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

Our April Poetry Shower!

Friday, April 20, 2012 7-9 pm

Nor'easter Open: 2 Features & an Open Mic at Big Blue Marble Bookstore

Carolina Maugeri and Lisa R. Nelson

More details to come shortly!

Please arrive at 6:45 pm to sign up for the open mic.

@ Big Blue Marble Bookstore

551 Carpenter Lane

Philadelphia, PA 19119

Join us for our March Nor'easter Open Mic!

Friday, March 9th

7:00 - 9:00 PM

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

Big Blue Marble Bookstore

551 Carpenter Lane

Philadelphia, PA 19119-3402

Join us for our second Nor’easter Open, Nor’easter Exchange’s monthly open mic series that takes place the second Friday of every month 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 March features are Aziza Kinteh and Iain Haley Pollock, incredible poets and Philadelphia natives.  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.

Na Koikoi Aziza Zenzile Kinteh  is a Poet/Activist, Griot, Author, Vocalist, Educator, and Hair Culturalist.  Alumna of Eckerd College and Temple University's School's of Journalism and Communication, Azizag self published her first book of poetry  I Am Aziza in 2003. She has  also been published in three Poetry Ink  Anthologies, The Real News, Hair Stories, Howard University’s Amistad Literary Journal, The Apiary,  Versadelphia‏, and  E  Pluribus Unum: An Anthology of Diverse Voices.  For the past eight years,  Azizag has acted as host to  a 1st Friday venues that provides an outlet for free form expressions of art and  culture  in the community;  now housed at The Nile Cafe.   Aziza is also featured in The Connection, a documentary film about relationships directed by Nisa RA.  She is currently awaiting publication for “Traveling Lite”, her second book of poetry.

Iain Haley Pollock lives in Philadelphia and teaches at Springside Chesnut Hill Academy, where he is the Cyrus H. Nathan '30 Distinguished Faculty Chair for English. His first collection of poems, Spit Back a Boy (University of Georgia, 2011), won the 2010 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Pollock earned a bachelor's degree in English from Haverford College and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Syracuse University. He is a Cave Canem Fellow.

For further information please visit: 

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

Nor'easter in the news!

We were honored to have WHYY Newsworks's Jana Shea come out to our inaugural Nor'easter Open at Mt. Airy's Big Blue Marble Bookstore, check out her article and audio slideshow below and you can also access it here.  Thanks to everyone for coming out, rocking the mic, and partaking in the remainder of our Superbowl fare. 

Yolanda Wisher kicks off Big Blue's first poetry open-mic night

February 15, 2012
By Jana Shea for NewsWorks

 

Mt. Airy has added a new open mic event to its growing literary calendar of spoken word happenings. An intimate group gathered for the first Nor'easter Open at the Big Blue Marble Bookstore last Friday night.

The Nor'easter Exchange will be hosting the monthly reading series on every second Friday at the book store near Weavers Way.

The Nor'easter Exchange was founded in 2010 by husband and wife team, Quincy Scott Jones and

Nina Sharma-Jones. Its mission is to build a multi-cultural community amongst writers from Philadelphia, New York City and the tri-state region.

"We know all these great writers from two cities and they're all about to blow up," Quincy Scott Jones remarked.

Yolanda Wisher was one of two featured authors who gave a reading.  Named the first poet laureate of Montgomery County in 1999, Wisher also founded the Germantown Poetry Festival.  She heads the art education department at the Mural Arts Program. Wisher is currently collaborating with Philadelphia's poet laureate, Sonia Sanchez on a Mural Arts' multimedia project, Peace Is A Haiku Song.

Northeast Philadelphia poet Dan Shall read from his collection entitled Space Within Line Not Dedicated: Private Moments in Public. Shall is a professor at nearby Arcadia University and director of its Writing Center. He is also the editor for Obsession Literary Magazine.

The evening wrapped up with an open mic session for audience members who wished to read from their own works. Joe Roarty, Chad Crisp, Stephanie Noor and Nina Sharma-Jones each read two poems.

Sharma-Jones considers Mt. Airy to be a "new haven" for the reader series.

"It will be exciting to see what the space can do to nurture this project," she said.

The next Nor'easter Open will be held on March 9 and will feature authors Aziza Kinteh and Iain Haley Pollock.

Behold, The Storm:

Our Monthly Open Mic!

Friday, February 10, 7:00-9:00 PM

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

Join us for our inaugural Nor’easter Open, Nor’easter Exchange’s monthly open mic series that will take place the second Friday of every month 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 February features are Yolanda Wisher and Dan Schall, incredible poets and Philadelphia natives.  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.

YOLANDA WISHER received a B.A. in English/Black Studies from Lafayette College and a M.A. in Creative Writing/Poetry from Temple University.  In 1999, she was named the first poet laureate of Montgomery County.  A Cave Canem fellow and Leeway Foundation Art and Change Award recipient, her poems have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Ploughshares, The Fence Reader, and Gathering Ground.  During a decade of teaching at Germantown Friends School, Wisher hosted a poetry radio show on Gtown Radio and founded the Germantown Poetry Festival.  She currently heads the art education department at the Mural Arts Program.

DAN "THE MAN" SCHALL teaches at Arcadia University and is the Director of the University's Writing Center. He is a scholar by day, and a poet by night (or is it the other way around?). He is a founding member of the Assassin's Guild Writing Group and is currently an editor for Obsession Literary Magazine.  He has forthcoming publications in xcp streetnotes and Moria Poetry Journal, and is currently working on a collection of poems titled "SPACE WITHIN LINE NOT DEDICATED: Private Moments in Public."

@ Big Blue Marble Bookstore
551 Carpenter Lane
Philadelphia, PA 19119

Nor'easter Cometh!

We hope you can join us for our Nor'easter Open-- a monthly open mic that will be held the second Friday of every month at Big Blue Marble Bookstore, an incredible independent bookstore set right in the heart of Philadelphia's Mt. Airy neighborhood. Our inaugural event takes place on February 10th, 7-9 pm. More details to come shortly.