As we work through the final weeks of Spring 2018, we encourage everyone to take advantage of our special April events. The last reading for Spring 2018 is Wednesday, April 18th from 7PM to 9PM outside GCC’s Student Union. There are more details in the flyer below.
Wednesday, honey, there comes a time in every relationship when we realize that things have grown stale, become ordinary and predictable. Conversations replay themselves like the script from a credit card call center. Dinners become aggravatingly cyclical, dictated by the weekly coupons in grocery store circulars and disrupted only by Betty Crocker’s introduction of a new Hamburger Helper flavor. Date nights are spent at Applebee’s drinking colorful martinis and eating 2 for $20 deals or endless appetizers, all while talking past one another and allowing the watered-down booze to magically transpose the face of your high school girlfriend or Ryan Reynolds on the ever-more-wrinkled head of your partner. In short: Wednesday, it’s long past time that we see other people days.
Tuesday, how you doing?
For clarity’s sake: March’s Open Mic is upon us, and it’s going to be on a Tuesday. Not only that, but it will be a bilingual night. Come share your work in English, Spanish, or both! Not in the mood for sharing? Come just to listen, then, and give these talented folks the audience they deserve.
David Alberto Muñoz (1959) was born in Mexico at the end of the 1950s. In 1973, he migrated to the United States of America. He has colleges degrees in Theatre Arts, Religious Studies and a Master of Arts in Hispanic Literature and a Master of Arts in Theology, as well as a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion. He has written a variety of books, which includes collection of shorts stories, essays, chronicles, poetry, and a couple of textbooks. Insanities, soundness, and reality: A collection of shorts stories written perhaps by the same person, is his first fiction book written directly in the English language. Muñoz enjoys the study of popular culture as well as the sometimes-complex problem of religious ideology in a contemporary society. He describes himself as a “cuentero” (fabulist), who likes to reflect on the complex human experience. He lives in Glendale, Arizona, with his wife Mireya, a music educator, and they have a daughter, Mirita, 23 years old who is attending California State University at Northridge.
It is officially Go Time. Classes are churning. Deadlines are looming. New Year’s Resolutions are beginning to lose to pragmatism and habit. Writing professors, faced with the first of many waves of essays, are once again questioning their life choices. And, of course, blog posts are coming fast leisurely and furious with mild sarcasm now.
Also, there’s this Open Mic thing happening, with Josh Rathkamp as our featured reader.
Josh Rathkamp received an MFA in Poetry from Arizona State University and an MFA in Poetry Translation from Drew University. He has published two collections of poems, A Storm to Close the Door (selected by Terrance Hayes as the 2016 Georgetown Review Poetry Prize) and Some Nights No Cars At All (Ausable Press). His work has appeared in numerous literary journals and public art projects, including American Poetry Review, The Southern Review, Narrative, Poet Lore, and Rattle. He directs the Creative Writing Program at Mesa Community College
Join GCC students, faculty, and staff, along with numerous talented writers and performers from across the valley, for 2016’s Poetry & Prose Slam. Whether you want to participate, or if you simply wish to listen, the slam always proves to be a great time.
Obligatory disclaimer: We accept all performers’ rights to express their creative works and art freely, so we do not censor subject matter or content
Interested in transforming waves of sound into variations of electrical energy? I know: Who isn’t? Thankfully, GCC has us covered. Soon, GCC will be hosting an event involving microphones. These microphones will be of the open variety (we tried the closed variety, but testing proved unfavorable). Bring your poems, your short fiction, your short nonfiction, your creativity (short is optional here) and share any or all of it with an audience of listeners eager to experience the transformation of sound waves into electrical energy.
In addition to the Open Mic, we will also have Shawnte Orion as the featured reader. The longtime MC of these readings, Shawnte returns to share much of his own work. So, come read, come listen, and come support creative writing in the community.
Shawnte Orion has published a recent book of poetry The Existentialist Cookbook (NYQBooks) and a new chapbook Faithful as the Ground (Five Oaks Press). His poems have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Barrelhouse, Gargoyle Magazine, and New York Quarterly. He has been invited to read at bookstores, bars, universities, hair salons, museums, and laundromats.
Shawnte’s home on the web can be found at batteredhive.blogspot.com.
During Fall 2016, we will continue to support Free Association readings at GCC and hold free community workshops one Saturday per month. We hope to see big, happy, creative crowds at all of these events. Listed below you’ll find the current dates for our readings and workshops. We will have more details about each of these events as the calendar lurches closer to them. We will also look to add other events, both college- and community-run, when we are able. For now, mark your calendars and save the dates!
GCC Open Mic Events (GCC Main, SU104E)
GCC Saturday Workshops (GCC Main, LA141)
Our next Free Association Open Mic will be Wednesday, Feb. 17 beginning at 7PM in the Student Union room 104E.
This evening’s reading will be a special bilingual English/Spanish edition.
Participants are invited to reading in Spanish or in English (or both!).
Todos son invitados participar en Espanol o Ingles o los dos!
Members of the Cardboard House Press will host the bilingual evening along with Shawnte Orion.
Please share this information with your students!
All are welcome in the community, but the event is not recommended for children.
Please contact Kimberly Mathes at kimberly.mathes@gccaz.edu with any questions.
On October 21st, this month’s open mic will feature the 2014 contributors to Glendale Community College’s literary arts magazine, The Traveler, and will also feature past Traveler contributor Dan Ramirez reading from his new book Flashes from the Molcajete.
Open mic begins at 7:00 p.m. with Traveler readers and Dan Ramirez to follow.
This event is open for GCC faculty, staff, students, and also community members.
Location: GCC’s main campus, SU 104-A/B/C
October 21, Free Association Open Mic
Featuring a reading with GCC’s own Dan Ramirez and other Traveler contributors.
This month’s open mic will feature the 2014 contributors to Glendale Community College’s literary arts magazine, The Traveler, and will also feature past Traveler contributor Dan Ramirez reading from his new book Flashes from the Molcajete.
Open mic begins at 7:00 p.m. with Traveler readers and Dan Ramirez to follow.
Location: GCC’s main campus, SU 104-A/B/C
GCC Creative Writing 