Sunday, September 13, 2009

Catherine Wang Hsu and Li Mo Feature Tuesday September 29, 2009 • 7:30 pm

CAMBRIDGE COHOUSING PRESENTS
THE FIRESIDE READING SERIES
MOLLY LYNN WATT, CURATOR

CATHERINE WANG HSU has been a professional businesswoman, an entrepreneur, and an educator. She has been a daughter, a wife, and a mother. She is Chinese and American and has traveled the world both physically and spiritually. Her recent collection of poetry, Shadows and Light was published by lulu.com. Her poems have appeared in Lyric Somerville (The Somerville News) and the Goose River Anthology. She has been a featured reader for Outloud at the Beebee Estate, sponsored by the Melrose Cultural Council, and the Osher Life Long Learning Institute at UMass Boston. Her work has been presented on Digital Storytelling for Malden Community Access TV and won an award from Mystic Valley Elder Services.
LI MO, (also known as LI MIN MO), was born in Shanghai, escaped from China with her family in 1952 and eventually made her way to the U.S., coming of age in New York City during the 1960s. She holds an M.A. from Goddard and an M.F.A. from Emerson. For over 30 years she has lived in Cambridge where she raised three children and developed an outstanding reputation as a professional storyteller, award-winning educator and artist. Her work has been supported by many awards and grants. Since 1982 she's been on the roster of the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is a long-time active member of Streetfeet Women, a performers and writers collective, and taught Storytelling at Lesley University for 17 years. Her storytelling has taken her across United States, as well as to Singapore, Shanghai and Beijing. Her just-published memoir, Spirit Bridges, tells an intimate story of a young Chinese American woman facing political persecution, sexual assault, racism, poverty, disabilities and the immigrant experience. It is also a tribute to her mother, one of China's first female journalists in the 1940s. Mo’s storytelling and poetry leads the reader through her life, as she gains self-knowledge, joy and a profound commitment to optimism even in her darkest moments.

The reading begins with a short open mike. Come at 7 PM to help set up, sign up for open mike and nosh and schmooze. Following the reading you are invited to a wine and cheese reception. (A donation of $3 is requested to help with the cost.)

The Fireside Reading Committee is Molly Lynn Watt, curator, Richard Curran, webmagician, plus Jenise Aminoff, Vinnie D’Orio, Jim Foritano, Lolita Paiewonsky, Ruby Poltorak, Elizabeth Quinlan, Julie Rochlin, Barbara Thomas and Dan Lynn Watt. Thanks to many others for help on logistics, and the writers who come month after month. The reading is held at Cambridge Co-Housing, 175 Richdale Ave. in Cambridge, 3 blocks from the Red Line stop at Porter Square. A request to the City of Cambridge allows out-of-town visitors to park on Richdale Avenue from 6:30-10:30 PM. Contact Molly Lynn Watt, 617-354-8242, mollywatt@comcast.net or Jenise Aminoff, 617-576-2004, jenise@alum.mit.edu, or www.cambridgecohousing.org/Fireside/index.html

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Molly Lynn Watt reads at first presentation of The Poet Populist Reading Series on Sept. 14 at 7 pm at the Cambridge Arts Council

A reading Series at the Cambridge Arts Council every two months featuring poets, and writers of Cambridge, and on occasion special guests. The first presentation is scheduled for Monday September 14, 2009, 7:00 PM. Each presentation will be filmed with the support of CCTV to be aired at the station on future dates. Presented by Jean-Dany Joachim

Molly Lynn Watt, an educator and a poet, curates Fireside Monthly Reading Series, now in its 10th year, serves as poetry editor of HILR Review and Bagels with the Bards Anthologies 1, 2, 3 & 4. She and Daniel Lynn Watt created and perform George & Ruth: Songs and Letters of the Spanish Civil War, published on CD, with script to be published later this year by Cervena Barva Press. In 2007 Ibbetson Street Press published Shadow People. She is currently writing a series of poems set in the Civil Rights Movement, is published widely, reads at many venues and was a finalist for the inaugural Poet Populist position in Cambridge.


Philip Burnham grew up in New England, served as Vice Consul in Marseille, France, under JFK, then spend the balance of his professional life teaching Medieval History in the Boston area. His poems have appeared in a number of literary journals, including The Aurorean an Lyric, and one was recently read on the Writer’s Almanac. I have published four books of poetry, the most recent, A Careful Scattering (Cervena Barva Press, 2007).


Marcia Ross has lived in Scotland, England, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia, and now resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has worked as a radio and print journalist, an antiques dealer, a waitress, typist, editor, and farm stand cashier. She supports a distinguished scientist at MIT and teaches English Literature part time at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her poems and essays have appeared in Vanguard, Halifax Magazine, The Fourth Estate Newspaper, Canadian Antiques & Arts Review, and The Dalhousie Review. Ms Ross recently completed a novel, Leda and the Lake, and is working on a collection of poems.

John Clifford is a Vietnam veteran and native of Somerville. While he was in Vietnam’s DMZ, he wrote several poems and left with a Purple Heart. After living in Cambridge for a while, he bought the Green Street Grill, which he owned and managed for 20 years. The creator and director of the Central Square World Fair, he has always been an advocate for the arts and the community.

MARILÈNE PHIPPS-KETTLEWELL is a painter, a poet and a short story writer who was born and grew up in Haiti. Her website can be viewed at www.marilenephipps.com. She has held fellowships at the Guggenheim Foundation, and at the Bunting Institute, the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research and the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University, and has been a recipient of a grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts. In 1993, she won the Grolier prize for poetry. Her poetry collection Crossroads and Unholy Water (Southern Illinois University Press, 2000) won the 1999 Crab Orchard Poetry Prize (also a finalist for the Walt Whitman prize from the Academy of American Poets). Her poetry was published in England by Carcanet Press Ltd, England in the anthology of seven Caribbean poets titled, “New Caribbean Poetry”.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Molly Lynn Watt, Elizabeth Quilan and Edie Aronowitz Mueller feature at Newton Public Library Poetry Series Kickoff, September 8, 2009 at 7 pm

The 2009-2010 poetry series will open on Tuesday, September 8 at 7:00 pm and will feature poets Molly Lynn Watt, Elizabeth Quinlan and Edie Aronowitz Mueller. Their readings will be followed by an open mic with a limit of one poem per person. Come early to sign up for the open mic; limited slots are available, time permitting. For more information visit http://www.newtonfreelibrarypoetryseries.blogspot.com/. The series is facilitated by Doug Holder of Ibbetson Street Press.

Molly Lynn Watt is a progressive educator for peace and justice, as well as the curator for the monthly Fireside Poetry Reading Series. Her collection of poetry, Shadow People, was published in 2007. A visual artist specializing in the book arts, Elizabeth Quinlan's recent work, Stories of the Grandmother, a sculpture/book, is a collection of collages, found objects, photographs and stories. Edie Aronowitz Mueller's poems have won numerous awards. Her first book, The Fat Girl and Other Poems, was published in 2008.