Category: Uncategorized


Brenda Dixon Gottschild author of Joan Myers Brown & The Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011
Jan
14
2:00 pm

Saturday, January 14, 2pm – Non-Fiction
Brenda Dixon Gottschild author of Joan Myers Brown & the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina ($27.00 Palgrave Macmillan)

Founder of the Philadelphia Dance Company (PHILADANCO) and the Philadelphia School of Dance Arts, Joan Myers Brown’s personal and professional histories reflect both the hardships and the accomplishments of African Americans in the artistic and social developments through the twentieth century and into the new millennium. Dixon Gottschild deftly uses Brown’s career as the fulcrum to leverage an exploration of the connection between performance, society, and race beginning with Brown’s predecessors in the 1920s and a concert dance tradition that has had no previous voice to tell its story from the inside out. Augmented by interviews with a score of dance professionals, including Billy Wilson, Gene Hill Sagan, Rennie Harris, Milton Myers, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and Ronald K. Brown, Joan Myers Brown’s background and richly contoured biography are object lessons in survival a true American narrative.

Brenda Dixon Gottschild, author of Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance, Waltzing in the Dark, and The Black Dancing Body, is professor emerita of Dance Studies at Temple University and a former senior consultant and writer for Dance Magazine. Brenda Dixon Gottschild writes the definitive book on the Founder of the Philadelphia Dance Company (PHILADANCO) and the Philadelphia School of Dance Arts, Joan Myers Brown. Her personal and professional histories reflect the hardships as well as the advances of African-Americans in the artistic and social developments of the second half of the twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries. This is a compelling story about race and the arts in America. Dixon Gottschild uses Brown’s career as the fulcrum to leverage an investigation of the interface between performance, cultural formation, and race politics as evidenced by the development of a dance community in black Philadelphia and the rise and spread of its influence beyond community and regional borders to national and international distinction.

Ewuare Osayande author of Whose America?

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011
Jan
10
7:00 pm

Tuesday, January 10, 7pm – Poetry
Ewuare Osayande
author of Whose America? New and Selected Poems

Writing in the socially-engaged poetic tradition of Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman, Ewuare X. Osayande unleashes his latest book of poems, Whose America?, that takes on the political climate of this country and garners the praises of two living legends of Black poetry, Amiri Baraka and Haki R. Madhubuti, in the process. It is from this artistic trajectory that Osayande crafts a whirlwind of poems that chronicle the national political journey of the past few years. From Hurricane Katrina to the current economic crisis, Osayande is a bard that pays homage to the strength of the human spirit with each poem. Readers have come to appreciate Osayande’s internationalist worldview.

In Whose America?, Osayande is reporter, translator, interpreter and negotiator. He takes us from the ghettoes of Paris to the marshes of Nigeria to the ruins of Haiti after the 2011 quake. He remembers the lives of activists and cultural icons such as Octavia E. Butler, Gil Scott-Heron, Lucille Clifton and Ken Saro-Wiwa. Rooted in the Black radical tradition of speaking truth to empower, Osayande’s poems cry forth a defiance that is rooted in an unflinching love for humanity.

When “Take Our Country Back” has become a rallying cry of the Tea Party, Ewuare Osayande’s book poses the fundamental question of this time. In the book’s introduction, Madhubuti states that Whose America? is both “a question and an answer.” “His poetic range is that of a seer,” continues Madhubuti. “Writing to this poet is like drinking water; it is his life-source, his song, and his uniquely determined voice.” And Osayande’s determination is on full display in Whose America?. Whether challenging the President in the poem “An Open Letter to President Obama” – “how can we pull ourselves up/ when our boots been snatched/ been repossessed/ been foreclosed/ we can’t live vicariously through you/ in the White House/ when we too busy trying to stay in our own homes” – or counseling his sons in the poem “that first day” – “i have tried to show you that/ being a man is not macho talk/ curse words/ chest beating/ and boasting/ its quiet contemplation of yesterday/ building tomorrows/ with the bare hands of your ambition,” Osayande carries a passion and transparency that is compelling.
According to poet icon Amiri Baraka, Osayande “is one of the United States’ most important young poets!” For Osayande, such praise is humbling. “I have walked a path that was blazed by both of these men. For me, they are the twin towers of Black poetry. It is the highest honor of my career thus far to be recognized by them both.”

Ewuare X. Osayande is an activist and author of fifteen books and pamphlets including Blood Luxury with an introduction by Amiri Baraka and Misogyny and the Emcee: Sex, Race and Hip Hop. He is founder of The People’s Alliance for Justice Now!. Currently, he teaches African American Studies at Rutgers University in Camden, NJ.
More information on Whose America? and Ewuare X. Osayande is available at his website www.osayande.org. Listen to Osayande read one of the poems from the book at osayandespeaks.podomatic.com. Osayande is available for readings, workshops and interviews. Contact him at 484.362.9240 or email him at osayandespeaks@gmail.com

Hope for Afghanistan Comes in Small Steps – A Talk by Budd MacKenzie founder of Trust In Education

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011
Nov ’11
1
7:30 pm

Tuesday, November 1, 7:30pm – Non-Fiction
Hope for Afghanistan Comes in Small Steps
A Talk by Budd MacKenzie founder of Trust In Education

“As we withdraw our military forces from Afghanistan, most people are asking, “What will happen to Afghanistan?”
“We cannot abandon the Afghan people,” said Budd MacKenzie, founder of the grassroots, nonprofit organization Trust In Education (TIE). “No matter what happens militarily, we have an obligation to help Afghans reconstruct their country and not abandon them as we did in 1993.”
Budd’s passion comes from his fourteen trips to Afghanistan and the community-based work TIE has been doing there for seven years. TIE has been instrumental in educating hundreds of children and partnering with villages to make small infrastructure improvements. When Budd visited Afghanistan for the second time in the fall of 2005, he met a village leader who pulled out a stack of business cards and said, “All these people came to my home and never came back. I thought you would be the same.” Budd recognized then that work in Afghanistan depended on trust and relationships and he pledged he would be in it for the long haul.
Budd is also adamant about the need to support Afghan women in their struggle for the most basic human rights. “More than anyone else, women will bear the consequence of what the men decide,” he said.
Budd has compelling stories to share about what he has observed and the challenges TIE has encountered. He knows that hope for Afghanistan comes in small steps, but he has seen the difference that Americans can make. His portrayal of Afghanistan is unlike any you have read, heard or seen. Budd communicates an alternative vision that ordinary people – our friends and neighbors – are important because by getting involved, they are improving life for so many Afghan children and families. Visit www.trustineducation.org

Wings of Worth – Tamara

Saturday, April 23rd, 2011

Friday, June 3, 7:30pm

Wings of Worth – Tamara

P&P: Jim Cory

Sunday, March 20th, 2011
Apr ’11
19
7:00 pm

Tuesday, April 19, 7pm – Poetry
Poets & Prophets Presents Jim Cory

“Jim Cory writes stories as well as poems and his work has appeared in many venues over the course of the last 35 years. His poems most recently appeared in the zine Elephant, out of New London, Connecticut., the on-line political journal Counterpunch.org and …like this, out of North Attleboro, Mass. He has published seven chapbooks of poems and been a recipient of fellowships from the Pennsylvania Arts Council and Yaddo. He lives in Center City, Philadelphia, and can be reached at coryjim@earthlink.net

MPS: Ernest Hilbert, Timothy Donnelly & Matthew Zapruder

Sunday, March 20th, 2011

Tuesday April 12, 7pm – Poetry
The Moonstone Poetry Series Presents
Ernest Hilbert, Timothy Donnelly & Matthew Zapruder
Matthew Zapruder
is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Come On All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon), selected as one of the top 5 poetry books of 2010 by Publishers Weekly. His poems, essays and translations have appeared in many publications, including Open City, Bomb, Slate, American Poetry Review, Poetry, Tin House, Harvard Review, Paris Review, The New Republic, The Boston Review, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, The Believer, Real Simple, and The Los Angeles Times. He has received a William Carlos Williams Award, a May Sarton Award from the Academy of American Arts and Sciences, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. Currently the Holloway Lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley, as well as an editor for Wave Books and a member of the permanent faculty in the low residency MFA program at UC Riverside-Palm Desert, he lives in San Francisco.
Timothy Donnelly’s first book of poems, Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit, was publshed by Grove Press in 2003. His second, The Cloud Corporation, was published by Wave Books in 2010. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Harper’s, The Iowa Review, jubilat, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, A Public Space, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. He is poetry editor of Boston Review and teaches in the Writing Program of Columbia University’s School of the Arts.
Ernest Hilbert’s poems have appeared in The New Republic, Yale Review, American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Parnassus, Boston Review, Verse, New Criterion, American Scholar, and the London Review. He attended Oxford University, where he edited the Oxford Quarterly. He was the poetry editor for Random House’s magazine Bold Type in New York City (1998-2003) and, more recently, of the Contemporary Poetry Review (2005-2010). He hosts the popular blog and video show www.everseradio.com. He is an antiquarian book dealer in Philadelphia, where he lives with his wife, an archaeologist.

LOS: Leon Boykins Trio & Justin Sekelewski Quintet

Sunday, March 20th, 2011

Friday, April 8 – Doors: 8:30 p.m. Show: 9 pm sharp – BYOB – Jazz
$10 at the door / $8 in advance (at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/165951)
Lucky Old Souls @ Moonstone Presents
Leon Boykins Trio & Justin Sekelewski Quintet

LEON BOYKINS TRIO: Leon Boykins, bass; Alex LoRe, alto saxophone; Dustin Kaufman, drums
Bassist/composer LEON BOYKINS strives to positively influence the public through music. Born in Pittsburgh, Pa., Leon showed an interest in music at a young age. His musical journey started on the piano, where he learned the basics of melody and harmony. He then moved to the bass, which introduced him to the foundations of rhythm. In high school, after performing with various regional high school jazz bands and all state orchestras, Leon decided to make music his career path. Upon graduating from Schenley High School, Leon enrolled in West Virginia University. In the fall of 2005, he transfered to Temple University in Philadelphia, where he received a Bachelor of Music in jazz performance. While living in Philadelphia, Leon quickly made a name for himself as both a performer and an educator. He had the opportunity to share the stage with many musical greats, including pianist Orrin Evans, saxophonist Ben Schachter, trumpeter John Swana, trumpeter Terrel Stafford, drummer ?uestlove, and many more. Currently, Leon lives in New York City, pursuing a Master’s degree in music performance at the prestigious Manhattan School of Music. He is focusing on jazz performance, classical bass technique, and composition. Bass mentors have included Harvie S, Jeremy McCoy, Larry Grenadier, Madison Rast, Mike Boone, Douglas Mapp, Dr.
Andrew Kohn, Paul Thompson, Bill Howard and Dwayne Dolphin. He would like to thank his friends, family, books, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York City for all the educational experiences that they have provided.

JUSTIN SEKELEWSKI QUINTET featuring JIM HOLTON: Michael Pracher, tenor saxophone; Adam Siegel, alto saxophone; Jim Holton, piano; Justin Sekelewski, bass Nick Wight, drums
The band consists of musicians who are all based in Philadelphia and perform regularly in Philadelphia and the surrounding areas up and down the East Coast. Bassist Justin Sekelewski, pianist JIM HOLTON, and drummer NICK WIGHT have been playing together on a consistent basis for several years. Saxophonists ADAM SIEGEL and MIKE PRACHER provide the perfect complement to the ethos of this group: moving jazz in a new and exciting direction while holding a firm grasp on the history of the music and the idea that jazz was and still is music of the people. Pianist, cellist, composer, and arranger Jim Holton has performed extensively in the Philadelphia Area, New York, and New Jersey with several groups, including the critically-acclaimed Rhythm and Brass, Orrin Evans’s Captain Black Big Band, and Joe Sudler’s Swing Machine, which backed artists such as Jon Faddis, Clark Terry, Slide Hampton, and Al Grey. Some of the many musicians he has worked with over the years include bassists Tyrone Brown, Mike Boone, and Charles Fambrough; drummers Byron Landham, Mickey Roker, Billy James, Ryan Faulkner, and Cornell Rochester; and horn players John Swana, Bootsie Barnes, Larry McKenna, and Clifford Adams. In addition to performing, he teaches cello and piano, and is one of the ministers of music at Saint John’s Lutheran Church in Ambler, Pa.

The Whimsical Sage: Words at Play for All Ages

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010
Dec ’10
5
2:00 pm

Sunday, December 5, 2pm – (60 mins) – Fun with Language

Joan Sage Presents The Whimsical Sage: Words at Play for All Ages

In our eight years of sharing The Whimsical Sage; a collection of fun with homonyms, similes, puns, definitions, expressions, words-inside-words, diverse verses, and short stories with playful illustrations; we have gotten positive feedback from audiences young and old in neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia and the surrounding area. Please join us for a presentation that introduces this magical book and the fun ways it can be used to celebrate words and language with the children (and adults) in your life. After the presentation, copies of The Whimsical Sage will be available for participants who would like one to keep or to share.

The 2011 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Opening Launch Event

Thursday, September 16th, 2010
Sep ’10
29
4:30 pm

Wednesday, September 29, 2010 from 4:30-6:00PM

Philadelphia Writing Project & Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership, Regional Partner for the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers are proud to announce:

The 2011 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Opening Launch Event

Please join us for an afternoon featuring student art and writing at the Moonstone Arts Center, 110A S. 13th Street.

Featuring Renowned Local Poets:

Elijah B. Pringle, III: is a Philadelphia based poet. To his credit he has edited and published several chap books by other poets as well as published three chapbooks of his own poetry and prose.  His work has been featured in the Edison Poetry Review, Minority Interchange’s IMpact, The God’s Must Be Bored, Fox Chase Poetry Review, River Poetry Journal, The River and anthologies published by Robin’s Book Store and Lilly Press.  He has lectured on poetry in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC, Minneapolis, and San Francisco.  His opinion and insights have appeared in the NY Times, Newsweek and the Philadelphia Daily News.  He is the former on air host of Panoramic Poetry at OctoberGallery.com.   Although he reads infrequently he considers First Fridays hosted by Aziza, Panoramic Poetry hosted by Crucial and Moonstone Art Center to be his artistic home.

Dr. Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon, B.A. (Journalism); MFA (Theater); Ph.D. (Cultural Anthropology), is Assistant Professor of Theater History at Temple University and teaches a course on Poetry as Performance Art. Winner of the PEW Charitable Trusts Fellowship in the Arts (Scriptwriting, 2000); the DaimlerChrysler National Poetry Competition (1999), and the Provost’s Arts Commission grant, she is the author of 8 books of poetry, nearly 20 plays, and has received numerous awards and honors. She was Arts Producer for public radio, WXPN-FM 88.5, reporter and columnist with the Philadelphia Tribune and television editor for the Chicago-based Maceba Affairs Media Review magazine. She has received numerous community service awards, including citations from Philadelphia City Council, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the key to the City of Scranton, Pennsylvania by Mayor James P. Connors in 1992.

Eleanor Wilner has published seven collections of poems, most recently Tourist In Hell, The Girl with Bees in Her Hair; Reversing the Spell: New and Selected Poems; and Otherwise. Her work has appeared in over forty anthologies, including Best American Poetry 1990 and The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Wilner has been the recipient of numerous awards, including fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Juniper Prize, and three Pushcart Prizes. Former editor of The American Poetry Review, she is currently an Advisory Editor of Calyx. She has taught, most recently, at the University of Chicago, Northwestern, and Smith College. She is currently on the faculty of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and lives in Philadelphia.

“Wilner . . . has a deep and heroic belief in the transformative power of language and myth. She paddles her surfboard outside the reef where most poets stop; she rides the big waves.” – Tony Hoagland

Light Refreshments will be served.

Learn about the awards program recognizing students excelling in the visual arts and writing. Students can submit work in more than 30 categories and compete for more than $4 million worth of college scholarships.

Moonstone Arts Center is located one block from the Walnut Street Station on the Broad Street Line.  Free parking in the Stoddart-Fleisher Middle School lot at 540 N. 13 Street, which is near the Broad Street Line.

For more information about the Writing Awards, contact Ted Domers at philwp@gse.upenn.edu or 215-898-1919

For more information about the Art Awards, contact Raye Cohen at paep@uarts.edu or 215-717-6596