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

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.