The Broad Stage Announces Red Hen Poetry Hour On FB Live March 28

The Broad Stage presents the Red Hen Press Poetry Hour, a new recurring digital program, the first for both organizations, via The Broad Stage's Facebook Live. Red Hen Press Poetry Hour is part of The Broad Stage at Home, a destination offering new, livestreamed content from artistic partners and archival concert footage.

For the inaugural Saturday, March 28 program at 8:00 p.m., Red Hen Press Poetry Hour presents live and pre-recorded poetry readings from California Poet Laureate Dana Gioia, Douglas Manuel, Brendan Constantine, Jason Schneiderman, and Felicia Zamora, and a lively discussion about the necessity of poetry and the arts during these unusual times.

Joining the conversation on March 28 are Gioia, Artistic and Executive Director of The Broad Stage Rob Bailis, and Red Hen Press Managing Editor and Co-founder Kate Gale, moderated by Sandra Tsing Loh.

Providing context for inaugurating this Poetry Hour, Dana Gioia said, "The very nature of poetry is that it is what we are about right now. In this time of confusion, when people are worried about their mortality, poetry allows us a momentary, deeper perspective. On ordinary days, ordinary people feel isolated; poetry allows them to see life from a distance-and perhaps even experience physical and psychological relief."

Rob Bailis said, "Poetry is where I live, what I read before I go to bed at night. Poetry is simultaneously fiction and nonfiction-and can inhabit that space where there are as many gray areas as there are people alive.

"While we are all isolated, how can we stay in communication and not lose contextual conversations? Because in the absence of those, we are lost. This feels like a time when artistic exploration-finding a truth and being authentic to this moment as much as we can-would be incredibly useful for all. I think people are looking for content that isn't slickly produced entertainment. I am excited and honored to be launching our first digital event."

Blank Verse Films provide the pre-recorded readings. For more information, please visit https://www.filmindependent.org/programs/fiscal-sponsorship/blank-verse-films/

Participants (in alphabetical order)

Prior to joining The Broad Stage in April 2019 as Artistic and Executive Director, Rob Bailis had joined Cal Performances at UC Berkeley in 2013 and was named Interim Artistic Director in May 2018. In this role, he led the artistic planning team in curating all Cal Performances productions and presentations. Prior to that, as Associate Director, he curated the organization's dance and theater presentations, a position from which he stewarded many of Cal Performances' most established and longstanding artistic partnerships while introducing a new generation of international talent to UC Berkeley stages.

During his tenure, Bailis was instrumental in developing collaborations with leading International Artists and companies dedicated to groundbreaking contemporary work. Bailis spearheaded many recent initiatives, including Berkeley RADICAL, which has deepened the organization's commitment to thematic curation and helped attract diverse audiences from throughout the area. Bailis has been pivotal in developing a body of new work through major commissioning projects and residencies.

Brendan Constantine is the author of four books of poetry. His work has appeared in many of the nation's literary standards including Best American Poetry, Virginia Quarterly, Poem-a-Day, Prairie Schooner, and Tin House. His most recent collections are Dementia, My Darling (2016) from Red Hen Press and Bouncy Bounce (2018), a chapbook from Blue Horse Press. A popular performer, Brendan has presented his work to audiences throughout the U.S. and Europe, also appearing on TED ED, NPR's All Things Considered, KPFK's Poet's Café, numerous podcasts, and YouTube. He currently teaches at the Windward School and, since 2017, has been developing poetry workshops for people with Aphasia.

Dr. Kate Gale is Co-Founder and Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Editor of the Los Angeles Review, and teaches at the Low Residency MFA program at the University of Nebraska in Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction and at the Ashland, Ohio MFA Program. She is author of seven books of poetry including The Goldilocks Zone from the University of New Mexico Press in 2014, and Echo Light from Red Mountain in 2014, and six librettos including Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera with composer Don Davis, which had its world premiere in October of 2010 at the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Her forthcoming book, The Stoning Circle, will be published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2021.

Dana Gioia is an internationally acclaimed poet and writer. Former California Poet laureate and Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Gioia was born in Los Angeles of Italian and Mexican descent. The first person in his family to attend college, he received a BA and MBA from Stanford and an MA from Harvard in Comparative Literature. For fifteen years, he worked as a businessman before quitting at age forty-one to become a full-time writer.

Sandra Tsing Loh is the author of six books, including The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones (2014, W.W. Norton), which was selected as one of The New York Times' 100 Most Notable Books. It is based on her piece on menopause in The Best American Essays 2012, originally published in The Atlantic. The Madwoman in the Volvo inspired Sandra's hit play of the same name, as well as her stand-up show, The B***h Is Back: An All-Too Intimate Conversation, which ran at The Broad Stage in 2015. Her new book The Madwoman and the Roomba: My Year of Domestic Mayhem will be published by W.W. Norton in June 2020.

Douglas Manuel was born in Anderson, Indiana. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University and an MFA from Butler University where he was the Managing Editor of Booth. He is currently a Middleton and Dornsife Fellow at the University of Southern California where he is pursuing a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing. He has served as the Poetry Editor for Gold Line Press as well as one of the Managing Editors of Ricochet Editions. His poems are featured on Poetry Foundation's website and have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, the Los Angeles Review, Superstition Review, RHINO, North American Review, The Chattahoochee Review, New Orleans Review, Crab Creek Review, and elsewhere. His first full length collection of poems, Testify (Red Hen Press, 2017), won the 2017 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for poetry. He also won the 2020 Dana Gioia Poetry Award.

Jason Schneiderman is the author of four books of poems: Hold Me Tight (Red Hen Press, 2020), Primary Source (Red Hen Press, 2016); Striking Surface (Ashland Poetry Press, 2010); and Sublimation Point (Four Way Books, 2004). He edited the anthology Queer: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press, 2016). His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry, Poetry London, Grand Street, and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. An Associate Professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, he lives in Brooklyn with his husband Michael Broder. His next book of poems, Hold Me Tight, will be out from Red Hen in 2020.

Felicia Zamora is a poet, educator, and editor living in Arizona. She is the author of five books of poetry including Quotient forthcoming from Tinderbox Editions in 2021, Body of Render, winner of the 2018 Benjamin Saltman Award frand forthcoming om Red Hen Press (2in 20),and Of Form & Gather, winner of the 2016 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. She's received fellowships and residencies from CantoMundo, Ragdale Foundation, PLAYA, Moth Magazine, and Martha's Vineyard, authored two chapbooks, won the 2019 Wabash Prize for Poetry and the 2015 Tomaž Šalamun Prize, and was the 2017 Poet Laureate of Fort Collins, CO. She teaches creative writing online at Colorado State University and is the associate poetry editor for Colorado Review.

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