Join Scars: An Anthology Panel at the 2016 Arkansas Literary Festival

Join "Scars: An Anthology" panel for "Hurting and Healing" at 5:30 pm Friday, April 15 at the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History during the Arkansas Literary Festival! Readings and conversation with Scars contributor, author of The President Next Door: Poems, Songs, and Journalism (Et Alia, 2016), and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Philip Martin; contributor and transgender activist Andrea Zekis; and editor and contributor Erin Wood.

Panel description: "Through various genres and mediums, the topics of self-mutilation, art, cancer, gender confirmation surgery, birth, brain injury, war, pain, and love are explored in Scars: An Anthology."

Hope you'll join the conversation next week!

April 14-17, 2016. Little Rock, AR

Scars: An Anthology Contributor Hosts Disability and Identity Panel in DC

If you live in or around DC, join Scars: An Anthology contributor, poet, and chair of the Disabilities Studies Program at The University of Toledo Jim Ferris for a panel next Thursday,  4/14/16, "Cripping the Intersections: Readings Probing Disability and Identity." (Facebook Event Page.) His Scars: An Anthology contribution, "Scars: A Love Story" is a script of Ferris's performance piece which, like a scar, transforms in the telling. Jim writes: 

"Scars are places where the separation of inside and out has been breeched and then reestablished. Scars help to keep outside out and inside in. But they also mark that breech, even historicize it: a breech occurred here . . . and it may return."   

Panel Description: Disability – the one identity category that cuts across all the other lines. This themed reading will use poetry to explore some of the ways that the range of human circumstances we call disability weave through many other facets of identity, including race, gender, class, religion and spirituality, sexual orientation, level of education, and age. Disability intersects in complex ways with all other identity categories. This reading promises to challenge and trouble a variety of identity categories, probing the sometimes startling ways that seemingly disparate vectors of identity can converge. Discussion will follow; challenges, provocations, and jokes encouraged. Cripping the Intersections: Readings Probing Disability and Identity Jim Ferris, Jill Khoury, Mike Northen, L. Lamar Wilson, Kathi Wolfe. At Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Room 102.

Below, "Scarbill" by Et Alia Press's layout and graphic designer Kathy Oliverio precedes Ferris's piece in Scars: An Anthology

 

 

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The President Next Door: Poems, Songs, and Journalism Launches in Little Rock

More than 60 guests gathered at Cantrell Gallery in Little Rock on Thursday, March 18 to celebrate the launch of Philip Martin's The President Next Door: Poems, Songs, and Journalism (Et Alia Press, 2016). 

The President Next Door is the latest book by award-winning newspaper columnist, critic and songwriter Philip Martin. It collects poems and song lyrics, many of which were inspired by Martin's journalistic work. Martin's enormous impact on our community was evident, drawing guests ranging from former Congressman and author Ed Bethune, to author Kevin Brockmeier, to Et Alia two-time author and UALR Professor Frank M. Thurmond, to Matt Smith, owner of Little Rock's independently owned Riverdale 10 Cinema. All enjoyed Martin's time at the mike, as he sang three songs from his book, followed by a greeting and book signing. 

Et Alia thanks Cindy, Clarke, and Helen at Cantrell Gallery for graciously volunteering their beautiful art space for this event. Cantrell Gallery is the oldest gallery and custom frame shop in Little Rock, and features art by over 30 established and emerging local/regional artists. In their large gallery space, they feature special exhibits that generally run for roughly seven weeks before rotating. The Gallery carries everything from prints to original works of art, including three-dimensional pieces, gift items, and custom framing. 

 

 

Columbia University Panel Podcast and Review of Scars: An Anthology

Columbia University's Seminar on Narrative, Health, and Social Justice presented "Scars as Art, Text, and Experience" on December 10, 2015. 

On December 10,2015, Columbia University's Seminar on Narrative, Health and Social Justice presented "Scars as Art, Text and Experience" at the Faculty House, featuring Editor Erin Wood and contributors Kelli Dunham, Lorrie Fredette, Samantha Plakun, and Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes. Marsha Hurst, who is a lecturer in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University and co-chairs the University Seminar on "Narrative, Health, and Social Justice" introduced the panel. Hurst is co-editor with Sayantani DasGupta of Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write Their Bodies. Click and scroll to the bottom of the book review to listen to the two hour conversation in its entirety

Review of Scars: An Anthology by Donna Bulseco in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, January 24, 2016:  

"For some two years, Erin Wood spent her time examining scars. As careful and probing as a surgeon, the writer and editor of Scars: An Anthology examined a wealth of poems, photographs, and prose about the subject and handled each person's revealing narrative with the emerging understanding that "there is a great deal about our scars that extends far beyond the individual body and the self."

Wood, whose essay "We Scar, We Heal, We Rise" was a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2013 (it appears in this volume) reflects on the ways scars may "belong to different versions of ourselves: our past selves...or new selves, selves in transition, or even selves we wish to regard more fully."

Stories that address these issues make the collection a rich reading experience that at times can be intense and painful, but also enlightening and entertaining. . . ." READ MORE