WordSpace’s long history is filled with events that sometimes shocked, usually surprised and often included unusual juxtapositions of artists, critics and musicians. Here’s a look at just a few of our recent events.

2006 Events

Poetry Readings at Paperbacks Plus:
Tish Crear, poet who hosts readings for Reciprocity and the Dallas Museum of Art's Late-Night events, and Bob Whoopeecat who hosts the "Poetry Grind" series and is an award-winning slam poet. Bruce Bond & Mary Anne Mayer Redmond. Bond is poetry editor for American Literary Review and teaches at the University of North Texas. Redmond has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Vermont College.

Dancing Tongue Literary Cabaret
Tim Cloward's multi-media performance poetry ensemble presented the poetic word in a variety of media. The November 2006 featured internationally renowned theater performer Fred Curchack and Dallas' hottest Jazz bassist Drew Phelps. This cabaret series is an opportunity to mingle in the intimate space of the Undermain Theatre and experience cutting edge entertainment that offers up an intellectual edge with a populist sensibility.

Fiction Writing Workshop
Ben Fountain and David Searcy led an intensive one-day workshop focusing on writing and selling fiction. Students submit manuscripts up to twenty pages for reading and comment by instructors, and the manuscripts were discussed and analyzed in class. Instructors led a discussion on the actual business of fiction - on getting an agent, selling to magazines, selling your book, surviving.

Tim Seibles Reading
Opened the 2006 Texas Unbound festival. Tim Seibles has a large and long-standing audience in Dallas for his extraordinary poetry readings -- developed over the ten years he wrote and taught high school here. The author of four collections of poetry, including Buffalo Head Solos (2004) and Hammerlock (1999), Seibles is an NEA fellow and a graduate of SMU and Vermont College at Norwich University.

Fiction Writer's Night
Readings from Texas novelist and journalist Bryan Woolley, Bill Swart, emerging novelist Cristina Henriquez whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Glimmer Train, and the Virginia Quarterly Review; and National Book Award Winner Leanne Howe.

Performance
The musicians and dancers of the African-American artist collective Kumaasi.

Artist's Night Out
Performance poet Will Richey and the acclaimed multi-media series pioneered by Richey and visual artist Solange Mariel. The event featured some of the area's best slam, hip-hop and performance poets.

Staged Readings
New works by award-winning playwrights Tom Sime, Vicki Cheatwood, Alex Argyros and John Fullinwider read by top Dallas actors.

Music History
Recreating the Dallas Blues - an evening featuring the music and lives of Blind Lemmon Jefferson and Jimmie Rodgers with Alan Govenar of Documentary Arts and Bruce Dubose, a widely respected member of the Dallas theater community. His Jimmie Rodgers: Waiting For a Train premiered successfully last April. An expanded version will be presented this September at the Undermain Theatre.

One Woman Show: Split Ends
Venus Opal Reese is an award winning solo performer, playwright, director, choreographer and poet. WordSpace hosted a performance of Split Ends, a one woman show that explores the cultural history of black women in America through their hair and is partially based on extensive interviews that Reese has conducted.

2005 Events

Salon Event
Former Reuters correspondent Michael Diebert signed his book Notes From the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories, 2005) Diebert's writing has appeared in Newsday, the Miami Herald, The Village Voice, The Economist Intelligence Unit, Salon, and The Guardian.

Readings at Paperbacks Plus:
Local Pan-American Literature with writers Gabriel De Motemayor & Ricardo Garza
Writers from the Death List Five literary magazine
Yogis & Yoginis Writers from the Yoga community

Panel Discussions:
History of Literary Dallas #1: The Publishers
Discussion of the history of Southwest Review

History of Literary Dallas #2: The Writers
Speakers and subjects were: Robert Trammell on Terry Southern, Tim Cloward on G.V. Desani, Martha Heimberg on Horace McCoy, Ben Fountain on Billy Brammer

Literary Tribute
An evening event devoted to the Chilean author Pablo Neruda

Multimedia Event
An evening with musician and personality Josh Alan Friedman, including screening of the documentary film on Friedman, Blacks and Jews

Fiction Reading
An evening of readings by fiction writers Robert Trammell, David Searcy, Cristina Henriquez, and Ben Fountain

Play Night
Production of the play Chalk Temple by Isabella Russell-Ides
Dharma Broads III (Pagan Fusion Theatre)


2004 Season

Reading and reception
WordSpace honored Cleatus Rattan, poet laureate of Texas

Salon Event Series:
"Indian/Indian", a series of Sunday afternoon salon-style talks at the Undermain Theatre on how non-western traditions are transforming contemporary English literature.

"Aruhdhati Roy and Contemporary Fiction from the Subcontinent," hosted by Dr. Tim Cloward
"Finding the Sacred in the Mundane: Transformations from American Indian Literature," hosted by Dr. Ken Roemer
"Transcendentalists to Beats: The Influence of India and American Indians on American Literature," hosted by Bob Trammell

Open Reading:
"Writers in a Time of War," a free and open reading at the All-Good Cafe, with special guest David Rees, creator of the Rolling Stone Magazine comic strip Get Your War On

Reading
Translations from China's T'ang Dynasty poets, 600 A.D. to 1100 A.D., by Dr. Fred Turner of UTD