Broadside Reading Series: Spring 2019 III

The Center’s Broadside Reading Series produces 12 limited-edition letterpress-printed broadsides each year, featuring the works from poets of various backgrounds and writing styles.

This evening’s reading will feature Poets Marwa Helal & Brenda Hillman, and Resident Artists: Keith Graham, Laura S. Nova.

Our Spring 2019 series is organized by Stephen Motika.

Readers

Marwa Helal is the author of Invasive species (Nightboat Books, 2019) and the winner of BOMB Magazine’s Biennial 2016 Poetry Contest. Born in Al-Mansurah, Egypt, Helal now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Brenda Hillman is the author of 10 collections from Wesleyan University Press, most recently Extra Hidden Life, among the Days (2018), Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire (2013), and Practical Water (2011). With her mother, Hillman recently co-translated At Your Feet, the poems of Ana Cristina Cesar (Free Verse Editions, 2018). She presently serves as a Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets. Named by Poets and Writers as one of fifty inspiring writers in the world, she lives in the Bay Area and is Olivia Filippi Professor of Poetry at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California.

Artists

Keith Graham is a printmaker, carpenter and educator. In drawings, prints and books he uses close observation of detail, texture and sequence to present narratives which explore a fascination with memory, sense of place, and eulogy. Originally from Seattle, he studied with Fred Hagstrom at Carleton College and Karen Kunc at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is now based in New York City.

Laura Nova is an artist based in New York City’s Lower East Side where she produces action oriented and site specific work that encourages both activist and active audience participation. These large-scale public productions utilize a combination of text, image, video, sound, sculpture and performance. Recent commissions have included multi-year, social engagement projects like “Silver Siren,” a cheerleading squad of senior citizens that champions healthcare, gender and age discrimination presented at the Art in Odd Places Festival; “Feed Me A Story,” (co-produced with Theresa Loong) an interactive video installation and documentary video cookbook of secret family recipes; “Moving Stories,” a senior citizen-led, storytelling-walking tour at the New Museum’s IDEA City Festival; and The Crescendo Project which used RFID technology to create an automated praise-singing machine for disabled athletes during a New York Road Runner race. Nova’s In tandem with Dances For A Variable Population, she transformed residents and dancers alike into a moving company for the River to River Festival’s “LES Citizens Parade.” Nova’s work has been presented at the Museum of the Moving Image, the Museum at Eldridge Street, the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Real Art Ways and many galleries including the Substation Gallery in Johannesburg, South Africa and the National Arts Center in Tokyo, Japan. She has received support from the Ford Foundation, MAP Fund, National Endowment of the Arts, New York State Council of the Arts, PBS/POV and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Her work has been reviewed in New York Magazine, Hyperallergic, Vice and WNYC. Her residencies include SPARC (Seniors Partnering with Artists Citywide), the Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island National Monument, Governors Island, Vermont Studio Center, LMCC Workspace and upcoming at the Women’s Studio Workshop and the Center for Book Arts. Nova received a B.F.A. and B.A. from Cornell University and an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently an Associate Professor of Expanded Media in the Creative Art and Technology program at Bloomfield College and the 2016 recipient of the LMCC President’s Award in Visual Art.

Curator

Stephen Motika is the Director & Publisher of Nightboat Books. He was for many years on the staff of Poets House in New York City. The author of the poetry collection Western Practice (2012) and the poetry chapbooks Arrival and At Mono (2007), In the Madrones (2011), and Private Archive (2016), Motika is also the editor of Tiresias: The Collected Poems of Leland Hickman (2009) and co-editor of Dear Kathleen: On the Occasion of Kathleen Fraser’s 80th Birthday (2017).