The Writers Guild at Bloomington is an association of writers committed to mutual support and the professional development of their craft. Its mission is to foster interaction among writers as well as other artists, educators, and the Monroe County public, thereby enhancing the vibrancy of the arts and the writing community in the greater Bloomington area.

Events Calendar

Feb

Sun

The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland by James Madison, a conversation

Tickets

Feb 21 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

James Madison, The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland

Conversation with the Author

Live on Zoom Sunday Feb 21

2 to 3 pm

Part of Coffee with Friends presented by the Friends of Monroe County Public Library

Enjoy a conversation with renowned author and historian, James Madison. Madison will discuss his recently released book, The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland, in which he details the creation and reign of the infamous organization. He offers a detailed history of this powerful organization and examines how, through its use of intimidation, religious and ethnic intolerance, and the ballot box, the ideals of the Klan in the 1920s have on-going implications for America today. Madison is the Thomas and Kathryn Miller Professor Emeritus of History at Indiana University. The Midwestern History Association recently honored him with the Frederick Jackson Turner Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Friends are delighted to also welcome Carolyn Calloway-Thomas, the Chair of the Indiana University Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies who will facilitate the conversation with Madison. Bring your questions!

Please register with a valid email address at mcpl.info/friends. The link to the Zoom event will be emailed to you 30 minutes before the program begins. Please sign up as one person per household.

Help us spread the word about this program. Indicate you are going on our Facebook event, and invite your friends! https://www.facebook.com/events/752071365707685

If you would like to purchase a copy of The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland, IU Press is offering Friends members a 30% discount. You will still need to pay tax and the $7 shipping charge. Go to the IU Press web page for the book: https://iupress.org/9780253052186/the-ku-klux-klan-in-the-heartland/ and use the discount code “JamesMadison” at checkout to receive 30% off.

Feb

Sun

Last Sunday Poetry Reading & Open Mic Now on You Tube

Tickets

Feb 28 @ 9:00 am – 9:00 am

Last Sunday Poetry Reading & Open Mic

with guest poets Antonia Matthew and Anna Petro

followed by an Open Mic

You may see this event on You Tube at

Antonia Matthew is from England, where she grew up during World War II. She has lived in Bloomington since 1968 and has been a member of the writing group, Five Women Poets since 1974. She credits the group with keeping her writing. She has published a chapbook, Journey and written a play Home Front. She is a member of the Writers Guild at Bloomington.

Anna Petro is twelve years old and lives in Bloomington Indiana with her parents, her brother, her two dogs, her brother’s Ball Python, and her rescue snails. She loves to write.

Anna will be writing some poems on the same topic as some of Tonia’s poems for an inter-generational dialogue.

Mar

Tue

Just Write! IU life Long Learning

Tickets

Mar 2 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Just Write!

IU Life Long Learning class Three Tuesdays, March 2–16

Shana Ritter instructor

Grab your pen or keyboard for this generative writing class. You’ll learn a range of original prompts to spur writing in different genres and use fast writes and a variety of forms and approaches to stretch your writing muscles and tune your written voice. Intended for all writers, beginning or experienced, you’ll grow your writing practice as a group.

TO REGISTER or to get further information click on: Just Write!

Mar

Wed

Spoken Word Series

Tickets

Mar 3 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

SPOKEN WORD SERIES

Sponsored in part by the Indiana Arts Commission, Bloomington Arts Commission, and the Bloomington Urban Enterprise Association

TWO WAYS TO EXPERIENCE:

Drop a note to demand4poetry@gmail.com and we will send you the ZOOM link

watch LIVE on the Writers Guild at Bloomington Facebook page

featuring poets Steve Henn, Brooke Nicole Plummer, Bree Jo’ann & music from saxophonist Sam Newsome

BREE JO’ANN is the author of Black Glitter (Monster House Press, 2018). She works at the Indianapolis Public Library and lives in Indianapolis. www.poets.org/poet/bree-joann

STEVE HENN wrote Indiana Noble Sad Man of the Year (Wolfson Press 2017), And God Said: let there be Evolution! (NYQ Books 2012), and Unacknowledged Legislations (NYQ Books 2011) and the forthcoming chapbook from Main Street Rag, Guilty Prayer (out Feb/Mar 2021). He has been featured at the Long Beach Poetry Festival, the Uptown Poetry Slam, IUSB Visiting Writer Series, Bloomington Writers Guild series, at the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg, in the Divedapper Carnival poetry showcase, and elsewhere. He raises the 4 children of he and the late artist Lydia Frances Henn (1980-2013) and teaches in Indiana. www.therealstevehenn.com

BROOKE NICOLE PLUMMER is a writer and musician from the Midwest region. Her first full-length collection of poems, Flyover, Compiled Nothings, was self- published in November of 2018. Her second chapbook, Shaggy Frog, was released in January 2021 through Alien Buddha Press. As a performance artist, she goes by “The Rotten Fruit.” www.neutralspaces.co/brooke-nicole-plummer

An innovator of unconventional sounds on his instrument, SAM NEWSOME has evolved as one of the most important soprano saxophonists in improvised music. Since 2007, Newsome has released six ground-breaking solo saxophone recordings that push the boundaries of his instrument. Albums Blue Soliloquy and Sopranoville both received five stars in Downbeat Magazine. A recipient of the 2016 NYFA Fellowship and the 2020 Instant Award in Improvised Music, Sam works with many genre-stretching musicians on today’s improvised music scene. He has released over 20 recordings as a leader and has appeared on over forty as a side-person. www.somenewmusic.com

Mar

Sun

Third Sunday Write

Tickets

Mar 21 @ 1:00 pm – 1:00 pm

Third Sunday Write

Third Sunday Write offers all writers a chance to share in a writing community and flex and tone their writing muscles through exercises and discussion. While we can’t gather in person we are continuing to gather online. If you’re interested in receiving monthly prompts and having a friendly place to share your writing responses and read others’ please email shana747@gmail.com to get invited to the private FaceBook group 3rdsundaywrite.

Please note: The website notice mentions a date and time but please ignore them. It is a required field we have to fill in.

THANKS!

Mar

Sat

Writers Guild Business Meeting

Tickets

Mar 27 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

Writers Guild Business Meeting

Virtual via Zoom

For Zoom link please contact:

Joan Hawkins (jchawkin93@yahoo.com)

Tony Brewer (beatnik_a_go_go@yahoo.com)

Kyle Quass (kylequass@gmail.com)

Apr

Wed

Spoken Word Series

Tickets

Apr 7 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

TWO WAYS TO EXPERIENCE:

Drop a note to demand4poetry@gmail.com and we will send you the ZOOM link

watch LIVE on the Writers Guild at Bloomington Facebook page

WEDNESDAY, APR 7

6pm EST

featuring

Joan Hawkins, KH Brower, Abegunde

reading excerpts from the forthcoming book Rape Escapes

films by Valeria DeCastro

Sponsored in part by the Indiana Arts Commission, Bloomington Arts Commission, and the Bloomington Urban Enterprise Association

https://www.facebook.com/events/292666535557759

JOAN HAWKINS is an associate professor in cinema studies at Indiana University. Her creative writing has appeared in Fevers of the Mind, Sand, and the Performing Arts Journal. Her most recent book publication is William S Burroughs Cutting Up the Century, co-authored with Alex Wermer-Colan. The piece she is reading this evening comes from Rape Escapes, a poetry and prose anthology-in-progress that she is co-editing with K.H. Brower. Rape Escapes is organized around near misses. Assaults that did not happen or that did not happen to the narrator of the story. Assaults that did happen but were survived.

Maria E. Hamilton ABEGUNDE, Ph.D., is a Memory Keeper, poet, ancestral priest in the Yoruba Orisa tradition, healing facilitator, and doula. Her research and creative works are grounded in contemplative practices and respectfully approaching the Earth and human bodies as sites of memory, and always with the understanding that memory never dies, is subversive, and can be recovered to transform transgenerational trauma and pain into peace and power. Her most recent works address anti-Black racism and violence, genocide, sexual violence, and healing in the US, Brazil, and Juba, South Sudan, and can be found in If My Body Could Talk (Mouth), North Meridian Review, the Massachusetts Review, Tupelo Quarterly, FIRE!!!, and Keeper of My Mothers’ Dreams. She is the founding director of The Graduate Mentoring Center, and a faculty member in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University. In 2021, she was featured in Bloom magazine in the February/March Issue that recognized the accomplishments and contributions of Black Women of Bloomington. Dr. Abegunde is a Cave Canem, Sacatar, Ragdale, and NEH fellow.

K.H. BROWER most often writes science fiction for young people. Her YA SolarPunk series of novels imagines a future world in which her heroines and heroes actively regenerate damaged ecosystems across the galaxy. She is currently pitching a new TV streaming series, also SolarPunk, and is writing a contemporary feature film about a girl who rescues her neighbor’s pet bull, and together they save their forest. Among the Magic Mountains, her half-hour memoir master’s thesis film for USC School of Cinema-Television, has been screened at festivals worldwide, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. “Escaping Beaver Trapper” is her return to the memoir form.

VALERIA DeCASTRO is a performance artist, Butoh dancer, and works in non-traditional and contemporary theatre. She studied music at the University of Brasilia (Brazil) and holds an MA in Italian literature with a concentration on Film Studies from the Indiana University. Her work is interdisciplinary and largely influenced by Maura Baiocchi’s innovative methodology of the “Choreographic Theater of Tensions.”

Apr

Fri

Double Exposure IU Cinema

Tickets

Apr 9 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Double exposure

IU Cinema

Friday April 9

7 pm

Free virtual screening,

but you need to register.

This program brings together student filmmakers from the IU Media School, composers

from the Jacobs School of Music and writer from the Writers Guild at Bloomington

To register and for more information, see

https://cinema.indiana.edu/upcoming-films/screening/2021-spring-program-friday-april-9-700pm

Double Exposure 2021, Friday, April 09, 2021 7:00 pm

IU Cinema presents Double Exposure 2021 on Friday, April 09, 2021 7:00 pm. Join us for a virtual presentation of new short films with new scores created by student filmmakers and composers from The Media School and Jacobs School of Music.

cinema.indiana.edu

Apr

Tue

Poetry Night for Teens virtual at MCPL

Tickets

Apr 13 @ 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm