Open Mic

The Poetry & Prose Slam Looms

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  • What: The Annual Poetry & Prose Slam
  • When: Wednesday, November 15th from 7:00 to 9:00PM
  • Where: GCC Main Campus, Room SU-104
  • Why: Money

The final GCC CRW event for Fall 2017 draws near, and with it comes money. As we do every year, we’re concluding our event schedule with the Poetry & Prose Slam. Unlike our open mic events, the Slam is a competition, and as a competition, there will be prizes. Prizes, as in, money. We do not promise big, floppy checks, but we do promise letter-sized envelopes filled with prize money for the top three performers. Via a highly complex algorithm involving quality of writing and quality of performance, our illustrious judges will select these winners. Competitors can enter short stories, poetry, drama, essays, song lyrics, creative nonfiction, or any other kind of creative writing so long as you can read/perform it in three minutes or fewer! Time permitting, interested parties will be able to enter up to three separate pieces of writing.

In order to participate, you’ll need to fill out a simple entry form that you can download and print right here: Registration Form. Or, pick up a copy on campus from the English Department office in the 05 building. If you forget to grab a form, we’ll have extra entry forms available before the event begins.

So, come read, come perform, come listen, come get paid!

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Reminder: Open Mic & Kimberly Williams Tonight!

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kwilliams-bookcoverDon’t forget that tonight (Wednesday, 10/18) GCC is hosting our October Open Mic event. This event is free and open to the public. Come share your own creative work, be it poetry, prose, or some other genre. Or, simply come listen to the creative endeavors of your peers and neighbors.

In addition to the Open Mic, poet Kimberly Williams will read from her new collection of poetry Finally, the Moon. She is our featured reader for the night, and will take to the stage after the Open Mic portion ends.

All of this begins at 7:00PM on the GCC Main Campus, in SU104. Follow the signs! We’ll have some light refreshments. Have questions? Contact Jeff Baker at jeffrey.baker@gccaz.edu.

October Open Mic: Featuring Kimberly Williams

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kwilliams-bookcoverThere comes a time in every blog post’s life when it needs to put away childish things and enter society as a responsible adult. Time to get a job. Time to find a like-minded blog post and settle down. Have a family. Raise little baby blog posts. Secretly choose a favorite. Find a new web hosting service with more bandwidth and greater security. Time to shop for life insurance policies. Designate secret favorite the sole beneficiary of said life insurance policy. Time to move to Florida. Wait weeks between phone calls.  Be condescended to by no-longer-baby blog posts once those calls do come. Time to regret life choices and question the necessity for putting childish things away in the first place.

But now is not that time.

Now is the time to talk about our next open mic event where you creative wonders regale us with poetry and prose and song. Read us your finished work, your unfinished work, your work that prefers not to be labeled. Now is also the time to talk about GCC’s own Kimberly Williams and her book of poetry, Finally, the Moon, and how she is our featured reader for October’s open mic event. Come to read, come to listen, come to support a great community of writers and people.

  • When: Wednesday, October 18th from 7:00PM to 9:00PM.
  • Where: GCC Main Campus, SU104.
  • Why: Because life is too short not to.

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Kimberly K. Williams teaches Creative Writing and Composition classes at Glendale Community College. She earned an MFA from University of Texas El Paso in Creative Writing. Filled with art, angels, and poems that explore other places, Finally, the Moon is her first full-length publication.

Register now for CRW202: The Writer as Witness or CRW251: In a Flash! Writing Flash Fiction and Prose Poetry with Kimberly Williams in Spring 2018.

Tonight! Open Mic, L.M. Reker, & Traveler Readers

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Don’t forget our first Wednesday night reading is tonight, September 20th. We’ll have an open mic for anyone who wishes to share what they’re writing or reading or contemplating. We’ll have a few Traveler winners from last year to regale us with their published work. We’ll have author L.M. Reker to read from his published novels.

Light refreshments will be provided, along with copies of  the Traveler, GCC’s Arts & Literary Magazine.

The fun begins at 7PM on GCC’s Main Campus, in SU104.

September Open Mic: Featuring L.M. Reker & Traveler Winners

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We know we’ve spent some time apart of late, Wednesday. First it was Tuesday that came between us, and then the summer months with their delirium-inducing heat. There arose in us the notion (far-fetched, we know that now) that Wednesday night readings were antiquated, a thing of the past, a glory day from a touch-too-long Springsteen concert, a near-real picture of you inside Robert Smith’s damp and neglected photo albums, Bryan Adams’ little-known second real six-string from 1972. As the great balladeers Skid Row once sang, “Remember yesterday, walking hand in hand. Love letters in the sand, I remember you.”

Well, Tuesday is gone, things done changed, and we remember you, Wednesday.

To celebrate the reborn commitment to our sacred union, we’re having a reading on–you guessed it–Wednesday. There’ll be an open mic, readings from our most recent Traveler winners, and excerpts from our featured reader L.M. Reker. Come to read, come to listen,  come to make semi-obscure references, come to dramatically perform lyrics to forgotten songs about love and nostalgia. There’s something for everyone!

  • When: Wednesday, September 20th from 7:00 to 9:00PM.
  • Where: GCC Main Campus, SU104.
  • Why: Because if society accepted Skid Row as artistic talents, it sure as hell will accept you!

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Open Mic: Featuring David Muñoz

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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.

  • When: Tuesday, March 7th from 7:00PM to 9:00PM.
  • Where: GCC Main Campus, SU104e.
  • Why: Applebee’s closed down. No, really, the whole chain.
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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.

Open Mic: Featuring Josh Rathkamp

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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.

  • When: Wednesday, February 15th from 7:00PM to 9:00PM.
  • Where: GCC Main Campus, SU104e.
  • Why: Because all of this has happened before, and it will happen again.
jrathkamp

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

The Slam!

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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.

  • What: GCC’s Annual Poetry & Prose Slam
  • Where: GCC Main, SU104
  • When: Wednesday, November 16th from 7PM to 10PM, but arrive early to register if you want to participate (Hint: You want to participate!)
  • Why: Cash Prizes!

Obligatory disclaimer: We accept all performers’ rights to express their creative works and art freely, so we do not censor subject matter or content

Open Mic: Featuring Traveler Winners

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Wednesday. The middle child of the weekday family. The forgotten one. Pessimistic and cynical. Overlooked, but for good reason. Wednesday is to blame for everything, after all. No new bike for you, Wednesday. No new clothes either. Monday’s will fit you. Monday, who came first. Monday, who blazed the trail, set the tone, went boldly into a world filled with fresh experiences and innumerable possibilities. And then there’s Friday–the baby, the one Aunt Saturday and Uncle Sunday give the extra toys and attention to, the one everyone still thinks is cute and fun and worth their time.

Well, we here at GCC think you’re adorable, Wednesdays. So adorable, in fact, we’ve chosen to hold all of our open mics right there, atop your wee forehead. And our next open mic is special: We’re featuring writers published in our most recent issue of the Traveler magazine. 

So, come out to GCC,  share your work, and then listen to the fantastic pieces published in the Traveler.

  • When: Wednesday, October 19th from 7:00PM to 9:30PM.
  • Where: GCC Main Campus, SU104.
  • Why: Because Wednesday’s feelings will be hurt if you don’t come.