Summer Festival of the Arts is one of our favorite events of the year! We’ll be there with the “Where I’m From” poem template, in anticipation of Fall Literary Festival visiting writer George Ella Lyon and her international project.
We’ll also have paper sidewalk squares for visitors to decorate, in celebration of our poems stamped in sidewalk squares, part of the Words Made Visible project. We’ll dedicate them and introduce the poets at the Fall Literary Festival. Continue reading
Each summer, we raffle a large piece of art and split the purse with the artist. Thanks so very much to Youngstown sculptor Tony Armeni for collaborating with us. Word is, with an Armeni in your back yard, the birds show up in top hats.
Your donation helps us fund our programs, and we’re so grateful. Good luck! We will draw the winning ticket July 14 at the YSU Summer Festival of the Arts.
Don’t have a backyard? This would look amazing in your livingroom, or would make the best. gift. ever.
dLit Youngstown is proud to be a partner in this Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley initiative that will bring awareness of the intersection of public infrastructure and community health. The project will include photography and community narratives. Visit Where Sidewalks End for more information, including upcoming calls for submissions.
With the announcement of our Ohio Arts Council grant, seems like a good time for an update on the Words Made Visible project.
But first, woop woop! and so much thank you. With public funding on the chopping block, we are grateful to Governor Kasich and the Ohio Legislature for defending the value of the arts in our communities.
The panel discussion on our project was uplifting: Panelists noted that they liked the multidisciplinary nature of this proposal, that the activities truly work towards the goal of engaging as many writers as possible, that they are glad to see Lit Youngstown is encouraging new work, and considered Words Made Visible a fascinating idea to transform literary arts into visual arts, among other comments.
The first chunk of Words Made Visible is now finished: from many hundreds of submissions of poetry and short prose, the Lit Youngstown board selected ten finalists, then three winning poems and a set of haiku; of these winners, YSU student graphic designer Laura Garvin created a series of posters.
The featured poems are
“Men of Beautiful Countenance” by Craig Paulenich
“Feral” by Laura Grace Weldon
“The Neighborhood Girls Fall for the WKBN Meteorologist” by Allison Pitinii Davis
Haiku by Elliot Nicely & Valentina Ranaldi-Adams
With support from the YSU Summer Festival of the Arts, we gave out posters to hundreds of visitors to our tent, and hosted a reading by our project finalists, Dianne Borsenik, Luke Martinucci, Elliot Nicely & Craig Paulenich.
Next, in October, we will select four poems or short prose pieces to be letterpressed into broadsides by the Cranky Pressman.
Meanwhile, we will send the poems and stories to faculty in the Art Department at YSU, who will use the project in their classrooms, asking students to create visual work that responds to the literary work. Ceramics professor Missy McCormick’s summer class created such work, and here one pairing:
Feral
by Laura Grace Weldon
Moonlight leaks through the curtains.
I lie awake, listen to coyote songs
circle and connect, stitching together
the night’s raw edges.
Each time I hear their howls
my bone marrow sings.
What’s muzzled in me lifts.
I seem silent and
yet my pulse races through the trees.
These poems and their ekphrastic pieces in ceramics, printmaking, drawing and painting, will be exhibited at the Soap Gallery the month of February, 2018. There will be a reception and reading/response for the writers and artists Saturday, February 3.
We will also select four short works to be stamped into sidewalk squares by Michael Staaf at Metro Sign.
We hope you will join us along the way, celebrating the literary and visual arts, and their intriguing relationship.
In conjunction with the 35th Annual Women Artists Show, Lit Youngstown will present a reading featuring ekphrasis, or poems and stories that respond to the visual art on exhibit. Join us at the YWCA of Youngstown, 25 W. Rayen at 6:00, to hear original work by Mari Alschuler, Kris Harrington, Arya-Francesca Jenkins & Shanon Maple.
From 5:00 to 6:00, the Writers Circle critique group will meet in the conference room at the YWCA. Bring 5 copies of one poem or story excerpt, maximum 3 pages. Any experience level welcome. (If you’d like to critique longer writing projects, let’s make a plan!)
One chilly noon in January of 2015, a small group met at Suzie’s Dogs & Drafts to discuss the idea of starting a literary arts organization. From that hopeful beginning, we have grown into a thriving non-profit organization with ongoing programming and numerous activities and collaborations.The hundreds of people working with us—visiting writers, teaching artists, workshop participants, board members, YSU interns, audience members, funders and volunteers—have created a Lit Youngstown community, and are proof to us that a literary arts organization has a place in Youngstown.
In order to remain a sustainable organization with a strong presence in the community, we are asking for your support.For every donation (and for each additional gift of $25) to our Fall Fundraiser, you will receive an entry into our fall drawing to win one of three prizes:
Painted Scarf and Earrings
Bowl by Davey Jones
Bag of Books
Please donate before December 1 to be in the drawing, which will be held at our December 7 reading.
We are also seeking ten patrons willing to donate at the $500 level. At any level, your gift is tax deductible to the extent allowed by the law, and it is very much appreciated.
Our energy and motivation come from a deep belief that writing, reading, and storytelling, and being in the company of others engaged in these pursuits, strengthens our community and enriches our quality of life.
Looking Back
Our 2016 First Wednesday reading series featured faculty from YSU, Akron, and Bowling Green, U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Mercyhurst, and Hiram; students from Youngstown State, the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts and Canfield High School; readers from the fields of history, nursing and psychology; and essays written by incarcerated students. At our open mic after the readings, community members from age 12 to 70 shared their own writing. We also hosted readings at several art venues.
Our outreach work included reading food poems with adults with disabilities from the Purple Cat at Gallagher’s Lunchbucket, and book giveaways and community writing projects at several street fairs and festivals.
We collaborated with Selah Dessert Theater on the Strand Project, soliciting original monologues and staging their performance with local actors. Board member Kris Harrington spearheaded this project which played to a sold-out house and received rave reviews.
We have offered numerous writing workshops, with modest enrollment fees that have invited wide participation while allowing us to pay a stipend to teaching artists. We’ve also offered some free classes thanks to support from the Andrews Foundation.
Our newest project is Food for Thought, a food-themed book club and potluck, a collaboration with the Lake to River Food Co-op.
Looking Forward
In mid-December, we will host a reception releasing our book Phenomenal Women: Twelve Youngstown Stories, at the beautiful, historic YWCA. The stories came from our interviews with twelve African American women between the ages of 64 and 101, with deep roots in Youngstown. Support from the Wean Foundation has allowed us to hire a professional photographer, layout editor and cover editor, and to have the book printed locally at City Printing. Co-director Liz Hill spearheaded this project, and we can’t wait to share these insightful stories with the community.
In February, we will take Lit Youngstown on the road, leading a panel with other literary organizations from the Great Lakes area at the prestigious Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in Washington, D.C.
Our established programs will continue. The 2017 reading series will feature novelists, non-fiction and short story writers and poets from as far away as Iowa and Maryland, and many talented writers from home. Our workshop series will run in spring, summer, and fall, featuring a variety of topics taught by experienced teaching artists. The second Strand Project’s call for dramatic monologue submissions has gone out, and our book-potluck club will continue to meet each month until summer.
How You Can Help
As our programming increases, so do our expenses, as well as the time it takes to run the organization. Our wonderful Board of Directors and dedicated Co-Directors have donated many hours to establish our programming and organization. We are grateful for support and encouragement from The Wean Foundation and the Andrews Foundation.
But we need your help to remain sustainable and continue to provide great programming. Your gift will help to support:
We are grateful for support at any level. In addition, we are seeking Patrons willing to support us with a donation of $500. Giving at this level will help to ensure sustainability in some of our longer term goals.
We thank you for being a supporter. We have gotten so far because of you.
With sincere thanks,
Karen Schubert & Liz Hill, Co-Directors