Teachers Act Up!

2019 Seat in the Shade: A Summer Poetry Readings Series (7th season)

Hosted by Poetry for Educators founder, Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor (www.teachersactup.com)

Weeknights in July: July 16, 23, & 30  in Athens, Georgia

Time: 530-7pm

Place: Hendershots  http://hendershotscoffee.com/

Address: 237 Prince Ave, Athens, GA 30601

phone: (706) 353-3050

Contact information: Melisa (Misha) Cahnmann-Taylor,

Cahnmann@uga.edu

Athens, Ga. – A July of poetry reading and discussion of the poetic craft featuring top Georgia poets will be hosted by University of Georgia College of Education professor Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor June 16, 23, & 30 at Hendershots on Prince Avenue, Athens.

This is the seventh year for the event titled, “Seat in the Shade: A Summer Poetry Reading Series,” and starting on July 16 will feature poets each Tuesday weeknight at 530pm. The finale on Wednesday July 30 titled, “Poetry by and for Educators: Readings from the Collective,” will feature Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, and emerging UGA teacher-poets. On the Hendershots stage, 237 Prince Ave, Athens, GA 30601.
Cahnmann-Taylor, a professor in the department of language and literacy education and founder of Poetry by and for Educators, developed the summer poetry reading series seven years ago in conjunction with her Writing Cultures poetry class.

Here is an overview of the schedule and brief description of each featured poet (High Res Jpgs available for each reader):
SEAT IN SHADE

Bios for Poets

July 16  Deidre Sugiuchi & Jericho Brown

Deirdre Sugiuchi is finishing her fundamentalist boot camp memoir, Unreformed, which takes place at Escuela Caribe, a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic. Her work has been featured in Electric Literature, Guernica, the Rumpus and other places. Sugiuchi has been awarded residencies at the Albee Foundation, the Hambidge Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Wildacres. She was a recipient of the Mark Austin Segura Award for Nonfiction. She is the co-founder and curator of Athens, Georgia’s New Town Revue music and literature series. She’s also a public school librarian.

https://deirdresugiuchi.com/

Jericho Brown is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Writer’s Award. Brown’s first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection is The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019). His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is an associate professor and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University.

July 23  Sarah M.C. Baugh, Theresa Davis & Collin Kelley

Sarah M. C. Baugh is a writer and portrait photographer born and raised in Central New York. Her work can be found in Gulf Coast and Sand Hills, and she was a nominee for Best New Poets 2017. Sarah makes her home in Athens, Georgia with her husband and two daughters.

Theresa Davis is an educator, storyteller, poet, author, poetry slam champion and the host of the award winning open mic Java Speaks. She has performed on stages across the nation as a poet and keynote speaker. A classroom teacher for over 30 years, specializing in cross curricular education, Theresa continues her passion for education as a teaching artist. As a slam poet, Theresa has competed individually and on teams for over a decade and in 2011 won the Women of the World Poetry Slam. In May 2013, her first full collection of poems entitled “After This We Go Dark” was published by Sibling Rivalry Press. “After This We Go Dark” became an American Library Association Honoree, and the book can now be checked out in local and college libraries around the world. Her latest poetry collection “Drowned: A Mermaid’s Manifesto”, released with Sibling Rivalry Press, in fall of 2016 received the award“Ten Books All Georgians Should Read”. In addition to being a teaching artist and outreach poetry coordinator for Georgia Tech for 6 years, Theresa hosts and participates in many of the lit events around Atlanta. Her one-woman show “Then They’ll Tell You it’s all in Your Head” Made its debut as a part of 7 Stages Home Brew series in fall of 2017. Theresa is the Literary Events Coordinator and The Charles “Jikki” Riley Memorial Library, facilitator for The Arts Exchange.

Collin Kelley is the author of the poetry collection Midnight in a Perfect World, just published by Sibling Rivalry Press. His other poetry collections include Better To Travel (Poetry Atlanta Press), Slow To Burn (Seven Kitchens Press), After the Poison (Finishing Line Press) and Render (Sibling Rivalry Press), chosen by the American Library Association for its 2014 Over the Rainbow Book List. He is also the author of The Venus Trilogy of novels – Conquering Venus, Remain In Light and Leaving Paris – also published by Sibling Rivalry Press.

July 30  Melisa Cahnmann & Teacher Poets

Melisa (Misha) Cahnmann-Taylor, Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, is the author of Imperfect Tense (poems), and three scholarly books in education. Winner of NEA “Big Read” Grants, the Beckman award for “Professors Who Inspire,” and a Fulbright for nine-month study of adult Spanish language acquisition in Oaxaca Mexico, she’s served for over ten years as poetry editor for Anthropology & Humanism, judging the ethnographic poetry competition. Her work has appeared in Georgia Review, American Poetry Review, Women’s Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, Barrow Street, and many other literary and scholarly homes. She posts at her blog http://teachersactup.com.