Creative Writing
USpeak: Open Verse and Story Performance Series
The Creative Writing program is proud to announce a series of eight literary happenings at The Oasis deli on the Coral Gables Campus. Each event features a local writer/poet from the Miami or University of Miami literary community. Audience members are also invited to step up and share their poems, stories and music at the open mic. USpeak: Open Verse and Story Performances is broadcast live by University of Miami’s student radio station, WVUM and is sponsored, in part, by the University of Miami Citizen’s Board, University of Miami’s Auxiliary Services and The Creative Writing Program. Light refreshments will be served.
All podcasts are engineered and produced by UM Alumni, Matt Gajewski.
USpeak Calendar of Events
For eight Friday evenings from 6:30-7:30PM, the Creative Writing Program hosts featured poets and writers along with an all-campus open mic at the Oasis Deli at the Whitten University Center. USpeak is taped and broadcasted by UM's 90.5 WVUM-FM.
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November 13th
Matt Gajewski, radio host of Pure Imagination and story writer
Matt Gajewski was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1984. An avid youthful reader of former Miami Herald humorist Dave Barry, Matt moved to his childhood hero's adopted hometown in 2002 after being accepted into the University of Miami's music engineering program, allowing Matt to finally witness firsthand the absurd traffic and prehistoric-sized insects oft-maligned in Barry's columns. On a lark, while on summer break from college, Matt created a radio program called Pure Imagination for the university's 90.5 WVUM-FM. Inspired by the work of KCRW's Joe Frank, Pure Imagination featured Matt's darkly comic short stories set to music by fellow University of Miami composers, as well as largely improvised faux documentaries about subjects ranging from the complicated personal lives of urban werewolves to the decline of a troubled magician whose last great feat was making Akron, Ohio disappear. Now entering its fifth season, Pure Imagination has been profiled by WLRN Television, the Miami New Times, and the Miami Herald, and has expanded from the original radio program to include a regular series of literary readings accompanied by live music at Little Haiti's Sweat Records. Matt's first book, a self-published illustrated collection of Pure Imagination stories with drawings by Miami artist Zach Danesh, was released in May. -
December 4th
Mangrove Celebration Open Mic Party -
January 29th
Neil de la Flor, poet and MFA Alum
Neil de la Flor earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Miami. His first book of poetry, Almost Dorothy, won the 2009 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize and will be published in January 2010. His literary work has been published in several journals including Hayden’s Ferry Review, Barrow Street, Sentence, 42opus, Court Green and others. In 2006, Facial Geometry (NeoPepper Press), a collaborative chapbook of triads co-authored with Maureen Seaton and Kristine Snodgrass, was published. He currently lives in Miami and teaches at Miami Dade College and Nova Southeastern University. -
February 26th
TBA -
March 26th
KC Culver, Lecturer/Assistant Director, English Composition Center -
April 30th
TBA
Previous Events
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October 23rd, 6:00PM
PHILIPPINES FLOOD RELIEF
Oasis Deli in the UC
Listen Now
THE DISASTER
During the week of September 25th, 2009, Tropical Storm Ketsana pounded the islands of the Philippines with more than 400 mm of rain in just six hours – more than one month’s worth of rain in a matter of a few hours.
Over one million people were displaced by the storm, only to be hit again by a second storm, Typhoon Parma. More than 300 people were killed, and many more are wounded, helpless, and displaced. Families waded through knee-deep water, searching for relatives and neighbors as homes were engulfed with water. The floods have destroyed rice fields, ripped through power lines, and left many homes destroyed and families shelterless.
UM’s creative writing department seeks to create a positive impact through a community event – UHelp: a special USpeak event to raise funds for Red Cross efforts in the Philippines.
SIGN UP TO READ
This Open Mic is just like a marathon:
- You sign up to read, sing, or play music. You can read your own work or a poem that you choose (we have a collection of work from the South East Asian region).
Email: vinoad@gmail.com - Then you contact your friends and family to sponsor your effort.
- You collect the donations from your sponsors (cash or checks made to the
University of Miami) and deliver them to Professor M. Evelina Galang in the
English office, third floor Ashe by Friday, October 30th 5PM.
SPREAD THE WORD
- We really need your help in spreading the word. The more students that participate and read, the more funds we can raise. This is what you can do.
- Download and print the
event flyers, info sheet and sponsor forms - Post them in your residential college
- Take them to class and say a few words
- Email the files to your student organizations
- Tell your friends
Questions? Email: vinoad@gmail.com
- You sign up to read, sing, or play music. You can read your own work or a poem that you choose (we have a collection of work from the South East Asian region).
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September 4th
Crissa-Jean Chappell, YA novelist and UM Alum
Listen Now
Crissa-Jean Chappell holds an MFA in screenwriting and an interdisciplinary PhD in film theory, philosophy, and literature. She teaches creative writing and cinema studies at Miami International University of Art and Design. For eight years, she wrote a weekly film column for the Miami Sun Post. Her reviews of art and culture have appeared in magazines such as Film Comment, Tate (London), New Times, Urb, Script, and others. Her short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Confrontation and the Southwest Review. Her debut YA novel, Total Constant Order, was recently published by HarperCollins. It is a Florida Book Award medalist, a VOYA "Perfect Ten," and a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age.
Guest authors and creative writing graduate students were among those who performed at this event on September 4. Students from all departments are invited and encouraged to share their work at these events, be it poetry, comedy, an excerpt, or a short story.
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October 2nd
Adrian Castro, poet
Listen Now
Adrian Castro is a poet, performer, and interdisciplinary artist. Born in Miami, a place which has provided fertile ground for the rhythmic Afro-Latino style in which he writes and performs. Articulating the search for a cohesive Afro-Caribbean-American identity, Castro honors myth on one hand and history on the other. He addresses the migratory experience from Africa to the Caribbean to North America, and the eventual clash of cultures. Castro creates a circular motion of theme, tone, subject matter, style, and cultural history, giving rise to a fresh illuminating archetypal poetry. These themes reach their climax in their declamacion – the call-and-response rhythm of performance with a whole lot of tun-tun ka-ka pulse. He is the author of Cantos to Blood & Honey,(Coffee House Press, 1997), Wise Fish: Tales in 6/8 Time,(Coffee House Press, 2005), and has been published in many literary anthologies. He is the recipient of a Cintas Fellowship, State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, NewForms Florida, the Eric Mathieu King award from the Academy of American Poets, NALAC Arts Fellowship, and several commissions from Miami Light Project and the Miami Art Museum. He has performed with many dancers and actors including Chuck Davis and African American Dance Ensemble, Heidi Duckler and Collage Dance, and Keith Antar Mason and the Hittite Empire. The New York Times Book Review recently selected Wise Fish as an editor’s choice saying, “Sinuous, syncopated verses about the Caribbean melting pot.” And “…even a cursory glance suggests his poems—which seem to be trying to dance off the page…would truly come alive on the stage. “Wise Fish” is a serious and seriously enjoyable contribution to our flourishing Latino literature.” Adrian Castro is also a Babalawo and herbalist.
