Got your spurs ready for this, folks? Sunday is the Wild Women of Poetry reading at the Green Lantern featuring Bianca Spriggs, Rebecca Howell, Donna Ison, and Renee Rigdon. It’s a publicity and fundraising event for the Women Writers Conference hosted annual Gypsy Poetry Slam in a couple of weeks which boasts its own lineup of wild women poets. If you have been anywhere near an Al’s Bar stage in the past few months, chances are you’ve already met all four of us. And our styles couldn’t be more diverse. And just so you know, we aren’t the type of poets who ride side saddle.
The event begins at 7:30 PM with an Open Mic.
Featured readers go from 8-9 PM
Musical act: Nemo is on @ 9 PM.
Suggested Donation of $5
Here are your features:
Donna Ison, actress, author, and bourbonista is known for regaling audiences with her dangerous wit and material that’s occasionally on the raunchy side eliciting bawdy belly laughs from the crowd. Her website is http://www.donnaison.com. Her novel, The Miracle of Myrtle: Saint Gone Wild was published this year by Arctic Wolf Press. And here’s a hint, make sure you check out her blog! Her work has taken her from penning a one-woman show about and playing Mary Todd Lincoln to working with women all over the city in creative writing workshops and performances.
Renee Rigdon is a writer, artist, mother, and fledgling woman-about-town living in Lexington, Kentucky. She routinely defies the expectation that she is not a pain in the ass and was once kicked out of Girl Scout camp for being insubordinate. Her work has been described as trite, pointless, and grammatically unsound … but always hilarious. She performs monthly at the Holler Poet Series and will be one of the featured poets in November 2009. Previously, her work has appeared in Public Republic and Asinine Poetry.
Rebecca Gayle Howell is a writer and documentary photographer. She is the author of The Hatchet Buddha (Larkspur Press) and was the photographer for Arwen Donahue’s This is Home Now: Kentucky’s Holocaust Survivors Speak (University Press of Kentucky). Her work has been collected in Plundering Appalachia (Deep Ecology Foundation) and The Artist as Activist (University of North Georgia Press), and she is the recipient of fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. During her tenure as the Director of The Women Writers Conference, she received the 2004 Sally Bingham Award for excellence in activism and arts benefiting Kentucky women. Currently, she is on the faculty for the BFA in creative writing at Morehead State University.
Bianca Spriggs resides in Lexington, Kentucky where she works as an instructor of composition, literature, and creative writing. She is the creator and programmer of the Gypsy Poetry Slam featured annually at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference. A recipient of the Sophia Danielle Arnold scholarship, Bianca is certified as a Workshop Trainer through the Empowerment Institute founded by David Gershon and Gail Straub. Her emphasis is on facilitating empowerment and alleviating ignorance through the arts. An Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem Fellow, Bianca is the author of Kaffir Lily, and her work may be found in the anthologies, New Growth: Recent Kentucky Writings, America! What’s My Name? and the journals, Caduceus, Alehouse, and the Appalachian Heritage Magazine.
