Delco Writers & Friends
Friday September 9 (8:00 pm - 9:30 pm)
Celebrate our vibrant local literary community at Delco Writers and Friends. This reading features poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and hybrid works by writers Jeannine Osayande, Misty Sol, Julian Shendelman, Alison Lubar, Raima Evan and Amy Beth Sisson.
Join us in the CommuniTEA Room at the Park Avenue Community Center (129 Park Ave, Swarthmore), on September 9 from 8:00-9:30pm. We plan to start on time, so don’t be late!
Masks are required during the reading. Unmasked reception to follow. This event is geared toward adults and may not be suited for younger listeners. Donations welcomed (but not required) at the door.
Alison Lubar teaches high school English by day and yoga by night. They are a queer, nonbinary femme of color whose life work (aside from wordsmithing) has evolved into bringing mindfulness practices, and sometimes even poetry, to young people. Their debut chapbook, Philosophers Know Nothing About Love, is out now with Thirty West (May 2022); you can find out more at http://alisonlubar.com/ or on Twitter @theoriginalison.
Amy Beth Sisson is struggling to emerge, toad-like, from the mud outside of Philly. Her poetry has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, The Night Heron Barks, Ran Off With the Star Bassoon, The River Heron Review, and is upcoming in The Shoutflower. She is currently an MFA student studying poetry at Rutgers Camden. www.amybethsisson.com
Jeannine Osayande (Mama Jeannine), is a polycentric Choreographer, Educator, Performer, Cultural Expert of West African Diaspora/African Derived dance and drum traditions. She is founder and director of Dunya Performing Arts Company (DunyaPAC), specializing in Art Integration, where the arts become the approach to teaching and the vehicle for learning. She believes that people must learn and experience the beauty and genius of African and African American Folklore Traditions. Jeannine Osayande & DunyaPAC have provided programming on the Black Experience for 40 years, reaching hundreds of thousands of people, locally and internationally.
Julian Shendelman lives with his husband and two dogs in Lansdowne. After studying creative writing at the Orange County High School of the Arts, Julian pursued—and ultimately abandoned—an academic career as a queer/trans theorist. Since then, Julian has turned his attention to re-establishing his writing practice and community. His poetry chapbook, Dead Dad Club, was published by Nomadic Press in 2017 and his writing has appeared in Bat City Review. He was a 2012 Lambda Literary Fellow in nonfiction. When he's not freelancing, he's attending his weekly writing group, "Sit & Write," and learning to make up stories. www.shendelman.com
Misty Sol is a writer, visual artist, and performer in Philadelphia from small town PA who explores Black people's connections to nature, wellness, and speculation. Most recently her writing was published in the anthologies Zora's Den and Low Down Dirty Vote Volume 3. Her paintings are currently on display at the Philadelphia Airport by way of the Colored Girls Museum. You can also find her paintings on the set of All Rise Season 3 currently streaming on Amazon. You can find her work at www.mistysol.com
Raima Evan’s fiction has been published in Calyx, Philadelphia Stories, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Jewishfiction.net, Southern Humanities Review, and The Caterpillar. A flash fiction piece is forthcoming in The MacGuffin. Her nonfiction has been published in Referential Magazine and Women & Performance, and her one-act play was performed at Actors Theatre of Louisville and was published in Dramatics Magazine. She received her BA from Radcliffe and her MA and PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania. She was an assistant dean at Bryn Mawr College for many years and is now devoting more time to writing.