The Cyberpunk Apocalypse Writer-in-Residence Program and JustSeeds present:

Readings by

Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela

and

Adriana Ramirez

SUNDAY, August 28th, 2011

6:30pm

At the JustSeeds spot: 3410 Penn Ave

Light snacks and refreshments will be provided. The store will be open starting at 2pm-- arrive early to check out the art and merchandise, including a beautiful exhibit by artist Thea Gahr. Come around back to the second floor entrance.

Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela is Pittsburgh's Cyberpunk Apocalypse writer-in-residence for the month of August. She writes stories. During her stay in Pittsburgh, she has been working on completing her first novel which starts in Detroit then moves to a fictional Latin American country. She is a 2005 recipient of a Leeway Transformation Award for her work as a social change writer and DJ. She is a co-founder of Thread Makes Blanket, a small press out of Philadelphia, that published Letter from Tombs Prison, 1917 a publication that features work from Justseeds artists Mary Tremonte and Shaun Slifer. Marissa is currently an assistant professor of Creative Writing at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. As part of a new educational component of Books Through Bars Philadelphia, she will be instructing a free correspondence course in Latino History and Culture for inmates in solitary confinement in PA. She lives in Philadelphia.

Adriana Ramirez, nonfiction writer and performance poet, has over fifteen years experience in theater, spoken word, and advocacy. Once ranked the 26th slam poet in the world (iwps 2006), she helped found and co-hosted the Latino/Indigenous Showcase at the National Poetry Slam; she now hosts the Steel City Slam in Pittsburgh. Her poems and writings have appeared on the internet, on subway station walls, and occasionally, on pieces of dead wood. She love technology and refreshments—mineral water, limes, and cheap Mexican food. Adriana lives in Pittsburgh, where she is writing a book about her death fantasies, Colombia, and the way we tell stories around violence. She roots for el tricolor in the World Cup. Adriana teaches at The University of Pittsburgh.

Maximum Family Story Hour!

The wonderful stay of our current visiting writer Max Wheeler is coming to a close. If you haven't met him yet, you have less than a week to right that wrong. His end-of-the-residency event will be on Friday, July 29 at 7 pm at the house. He will be reading stories from his own family and encourages you to do the same. Bring a 1-5 minute story to read/say aloud. You know, one of those funny and/or touching family favorites? Yeah, one of those. Max will also be showing the prints he's been working on at AIR this month.

Thanks to everyone who helped us reach our house Kickstarter goal, by the way. We're excited to have so many more sbscribers to our Zine of the Month Club. Meanwhile, Max still has a week left of his Kickstarter project to put out a record and comic for the band Spooktober.

(Also coming up on Saturday, Artnoose and the zine Ker-bloom! will be at the DC Zine Fest, so if you're in or around that city, stop on by and say hello.)

this close to landing in Oz

This afternoon it looked like rain, so I brought my towel down off the line. Dan and I were in the kitchen, and the sky darkened a little.

"Maybe we should take the tent down," he said, looking out the window at the large farmers' market style tent we keep up in the summer time, "It looks like it could get gusty."

I pondered for maybe two seconds and then the deluge began full force. The storm had its foot on the accelerator, and Dan and I ran out into the yard to greet it. The tent was already starting to dance around with the threat of doing a pirouette into a neighboring yard or street. Dan and I struggled to collapse the tent as the rain soaked us and the wind kept trying to blow the tent out of our hands. I wondered if this was a tornado. I'm from California; I don't know much about tornadoes.

Max leaned his head out the door. "Get inside! You need to get inside!" he yelled. I panicked, thinking that when the guy from Ohio tells you to get inside, it must be a tornado. We were so close though, so we finished collapsing the tent. Dark as it was, I could just see across the yard that the wind was throwing patio furniture everywhere, including into the tomato plants. We stashed the tent in the stairs down to the basement door and ran to the back house with Max. I lifted a patio chair off the tomatoes on the way in.

Although the winds died down, the rain was still coming in sheets. The downspout was on the ground and water was pouring down the side of the house like a river. Already drenched, we reattached the downspout with a dog leash and jammed some boards under it to keep it from falling off. The rain barrel was overflowing at this point, and Dan had to transform a garden hose into a siphon to get the water down into the working drain.

The storm subsided and we were soaked down to the skin. Later the cat returned, her fur spiky from being sopping wet, her feet black with mud. It wasn't a tornado, by the way.

Visiting writer Max is putting out a 10 inch

This month's visiting writer is Max, from Athens OH. He's the jam. He's a print maker, a comics creator, and he runs his own record label (Gnarly As I Wanna Be). He's got a kickstarter right now to pre-sell a 10 inch/comic from the band Spooktober. Check it out. And also keep an eye peeled for his event coming up near the end of the month.