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DTSTART;TZID=America/Boise:20250929T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Boise:20250929T203000
DTSTAMP:20260404T210203
CREATED:20250820T225707Z
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SUMMARY:Becoming Who I Always Was: A Graphic Memoir of Trauma and the Search for Identity
DESCRIPTION:FINAL EVENT & ARTIST TALKBECOMING WHO I ALWAYS WAS: A GRAPHIC MEMOIR OF TRAUMA AND THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITYMonday\, September 29th | 7:00pm – 8:30pm \n\n\n\nfree \n\n\n\nat Surel’s Place: 212 E. 33rd Street in Garden City \n\n\n\nMaja Miłkowska-Shibata will share from her graphic memoir weaving together themes of growing up with a disability\, navigating a dysfunctional home\, and building a career within the healthcare field. The memoir follows her experience as a patient undergoing forearm-lengthening surgeries due to an infection in infancy\, alongside the highs and lows of her professional journey in health sciences\, which took her from Poland to the Netherlands\, across South Asia\, and eventually to the United States. Through this work\, she examines the lasting effects of medical trauma\, the intergenerational impact of addiction\, and the complexities of navigating the healthcare system. \n\n\n\nThe genre of graphic medicine blends the medium of comics and the discourse of healthcare\, merging the principles of narrative medicine with visual storytelling. Moved by the power of visual storytelling to capture the complexities of personal experience\, Maja strives for an intimate and authentic account of her journey. Her graphic memoir integrates written narrative with visual storytelling\, including sequential art\, illustrations\, photographs\, and archival documents\, all presented in her own handwriting. \n\n\n\nThe art talk will be followed by a short Q&A and reception. 
URL:https://surelsplace.org/event/becoming-who-i-always-was-a-graphic-memoir-of-trauma-and-the-search-for-identity/
LOCATION:Surel’s Place\, 212 E. 33rd Street\, Garden City\, 83714\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition and Artist Talk,Reading
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Boise:20250624T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Boise:20250624T203000
DTSTAMP:20260404T210203
CREATED:20250422T163022Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250605T201845Z
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SUMMARY:Reading: WATER EYE
DESCRIPTION:The central focus of Ivy Raff’s residency at Surel’s Place has been revisions to her third poetry collection. The titular poem and others meditate on the slower\, more internal movements – like the small water that drips on a boulder for centuries before cracking it – that define our evolving relationship to family and community\, to individual and cultural bodies that live and die out. Much of the “source material” for these pieces root in her own experiences balancing her feminism and pro-Palestine activism with her Eastern European Jewish heritage and identity. Still\, the questions with which this work grapples are cross-cultural. How can those of us who are more of a pariah at home than in the world outside of it find belonging in the communities we forge? The answers loop through lifetimes; our personal struggles are indeed personal\, but not unprecedented. What can our culture’s forgotten past feed us\, when its present seems ill-fit? How can we name ourselves as part of its future? \n\n\n\nBIOGRAPHY  \n\n\n\nAfter writing poetry privately for two decades\, in 2021 Ivy Raff (Queens\, New York) left a long career in technology and public policy to focus solely on writing. Since then\, she’s written two poetry collections: Rooted and Reduced to Dust and What Remains/Que Queda\, a bilingual English/Spanish translation which won 2nd place in the Dolors Alberola International Poetry Prize. Her heritage threads through her poetry. The two collections explore how a Bolshevik-influenced Jewish immigrant family in Amerika moves across time. Their granddaughter is a pro-woman\, pro-Palestine writer working with complex individual and cultural histories of trauma\, abuse\, and healing. \n\n\n\nHer individual poems and translations have been published in such noted literary spaces as Ninth Letter\, International Poetry Review\, Electric Literature\, Atlanta Review\, and Aesthetica Creative Writing Award Annual\, among numerous others. Ivy serves creative communities as the Senior Systems Project Manager at MacDowell\, the United States’ first artist residency\, and as a member of the editorial staff at Seventh Wave Magazine. \n\n\n\nIvy holds an MPA in public policy from the City University of New York at Baruch College and a double Bachelors in economics and psychology from Fordham University.  She lives in Morelos\, Mexico with her partner\, the novelist and human rights attorney Jorge Ríos. \n\n\n\nThis programming is supported in part by Creative West and the National Endowment for the Arts.
URL:https://surelsplace.org/event/reading-water-eye/
LOCATION:Surel’s Place\, 212 E. 33rd Street\, Garden City\, 83714\, United States
CATEGORIES:Reading
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Boise:20250610T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Boise:20250610T200000
DTSTAMP:20260404T210203
CREATED:20250521T025842Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250605T201625Z
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SUMMARY:READING: Poetry and Pints
DESCRIPTION:READINGPOETRY AND PINTSTuesday\, June 10th  |  6:30pm \n\n\n\nat Oldspeak: 3640 W Chinden Blvd in Garden City \n\n\n\n21+ \n\n\n\nDonate to attend \n\n\n\nSpecial Event: Poetry and Pints \n\n\n\nSurel’s Place is partnering with The Lit Room and gaining special access to Oldspeak on Tuesday\, June 10th at 6:30pm for a private poetry reading from our next artist-in-residence Ivy Raff. Cozy up with a pint of Alliteration Beer (or other NA offerings) and absorb Ivy’s readings from both published and unpublished work in English and Spanish.  \n\n\n\nIvy will be reading from her book Rooted and Reduced to Dust published just last year from Finish Line Press. The book is included in some of the donation levels and Ivy will be available to sign them at the reading.  She will also read from What Remains / Que queda\, a bilingual English/Spanish collection that won the Alberola International Poetry Prize with publication pending. The reading will be followed by a discussion led by The Lit Room’s Cristina Houston. \n\n\n\nHeaven and earth conspire that everything which has been\, be rooted and reduced to dust. \n\n\n\n-Isaac Bashevis Singer \n\n\n\nSo begins Ivy Raff‘s debut poetry chapbook\, which plumbs the depths of movement\, of growth: from one generation to the next\, from Eastern Europe across America\, from sickness to health.  With braided fearlessness and vulnerability\, Raff bridges the past with the heartbreaking tenderness of today. \n\n\n\nObservant\, challenging\, sensuous\, glowing with an undercarriage of mystique\, Raff’s poems are torsos that twist to embrace the universe.  Every muscled line is taut\, knowing its desire and how to hold what it loves in its arms. \n\n\n\n–Jimmy Santiago Baca\, American Book Award-winning author of Martin and Meditations on the South Valley  \n\n\n\nThis programming is supported in part by Creative West and the National Endowment for the Arts.
URL:https://surelsplace.org/event/reading-poetry-and-pints/
CATEGORIES:Reading
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Boise:20250423T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Boise:20250423T203000
DTSTAMP:20260404T210203
CREATED:20250310T191509Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250403T160246Z
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SUMMARY:Reading: Lineages of Non Consent and Lineages of Pleasure
DESCRIPTION:AIR Amanda Machado will read excerpts from essays and a book project that explore how sexuality and desire connects her to the women of her lineage. In this project\, she explores both the lineage of non consent in her family\, as well as lineages of pleasure\, and the queer elements of all immigrant woman narratives when we think of queerness as an act of bodily autonomy\, rather than only a sexual orientation.  \n\n\n\nThese essays meditate on the question: How do you create a life you’ve never seen before\, and how do you trust that it honors those before you? \n\n\n\nThis programming is supported in part by Creative West and the National Endowment for the Arts.
URL:https://surelsplace.org/event/reading-lineages-of-non-consent-and-lineages-of-pleasure/
LOCATION:Surel’s Place\, 212 E. 33rd Street\, Garden City\, 83714\, United States
CATEGORIES:Reading
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Boise:20250417T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Boise:20250417T203000
DTSTAMP:20260404T210203
CREATED:20250416T190443Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250416T190446Z
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SUMMARY:Reading: Amanda Machado
DESCRIPTION:READINGAMANDA MACHADOThursday\, April 17th  |  7:00pm \n\n\n\nfree  |  venue is ages 21+rsvp at surelsplace.ludus.com \n\n\n\nat Oldspeak Bar: 3640 W. Chinden Boulevard in Garden City \n\n\n\nCome join us for an intimate evening with the current writer-in-residence at Surel’s Place – the talented author Amanda Machado at Oldspeak Bar. Amanda will be reading from one of their acclaimed essays followed by a discussion led by Cristina Houston. Amanda’s work has been published in The Atlantic\, Guernica\, The Washington Post\, Adroit Journal\, Slate\, The Guardian\, Sierra Magazine\, among many others outlets. In addition to their essay writing\, Amanda also is a public speaker and workshop facilitator on issues of justice and anti-oppression for organizations around the world. This is a unique opportunity to meet the author in person! Don’t miss out on this special event – mark your calendars now!BIOGRAPHY \n\n\n\nIn nearly a decade of their work\, Amanda Machado (CA) has focused on writing stories about travel\, outdoor adventure\, and sexuality that center the experiences of queer people and women of color. Recognizing the common erasure of those stories\, she has aimed to use her work\, as writer Matthew Salesses wrote\, to “take responsibility for absence.” \n\n\n\nAs a queer daughter of immigrants from Mexico and Ecuador\, Amanda has always felt split between many places. “I write stories that show how those of us — children of immigrants and displaced people\, queers\, gender-expansive folks — who grow up with our first experiences of home and desire and identity expanding past binaries\, ultimately become the kind of people who want to take in the world intimately\, who view travel as something we naturally must do.” \n\n\n\nAmanda has a BA in English Literature/Nonfiction from Brown University. In addition to their essay writing\, Amanda also is a public speaker and workshop facilitator on issues of justice and anti-oppression for organizations around the world. She is also the founder of Reclaiming Nature Writing\, a multi-week online workshop that centers the experiences of people of color in how we tell stories about the outdoors. \n\n\n\nThis programming is supported in part by Creative West and the National Endowment for the Arts.
URL:https://surelsplace.org/event/reading-amanda-machado/
LOCATION:Oldspeak Bar\, 3640 W Chinden Blvd\, Garden City\, Idaho\, 83714\, United States
CATEGORIES:Reading
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Boise:20240506T200000
DTEND;TZID=America/Boise:20240506T213000
DTSTAMP:20260404T210203
CREATED:20240417T164355Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240427T001557Z
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SUMMARY:Four Riffs for a Sailor
DESCRIPTION:The Odyssey without Odysseus? Four Riffs for a Sailor is play that retells the story of the Odyssey through the interlocking monologues (and sometimes dialogues) of four women in it–Calypso\, Nausicaa\, Circe\, and Penelope–with no Odysseus\, at least not onstage\, though of course he gets talked about. Playwright Monica Raymond arrived at this residency with about 2/3 of the script written and is spending the first three weeks writing the final third\, and then playing with the pieces\, cutting and pasting\, and finding the right order. She is spending the week before this event with five local actors rehearsing and exploring the text to be shared with you in its first voyage. \n\n\n\nCalypso is the “whore of peace\,” the goddess who heals men from the psychic wounds of war enough so that they’re fit–well\, fit enough\, anyway–to return to the civilian world. Nausicaa is a child\, just over the edge of puberty\, seduced by Odysseus’s stories and adventures. Circe is the self-contained artist who nonetheless finds herself vulnerable to Odysseus. And Penelope\, whose story we think we know the best of all of these\, her fidelity\, her efforts to stave off the suitors\, her blessed reunion with Odysseus at the end– here turns out to be quite different.  \n\n\n\nLocal author\, screenwriter\, and Surel’s Place panelist Samantha Silva responded to Monica’s residency application by writing “Raymond’s CV is dizzyingly extensive and impressive. I wanted to like the writing so much…….And I LOVED the writing. It’s crisp\, poetic\, contemporary. Such a brilliant idea for a play. I had tears in my eyes at the end of Calypso’s last monologue.” \n\n\n\nFeaturing:Elke MyersJanet LoJason HaskinsKatie PrestonKiala Siman \n\n\n\nCasting by Buffie Main\, Artistic Director of Alley Repertory TheaterAlley Rep is delighted to incubate and support Surel’s Place artists. \n\n\n\n\n\nGET TICKETS: surelsplace.ludus.com\n\n\n\nThis programming is supported in part by the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF)\, the National Endowment for the Arts\, and the Idaho Commission on the Arts.
URL:https://surelsplace.org/event/four-riffs-for-a-sailor/
LOCATION:The Creative Space\, 121 E 34th Street\, Garden City\, 83714
CATEGORIES:Performance,Reading
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Boise:20230906T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Boise:20230906T203000
DTSTAMP:20260404T210203
CREATED:20230815T172057Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230815T174129Z
UID:2214-1694026800-1694032200@surelsplace.org
SUMMARY:Kathy Curnow: The Chalk-White Belly
DESCRIPTION:Artist-in-Residence Kathy Curnow reads from her mystery novel in progress and shares insights into her process and experience at Surel’s Place. Free!
URL:https://surelsplace.org/event/kathy-curnow-the-chalk-white-belly/
LOCATION:Surel’s Place\, 212 E. 33rd Street\, Garden City\, 83714\, United States
CATEGORIES:Reading
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Boise:20230809T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Boise:20230809T200000
DTSTAMP:20260404T210203
CREATED:20230707T183939Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230707T184036Z
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SUMMARY:Milia Ayache: Divas You Don't Know
DESCRIPTION:July/August Artist-in-Residence Milia Ayache reads from the one-woman play she has worked on while at Surel’s Place and fields questions about her work and process.  \n\n\n\nFree! \n\n\nMilia AyacheJuly-August\nMilia Ayache is a Beirut-based actor and writer. She originated the role of Molly in The Birth of Paper\, an online/offline show linking the cities of Beirut and Pittsburgh through the mail\, as well as The Performer in Angelmakers: Songs for Female Serial Killers\, both plays produced by Real/Time Interventions. \n\n\n\nMilia Ayache\n\n\n\nHer latest piece of writing "Splits/kin" was published in The New England Review. “Vocal Hygiene for the Revolution” was published in Contemporary Theatre Review in 2020. Her article “Playing for Time in Beirut” on making theatre in public spaces was published in American Theater Magazine in 2017. \n\n\n\nShe recorded the entirety of Etel Adnan’s The Arab Apocalypse for the Sfeir-Semler Gallery in Hamburg. Favorite credits include Frog and Nadezda in Masrah Ensemble’s production of Derek Walcott’s Ti-Jean and His Brothers and Biljana Srbljanović’s Family Stories; Hermia in Walden Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream\, and Miles in the world premiere of Futurity: A Musical at the ART Institute at Harvard. In 2022\, Ayache was in residence at Hedgebrook. \n\n\n\nAs an educator at the American University of Beirut and as a volunteer both at a senior citizen university program and in Syrian/Palestinian refugee camps\, she championed voices from the margins- including migrant workers\, refugees\, women\, seniors\, and youths of different sexual orientations. She helped design and run Youthful Cities\, a writing residency between Beirut and Coventry for writers under the age of 25; sat on the panel for the Mastercard scholarship\, edited (and still edits!) drama for the Beirut literary journal Rusted Radishes\, and produced plays for disenfranchised drama students at the university. Her mission has continued even while as a visiting assistant professor at Point Park University in Pittsburgh. In joining the community at Surel’s Place\, she wants to offer her time\, mentorship\, connections\, and advice on digital security/open source technology...if anyone wants it. \n\n\n\nDuring her residency\, Ayache led a workshop on the link between writing\, presence\, and performance through three tools from the later training of Konstantin Stanlislavski: the impression\, the game\, and the étude. The étude is a structured improvisatory short piece intended for the practice of a point in acting technique\, but can also be used for great effect in generating writing. Exploratory in nature\, it allows the actor or writer to exit the world of overthinking and\, instead\, think through action. \n\n\n\nFor her final presentation\, Ayache performed Divas You Don’t Know\, a one-woman play in English\, Arabic\, French\, and Russian. In it\, she explores her enduring preoccupation with three transnational divas of yore\, their presence (or lack thereof) in contemporary culture\, their posthumous impact on women in the public sphere\, as well as the converging struggles that accompanied their personal and professional lives. Through song\, dramatic monologue\, and movement\, she investigates their legacies and questions their roles relative to the politics of their respective nations. \n\n\n\nNot completely forgotten\, the divas\, Maya Kristalinskaya (Russian)\, Asmahan (Syrian-Egyptian)\, and Dalida (French-Egyptian-Italian)\, have little space carved out for them on our consumer culture sponsored world stage. In our fraught political landscape where we are cornered into choosing sides\, this is a story of women who didn’t. Kristalinskaya\, once a grand Soviet diva\, was relegated to touring backwoods cultural centers due to the rising anti-Semitism in the USSR. Asmahan\, a Druze princess and spy\, was murdered for being a double agent during WWII. Ayache dedicated much of her time at Surel’s Place to writing their stories in order to get their show on the road.
URL:https://surelsplace.org/event/milia-ayache-divas-you-dont-know/
LOCATION:Surel’s Place\, 212 E. 33rd Street\, Garden City\, 83714\, United States
CATEGORIES:Reading
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Boise:20230513T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Boise:20230513T203000
DTSTAMP:20260404T210203
CREATED:20230414T172606Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230420T222534Z
UID:2006-1684004400-1684009800@surelsplace.org
SUMMARY:From Eternity's Yurt: A Night of Poetry\, Philosophy and Music
DESCRIPTION:Poet Diane Raptosh returns to Surel’s Place with Hand Signs from Eternity’s Yurt\, a chapbook of poems featuring 22 sonnets. Each of the poems springs from a quotation by the British moral philosopher Mary Midgley\, who has a reputation as one of the most expansive and compelling moral philosophers of the twentieth century. “She thinks very much like a poet\,” Diane says of Mary Midgley. “The themes are very down to earth and contemporary: the environment\, animal rights\, civic unease.” \n\n\n\nDiane has invited Greg McElwain\, Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Religious Studies at The College of Idaho\, to join her. McElwain published Mary Midgley: An Introduction\, which is the first substantive introduction to Midgley’s influential philosophy on the human condition. Joining both Diane and Greg is their musician friend Scott Knickerbocker who will punctuate the words with tunes on the guitar. \n\n\n\nFree!
URL:https://surelsplace.org/event/hand-signs-from-eternitys-yurt-an-evening-of-poetry-philosophy-and-banjo/
LOCATION:Surel’s Place\, 212 E. 33rd Street\, Garden City\, 83714\, United States
CATEGORIES:Performance,Reading,Special Event
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Boise:20230405T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Boise:20230405T203000
DTSTAMP:20260404T210203
CREATED:20230302T155716Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230302T182319Z
UID:1832-1680721200-1680726600@surelsplace.org
SUMMARY:Stephanie Heit: Every Horizon Turns Liquid
DESCRIPTION:With its location along the river\, the Surel’s Place residency offeres Stephanie Heit (MI) unique support for her continued work on her manuscript Every Horizon Turns Liquid. As an ecopoetic exploration where water is at stake amidst climate change and evolutionary rigors\, this residency supported and fostered play and environmental inquiries budding in the piece. The work began along the shorelines of Lake Michigan\, documenting through somatic engagement the effects of Lake Michigan’s changing water levels\, and now expands to include our environs along with other real and imaginary locations. Stephanie worked outdoors\, utilizing movement and awareness exercises combined with writing to engage with place. She invited the environment to inform her work process and product through dialogue and somatic exchange with the landscapes she visited. These exercises combined with scientific research result in the work you will hear. This manuscript was a 2020 Nightboat Poetry Prize Finalist. \n\n\n\nFree and open to all.  \n\n\nStephanie HeitMarch - April\nA queer poet\, dancer\, and teacher\, Ms. Heit engages with her Ypsilanti\, Mich.\, community and beyond through a disability performance collective\, a literary organization for disabled poets\, and the somatic writing space she runs with her wife\, Petra Kuppers\, a 2017 Surel’s Place artist-in-residence in poetry. Her first poetry collection\, The Color She Gave Gravity (The Operating System)\, was a Nighboat Poetry Prize finalist and explores the seams of language\, movement\, and mental health difference. Her second\, Psych Murders\, is scheduled for publication in fall 2022 by Wayne State University Press. Her work has appeared in journals including Sonora Review\, Ecotone\, Venti Journal\, Rogue Agent\, About Place\, Anomaly\, Bombay Gin\, Dunes Review\, Typo\, and Disability Studies Quarterly.  \n\n\n\nDuring her residency\, Heit led a workshop on the exploration of our inner and outer landscapes through guided awareness exercises to hone senses and bring attention to bodily sensations. Heit offered creative prompts with options to respond in drawing\, writing\, and/or movement.  \n\n\n\nWith its location along the river\, the Surel's Place residency offered Heit unique support for her continued work on her manuscript Every Horizon Turns Liquid. As an ecopoetic exploration where water is at stake amidst climate change and evolutionary rigors\, this residency supported and fostered play and environmental inquiries budding in the piece. The work began along the shorelines of Lake Michigan\, documenting through somatic engagement the effects of Lake Michigan’s changing water levels\, and now expands to include our environs along with other real and imaginary locations. Heit worked outdoors\, utilizing movement and awareness exercises combined with writing to engage with place. She invited the environment to inform her work process and product through dialogue and somatic exchange with the landscapes she visited. These exercises combined with scientific research resulted in the work presented during her reading event.
URL:https://surelsplace.org/event/stephanie-heit-every-horizon-turns-liquid/
LOCATION:Surel’s Place\, 212 E. 33rd Street\, Garden City\, 83714\, United States
CATEGORIES:Reading
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Boise:20221201T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Boise:20221201T210000
DTSTAMP:20260404T210203
CREATED:20221119T193553Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221120T192935Z
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SUMMARY:COUNTERMAP & OUTSIDE WOMEN
DESCRIPTION:Roohi ChoudhryNovember/December\nRoohi Choudhry (NY) writes fiction about outsiders. Most often\, her characters are refugees displaced from the homes they once knew. They may be outsiders as migrants in their adopted countries\, but they were pushed to the fringes before they even left the homes of their birth. They became outsiders as activists\, childless women\, men who raise families alone\, or non-believers. \n\n\n\nDuring her residency at Surel's Place\, Roohi Choudhry continued to develop these themes of people who must find home again on the outside across geographies and generations in her novel-in-progress\, Outside Women. \n\n\n\nTwo women - separated by 100 years - are both displaced from their homes. Hajra is an academic in 1990s Pakistan who witnesses violence in which her brother is implicated. Sita grows up in a close-knit family in 1890s India until natural disasters ravage her village. Through interspersed chapters from the two perspectives\, Outside Women explores the forms of kinship in which outsiders everywhere find refuge. \n\n\n\nSeveral community members participated in a writing workshop where they created "Countermaps." These were also be on display during the final event. Workshop attendees spent an afternoon exploring the familiar streets in the Surel Mitchell Live-Work-Create District and scavenging for stories. They came back to Surel’s Place for writing and map-making prompts that helped them turn their found scraps into story treasure.
URL:https://surelsplace.org/event/countermap-outside-women/
LOCATION:Surel’s Place\, 212 E. 33rd Street\, Garden City\, 83714\, United States
CATEGORIES:Reading
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Boise:20220901T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Boise:20220901T200000
DTSTAMP:20260404T210203
CREATED:20220920T165516Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220920T165557Z
UID:49-1662058800-1662062400@surelsplace.org
SUMMARY:THE SCENT OF MY FATHER
DESCRIPTION:Opal Palmer AdisaAugust\nDiverse and multi-genre\, writer Opal Palmer Adisa (Caribbean) was nurtured on cane-sap and the oceanic breeze of Jamaica. Retired as the Director of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of West Indies\, Adisa has lectured and read her work throughout the United States\, South Africa\, Ghana\, Nigeria\, Germany\, England and Prague\, and has performed in Italy and Bosnia. An award-winning poet and prose writer Adisa has over sixteen titles to her credit\, including the novel\, It Begins With Tears (1997)\, which Rick Ayers proclaimed as one of the most motivational works for young adults. She has been a resident artist in internationally acclaimed residencies such as El Gounda (Egypt)\, Sacatar Institute (Brazil)\, McColl Center\, (North Carolina) and Headlines Center for the Arts (California\, USA). Opal Palmer Adisa’s work has been reviewed by Ishmael Reed\, Al Young\, and Alice Walker\, who described her work as “solid\, visceral\, important stories written with integrity and love.” \n\n\n\nFor the last 23 years Opal was a distinguished professor at California College of the Arts. She has been a visiting professor at several universities including\, Stanford University\, University of California\, Berkeley and University of the Virgin Islands. Her poetry\, stories\, essays and articles on a wide range of subjects have been collected in over 400 journals\, anthologies and other publications\, including Essence Magazine. She has also conducted workshops in elementary through high school\, museums\, churches and community centers\, as well as in prison and juvenile centers. \n\n\n\nDuring her residency\, Opal worked on a creative nonfiction piece reflecting on her father who passed many years ago. The collection is titled The Scent of My Father and is in three sections: his birth in Cuba; his return to Jamaica and life in Jamaica\, including meeting and marrying her mother; and finally the author explores her relationship with him. Opal led "Writing What Writes You"\, a mixed genre workshop. On August 14th\, 2022 Opal read "The Storytellers Return" on Radio Boise's "The Poetry Show." For her final event at Surel's Place\, Opal read a passage from The Scent of My Father. \n\n\n\n\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYP15OtrPBk&t
URL:https://surelsplace.org/event/the-scent-of-my-father/
LOCATION:Surel’s Place\, 212 E. 33rd Street\, Garden City\, 83714\, United States
CATEGORIES:Reading
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://surelsplace.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Aug-2022-Adisa-mailchimp-600x833-1.jpg
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