WINCE: Love Hurts

Get a head start on Valentine's Day at WINCE: Love Hurts, a night of YOUR stories, love letters, photographs, and other artifacts of love gone wrong.

About WINCE
WINCE began last April as an experiment in collective humiliation and multimedia storytelling. Previously, WINCE has featured stories of adolescent embarrassment. The second WINCE asked for stores about lying, and the consequences of that lie. The most recent WINCE featued stories of family, just in time for the holidays. Participants read from diaries, played their high school band's songs, told hilarious and mortifying stories, and shared other artifacts from their past in public.

Listen to selections from WINCE: "Liar Liar" on WNPR's Colin McEnroe Show (segment starts at 27:17).

• Links coming soon!
  

Writers & Readers: Allison Joseph
part of Rockstone & Bootheel: Contemporary West Indian Art.

[Watch: Allison Joseph reads at Poetry at Tech]

Allison Joseph, author of Worldly Pleasures, Imitation of Life and three other books of poems, will read from her work. Her newest book, My Father's Kites, will be published in February.

Allison Joseph was born in London, England in 1967 to parents of Caribbean heritage. She currently teaches at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, where she serves as editor for Crab Orchard Review.

Writers & Readers: Marlon James
part of Rockstone & Bootheel: Contemporary West Indian Art.

[listen to Marlon James on WNYC's Studio 360]

"Writing in the spirit of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker but in a style all his own, James has conducted an experiment in how to write the unspeakable — even the unthinkable. And the results of that experiment are an undeniable success."
- Kaiama L. Glover, The New York Times Book Review

Marlon James is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction (winner announced March 11, 2010) and a nominee for the NAACP's Image Award in Literature (winner announced Feb. 26, 2010).

Marlon James was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1970. He graduated from the University of the West Indies in 1991 with a degree in literature. His first novel, John Crow’s Devil, was short listed for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

• New York Times Book Review: The Book of Night Women
• Marlon James's blog
  

12 The Band

[Listen to 12 The Band at their website]

Watch: Video for "Prosper"
Visuals by Wendell McShine

12 the Band is a musical collaboration founded in 1999 by singer and songwriter Sheldon Holder. 12's permanent members are Sheldon Holder, Brendon Moore, Nigel Irish and John Hussain.

Part of Rockstone & Bootheel: Contemporary West Indian Art.

• 12 the band website
• "12 the band hits 10" | The Trinidad Guardian Sept 20, 2009
  

Konk Pack

[listen to Konk Pack]

Tim Hodgkinson • flat guitar, electronics, reeds
Roger Turner • drumset & percussion
Thomas Lehn • analogue synthesizer

"Grob label artists Konk Pack are utterly awesome. Featuring Thomas Lehn on the craziest old EMS synthi A, Tim Hodgkinson on flat guitar and Roger Turner on percussion, the show is awkwardly brilliant and defiant. With startling combinations of punkish nuisance, ingenious change-ups, and rolling, stumbling, tripping and flipping sound inventions, Konk Pack are one of the most exciting Improv groups in the world." - Lee Henderson, The Wire

For over ten years, this group has amazed audiences at festivals and concerts all over the world with the sheer energy of its rapid-fire interplay.

• Links coming soon!
  

The Odd Ball

It's a ball. The Odd Ball.

Real Art Ways goes inside-out and flips expectations upside down at The Odd Ball, a costume ball for all. The Odd Ball will be filled to the brim with immersive experiences, musical transformations, and innovative delicacies. Low-tech will meet high-tech, the outside will move inside, and the people, in all their costumed glory, will make the party.

Tickets go on sale Sunday, February 14.

Special thanks to our Odd Ball Sponsors:

Lincoln Financial Foundation

media sponsor:

• Odd Ball '09 page
  

Steve Almond

A reading and performance for the launch of Steve Almond's new book, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life.

Drooling fanatic: (def.) 1. One who drools in the presence of beloved rock stars.

2. Any of a genus of rock-n-roll wannabes/geeks who walk around with songs ringing in their ears, own more than 3000 albums at all times, and fall in love with at least one record per week.

With a life that’s spanned from the Phonographic Era to the Digital Age, Steve Almond lives to Rock. Like you, he’s secretly longed for the life of a rock star, complete with insane talent, famous friends, and hotel rooms to be trashed. Also like you, he’s (sort of) content to live the life of a rabid fan, a drooling fanatic, who has converted his unrequited desires into a noble obsession.

Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life traces Almond’s passion from his earliest (and most wretched) rock criticism to his eventual discovery of a Drooling Fanatic soul mate and subsequent production of two little super fans. Along the way, Almond reflects on the delusional power of songs, the awkward mating habits of drooling fanatics, and why Depression Songs actually make us feel so much better.

• Steve Almond's website
  

Writers & Readers

A gathering for everybody who loves the written and spoken word. For people in writing groups or book clubs; for those passionate about writing, reading and thinking. Each evening has a theme, with time before and after for conversation and connecting.