foundation Fellow, her work has been published in New York University’s Gallatin Review, Brownstone Magazine, Sinister Wisdom and is forthcoming in Kweli Journal.  In addition to being a NYC public school educator for the past eight years, she has facilitated poetry workshops with diverse groups of writers including formerly incarcerated youth and graduate students at Columbia University.  Poetry takes its rightful place in her life--neck and neck with teaching.  Charan’s performance poetry has reached audiences throughout the Midwest and East Coast.  She has shared a stage with Gill Scott-Heron, The Last Poets, Staceyann Chin, Ishle Park, Tara Betts, Climbing Poetree, and others. Her work fuels public dialogue around colorism, homophobia and the effects of war.  Of course, sometimes she writes about being human.  To find out more about her work as a poet and educator visit: www.charanp.com.

For further information please visit: 

http://noreasterexchange.blogspot.com/ & http://www.bigbluemarblebooks.com/

Email us at: noreasterx@gmail.com

1st FALL OPEN!

Friday, Sept 14th, 7:00-9:00 PM Nor’easter Open: Two Features & an Open Mic! Big Blue Marble Bookstore 551 Carpenter Lane   Philadelphia, PA 19119-3402 (215) 844-1870

Join us for our 8th Nor’easter Open, Nor’easter Exchange’s monthly open mic series that takes place at Mt. Airy Philadelphia’s Big Blue Marble Bookstore, co-hosted by Nina Sharma and Quincy Scott Jones.  Each series kicks off with readings by two feature authors, followed by an hour of open mic.  Our September features are Samantha Barrow and Maleka Fruean.  Nor’easter Exchange welcomes and is proud to support both emerging and established writers, at a bookstore with a truly independent heart.  Come read your work or just support that of your friends and neighbors.
 


For open mic, please arrive at least 15 minutes early (6:45 pm) to sign up, and allot 3 minutes for your reading.

Samantha Barrow is a poet, performer, writer and educator with an MS in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University, where she was awarded a Distinguished Graduate Research Scholar Fellowship in 2011. She facilitates creative resilience & writing workshops with survivors of sexual assault, and teaches Narrative Medicine at the City College of New York. She’s been known to ride her motorcycle around the country sharing her poems in all kinds of venues; big, small, loud, silent, fabulous and awkward. She really likes performing with musicians.

She is the author of GRIT and tender membrane (Plan B Press), Jelly (a chapbook, Tiger / Monkey Alliance), and Chap (self published).  Her poetry, prose, reviews and interviews have been published in The Ledge Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia City Paper, Off Our Backs, Avalon Magazine, Lesbian Nation, Feminist Review, Edible Vineyard, Manorborn, Moonstone’s Poetry Ink Anthology and Helmet Hair. She has been included in two Uphook Press Anthologies: “you say. say.” and “Hell Strung and Crooked."

She lives in New York City.  For more about Ms. Barrow please go to  www.SamanthaBarrow.com


Maleka Fruean was born in Western Samoa, raised in southern New Jersey, and started sassing around in Philadelphia. She creates poems and paints with her three children, and has featured her poetry and prose in venues like the Rotunda, the Painted Bride, and various communal houses and tearooms throughout Philadelphia. She recently had her first pieces of flash fiction published.    

                For further information please visit:

                http://noreasterexchange.blogspot.com/ & http://www.bigbluemarblebooks.com/

                Email us at: noreasterx@gmail.com

August Open roars in!

Friday, August 17th, 7 pm

Nor'easter Open: Two Features & an Open Mic!

Big Blue Marble Bookstore

551 Carpenter Lane

Philadelphia, PA 19119

215-844-1870

Sirowitz photo credit: Kim Soles

Join us for our 7th Nor’easter Open, Nor’easter Exchange’s monthly open mic series that takes place at Mt. Airy Philadelphia’s Big Blue Marble Bookstore, co-hosted by Nina Sharma and Quincy Scott Jones.  Each series kicks off with readings by two feature authors, followed by an hour of open mic.  Our August features are Anne Kaier and Hal Sirowitz.  Nor’easter Exchange welcomes and is proud to support both emerging and established writers, at a bookstore with a truly independent heart.  Come read your work or just support that of your friends and neighbors.

For open mic, please arrive at least 15 minutes early (6:45 pm) to sign up, and allot 3 minutes for your reading.

Anne Kaier’s recent work appears in the The Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, Bellingham Review, Under the Sun, Philadelphia Poets, American Writing, the recent anthology Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, and other venues. Her chapbook, In Fire, was published in 2005. Holding a Ph.D. from Harvard University, she teaches literature and creative writing at Rosemont College and Arcadia University.

Hal Sirowitz is the author of five books of poetry, Mother Said, My Therapist Said (Crown/Random House), Father Said, Before, During & After (Soft Skull Press) and the forthcoming Stray Cat Blues (Backwaters Press). His work has been translated into ten languages including Icelandic, Turkish, and, most recently, Macedonian. Garrison Keillor has read his work on NPR’s the Writer’s Almanac and he has included Hal’s poems in his anthologies, Good Poems and Good Poems for Hard Times. Hal has performed and appeared on MTV’s Spoken Word Unplugged, PBS’s Poetry Heaven, NPR’s All Things Considered, PBS’s The United States of Poetry and Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, Hal is the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York.

For further information please visit:

http://noreasterexchange.blogspot.com/

Beat the heat! Join us for our July Nor'easter Open!

Friday, July 20th,
7:00-9:00 PM
 


Nor’easter Open: Two Features 
& an Open Mic!
 


Big Blue Marble Bookstore


551 Carpenter Lane


Philadelphia, PA 

19119-3402


(215) 844-1870
 


Join us for our 6th Nor’easter Open, Nor’easter Exchange’s monthly open mic series that takes place at Mt. Airy Philadelphia’s Big Blue Marble Bookstore, co-hosted by Nina Sharma and Quincy Scott Jones.  Each series kicks off with readings by two feature authors, followed by an hour of open mic.  Our July features are Mike Cohen and Bernard Wilson.  Nor’easter Exchange welcomes and is proud to support both emerging and established writers, at a bookstore with a truly independent heart.  Come read your work or just support that of your friends and neighbors.
 


For open mic, please arrive at least 15 minutes early (6:45 pm) to sign up, and allot 3 minutes for your reading.



Reflective, philosophical, and humorous, Mike Cohen's writing is an ongoing attempt to make sense of this life and this universe. It addresses the Big Bang and the little bumps as well. There is no topic too meaningful or too nonsensical. Mike’s poetry has appeared in the Mad Poets Review, Poetry Forum Anthology, Fox Chase Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, the Mt. Airy Times Express, and the Philadelphia Daily News. His poetic presentations have been featured in programs at various schools, bookstores, coffee shops, and libraries. His poems have been aired on SKN radio. Mike has served as a judge in the Montgomery County Poet Laureate competition.  Currently, Mike hosts Poetry Aloud and Alive, a popular monthly poetry program in its fifth year at Mt. Airy’s Big Blue Marble Book Store. His articles on Philadelphia sculpture appear in the Schuylkill Valley Journal in which he is a contributing editor.  http://mikecohensays.com

 


Bernard Wilson grew up in the shadows of Temple University in North Philadelphia in the early 1950s. After having worn many different hats as clergy, professional musician, mental health worker, Federal Reserve Bank employee, general contractor and bartender, for the last eight years he has served as Adjunct English Professor at Arcadia University. Along the way, he developed his voice in writing and has found his work in magazines, newspapers and currently as contributor to the anthology Philadelphia Reflections: Stories from the Delaware to the Schuylkill, a collection of local memoirs.  Bernard was the first Washington Fellow from Temple University, where he graduated valedictorian as a non-traditional student in the college of education.
 


For further information please visit:

http://noreasterexchange.blogspot.com/ & http://www.bigbluemarblebooks.com/

Email us at: noreasterx@gmail.com

Saturday, June 9th: Writing Workshop & A Nor'easter!

Saturday, June 9th

Join us for a writing workshop with Thaddeus Rutkowski followed by our Nor’easter Open-- a reading and open mic hour, with feature authors Minter Krotzer and Thaddeus Rutkowski.
 

at Big Blue Marble Bookstore

551 Carpenter Lane

Philadelphia, PA 19119

215-844-1870

2:00-4:00 pm     Writing Workshop with Thaddeus Rutkowski

In this multi-genre workshop, participants will be able to write prose, poetry, or hybrid forms, whatever they are most comfortable with. On-the-spot exercises will be given to generate new material. We might start with a childhood memory, a given first sentence, or with characters chosen by the class. We might try a language exercise: a collection of words that we'd use in a piece. We'll write for about 10 minutes, then share what we wrote and comment on it. We will complete two or three of these exercises during the meeting. Often, these exercises grow into complete works after the workshop.

Cost $35, payable in cash on the day of the event.

Email: events@bigbluemarblebooks.com to register.

4:30-6:00 pm     
Nor'easter Open: 2 Features and an Open Mic 


Featuring Minter Krotzer and Thaddeus Rutkowski.  To sign up for the open mic, please arrive 15 minutes early.

MINTER KROTZER’S prose and poetry has been published in Many Mountains Moving, the Saint Ann's Review, the Arkansas Review, Upstreet, Night Train, Before and After: Stories from New York (WW Norton 2002), Louisiana in Words (Pelican Press), God Stories (Random House 2008), WW Norton’s Hint Fiction and The Hollins Critic. She has received writing fellowships at the New School, where she received an MFA in Creative Nonfiction, Bennington College, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Squaw Valley Writers Conference, the Moulin à Nef in Auvillar, France and the Ragdale Foundation. Minter is currently at work on a nonfiction book about her husband’s Early-Onset Parkinson’s Disease. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, poet Hal Sirowitz, and teaches private creative writing workshops.

THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI is the author of the innovative novels Haywire, Tetched and Roughhouse. Haywire reached No. 1 on Small Press Distribution's fiction best-seller list. Both Tetched and Roughhouse were finalists for a Members' Choice Asian American Literary Award. He teaches literature at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn and fiction writing at the Writer's Voice of the West Side YMCA in Manhattan. He has been the fiction editor of the literary journal Many Mountains Moving since 2007.

May Nor'easter Is Touching Down!

Friday, May 11th,

7:00-9:00 PM

Nor’easter Open: Two Features

& an Open Mic!

Big Blue Marble Bookstore

551 Carpenter Lane

Philadelphia, PA 19119-3402

(215) 844-1870

Join us for our fourth Nor’easter Open, Nor’easter Exchange’s monthly open mic series that takes place at Mt. Airy Philadelphia’s Big Blue Marble Bookstore, co-hosted by Nina Sharma Jones and Quincy Scott Jones.  Each series kicks off with readings by two feature authors, followed by an hour of open mic.  Our May features are Nathan Long and Mecca Jamilah Sullivan.  Nor’easter Exchange welcomes and is proud to support both emerging and established writers, at a bookstore with a truly independent heart.  Come read your work or just support that of your friends and neighbors.

For open mic, please arrive at least 15 minutes early (6:45 pm) to sign up, and allot 3 minutes for your reading.

Nathan Alling Long has work in over thirty literary journals, including Tin House, Glimmer Train, Story Quarterly, The Sun, and Indiana Review.  His work has appeared on NPR and in a half dozen anthologies, including the recently published Stripped. He has been awarded a Truman Capote Fellowship, two Bread Loaf Writers staff scholarships, and a Pushcart nomination. He lives in Philadelphia, teaches creative writing at Richard Stockton College of NJ, and can be found at http://wp.stockton.edu/longn/.

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is from Harlem, New York. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming internationally in publications including Callaloo, American Fiction, Best New Writing, Crab Orchard Review, Bloom, Lumina, Amistad, The Minnesota Review, 2010 Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize Stories, Baobab: South African Journal of New Writing, American Visions and GLQ. She is the winner of the Charles Johnson Fiction Award, the William Gunn Fiction Award, the James Baldwin Memorial Playwriting Award, as well as honors from Glimmer Train, Gulf Coast, American Short Fiction, Best New Writing,Philadelphia Stories, the Boston Fiction Festival, Sol Books, Temple University, Del Sol Press, the NAACP, and others. She is the recipient of scholarships, fellowships, and residencies from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The Yaddo Colony, the Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat, the New York State Summer Writers’ Institute, the Center for Fiction, and Williams College. She holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania.  She recently completed her dissertation on voice and difference in contemporary women’s literature of the African Diaspora.

For further information please visit: 

http://noreasterexchange.blogspot.com/ & http://www.bigbluemarblebooks.com/

Email us at: noreasterx@gmail.com

Join us for our April Nor'easter Open Mic!

Friday, April 20th,
7:00-9:00 PM

Nor’easter Open: Two Features
& an Open Mic!

Big Blue Marble Bookstore
551 Carpenter Lane 
Philadelphia, PA 19119-3402


Join us for our third Nor’easter Open, Nor’easter Exchange’s monthly open mic series that takes place at Mt. Airy Philadelphia’s Big Blue Marble Bookstore, co-hosted by Nina Sharma Jones and Quincy Scott Jones.  Each series kicks off with readings by two feature authors, followed by an hour of open mic.  Our April features are Carolina Maugeri and Lisa R. Nelson.  Nor’easter Exchange welcomes and is proud to support both emerging and established writers, at a bookstore with a truly independent heart.  Come read your work or just support that of your friends and neighbors.

For open mic, please arrive at least 15 minutes early (6:45 pm) to sign up, and allot 3 minutes for your reading.

Carolina Maugeri’s recent mixed media works, A Note on School of the Holy Beast and Takoyaki Hiss, Come L’amore, were included in the exhibitions Cinematic: Meditations Upon a Medium at the Osvaldo Romberg Studio and Containment Policy at the Pterodactyl Gallery. Since then she has performed music with Tristan Dahn in the Moles Not Molar series. She lives in Philadelphia.

Lisa R. Nelson, a Philadelphia native, has had her first works published in From Where We Sit: Black Writers Write Black Youth, a collection of short stories about African-American families. The book has been nominated for several awards. Lisa has a BA in Journalism with a concentration in Public Relations from Temple University . She has worked in public relations, community relations, and event planning, and is a senior staff member at a large Philadelphia non-profit family services agency. Lisa has participated in other readings throughout Philadelphia and is currently at work on a novella.

For further information please visit:

http://www.bigbluemarblebooks.com/
Email us at: noreasterx@gmail.com