Spalding at 21c: Voice and Vision is again going virtual for this month’s edition of the popular summer series, 6:00-7:30 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, July 16. The reading, a partnership of Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing and 21c Museum Hotel, will take place online via Zoom. It’s a free and open virtual event to support our vibrant writing and arts community.

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The line-up showcases award-winning poets and authors from around Kentucky. Readers include  Lilly Cary, Dorian Hairston, Silas House, Jason Kyle Howard, Amelia Martens, and Gabe Tomlin. Katy Yocom emcees.

Alice Gray Stites, Chief Curator and Museum Director of 21c Museum Hotels, will showcase exhibits featured at 21c Louisville, including “Truth or Dare: A Reality Show.”

Image: Brian Dettmer. “Ilustrado [Illustrated],” 2015. Hardcover book, acrylic varnish. #21cTruthorDare

This season’s series runs the third Thursday of every month through August. Writers from all area universities, community writers’ groups, Spalding alumni, and independent writers are welcome to participate. If interested in taking part in a future reading, inquire with series coordinator Amy Foos Kapoor at akapoor@spalding.edu. Sena Jeter Naslund, the founding program director of Spalding University’s low-residency MFA in Writing program, and Katy Yocom, associate director of Spalding’s School of Creative and Professional Writing, direct the series.

About the Readers

Lilly Cary received her MFA from the Stonecoast program at University of Southern Maine. Her blog is titled “Too Cool,” and she’s currently working on a collection of personal essays.  Dorian Hairston is an Affrilachian Poet and 2018 graduate from UK’s MFA program. He currently teaches English at Frederick Douglass High School in Lexington, Kentucky.

Silas House is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, three plays, and one book of creative nonfiction. His writing has recently appeared in The Atlantic, Ecotone, The Advocate, Time, Garden and Gun, Oxford American, and the New York Times. His first three novels were recently reissued with new supplemental material and are available now. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, he teaches in Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing and serves as the National Endowment for the Humanities Chair at Berea College.  Jason Kyle Howard is the author of two works of creative nonfiction, A Few Honest Words: The Kentucky Roots of Popular Music and Something’s Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal with Silas House. Howard is editor of Appalachian Review, based at Berea College, where he teaches and directs the creative writing program. He also serves on the graduate faculty of Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing.  Amelia Martens is the author of The Spoons in the Grass Are There to Dig a Moat (Sarabande Books, 2016), and four chapbooks. In 2019, she received an Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. She co-curates the Rivertown Reading Series, Exit 7: A Journal of Literature and Art, and two awesome daughters.  Gabe Tomlin is a poet, essayist, and screenwriter based in Louisville. He has participated in a variety of slam and creative leadership events at the annual Brave New Voices Festival in San Francisco and Chicago, is a graduate of the University of Kentucky, and is the founder of the university’s Poetic Justice literary group and chapbook publisher.  

Host Katy Yocom is associate director of Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing and author of an award-winning debut novel, Three Ways to Disappear.

About Spalding’s School of Creative and Professional Writing
Spalding’s School of Creative and Professional Writing houses three graduate writing programs: the nationally distinguished, 65-credit-hour MFA in Writing program; the 35-credit Master of Arts in Writing (MAW) with creative and professional tracks; and a 15-credit graduate certificate in writing, also with creative and professional tracks. All programs are offered on the low-residency model and are built on a commitment to excellence in a noncompetitive, supportive atmosphere. All three programs offer fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, writing for children and young adults, screenwriting, and playwriting, with professional writing available in the MAW and certificate. Semesters begin in the spring, summer, and fall with a residency in Louisville or abroad; then, faculty and students return home for an independent study focused on the student’s writing. Students may customize the residency location, season, and pace of their studies. See spalding.edu/SchoolofWriting for more information.

About 21c Museum Hotels
21c Museum is a multi-venue museum located in nine cities. One of the largest contemporary art museums in the U.S., and North America’s only collecting museum dedicated solely to art of the 21st century, each property features exhibition space open free of charge to the public, combined with a boutique hotel and chef- driven restaurant. It was founded in 2006 by Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson; philanthropists, preservationists, and collectors, committed to expanding access to contemporary art as a means of catalyzing revitalization and civic connection. 21c presents a range of arts programming curated by Museum Director, Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites, including both solo and group exhibitions that reflect the global nature of art today, as well as site-specific, commissioned installations, and a variety of cultural events.

The organization collaborates on arts initiatives with artists and organizations worldwide, including Speed Art Museum, North Carolina Museum of Art, MASS MoCA, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, The Barnes Foundation, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Creative Capital Foundation, Creative Time, and others.