It’s back! The local literary community, Hazel & Wren, and the WAM Collective, Weisman Art Museum’s student group at the University of Minesota proudly present the fourth annual Words at WAM, a literary open mic. Social hour and open mic sign-up starts at 6:00 pm. Indulge in refreshments, view the current WAM exhibitions, and participate in liter-arty interactive activities.
Readers begin at 7:00 pm, in order of the sign-up sheet. The open mic is open to all interested wordsmiths of any genre: fiction, poetry, nonfiction, spoken word, and all literary mischief welcome. Featured local rockstar readers will be pithy poet Paula Cisewski (author of Ghost Fargo) and L.A. Times Book Award winner for First Fiction, Peter Bognanni.
Each open mic reader will have four minutes to read their work(s), with a 30-second grace period. Readers will be given warnings if they go over the time limit, and at 4 minutes, 30 seconds, will have trashy dimestore romance paperbacks thrown at them. Readers will go in order of the sign-up sheet.
The open mic will end at 8:00 pm, regardless of how many people are left on the sign-up sheet, so get there early to ensure your reading slot! No props (costumes, music, etc.) allowed.
About Paula Cisewski
Paula Cisewski is the author of Ghost Fargo (Nightboat Poetry Prize, selected by Franz Wright), Upon Arrival(Black Ocean), and three chapbooks. Her work has appeared recently in Conduit, Water-Stone Review, and Privacy Policy: The Anthology of Surveillance Poetics. A Minnesota State Arts Board and Jerome Grant recipient, she is a cofounder of JoyFace Poetry and Arts and a cohost of the Maeve’s Sessions Poetry Series.
About Peter Bognanni
Peter Bognanni is a fiction writer whose first novel, The House of Tomorrow, won the L.A. Times Book Award for First Fiction. Recently, he was the recipient of a yearlong writing fellowship in Rome from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He teaches creative writing at Macalester College.