Category Archives: Uncategorized

This wordle shows the 100 most common words that live on Anywhere Avenue.

Mad props to Claire for the link to wordle.net.

Happy 50th Birthday to Edwin Torres!

A BIRTHDAY SLAM ROAST TO HONOR THE HOLY KID’S 50th AT THE BOWERY POETRY CLUB

A birthday bash to honor Edwin by roasting him. No presents just cursing, props, heckling and pizza. And it’s free! Come join Edwin with; Elena Alexander, Dael Orlandersmith, Willie Perdomo, Tod Colby, Sean G. Meehan, Brenda Coultas, Rodrigo Toscano, Sharon Mesmer, Emily XYZ, Latasha Diggs, Elliot Sharpe and many others. Special video surprises, door gifts and birthday raffle too!

Having for years worked as a carpenter, Gilb came late to the writerly life—some features of which he eschews, though he has been, for the last few years, teaching at Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University-San Marcos) and a (more or less) frequent contributor to smart magazines like The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Best American Essays and The Threepenny Review.

Meeting Raymond Carver in the late ’70s, Gilb turned down an offer to attend the University of Iowa Creative Writing Program, oblivious to, “What [Carver] was telling me, what I came to learn over the next decade, was the way the system works. You go to Iowa, you turn your story into a professor, who’s a famous writer. And that famous professor-writer gets you to an editor. Whereas I was under the misconception that you put things in the mail, and some editor reads it and (something) happens, if it was good. I don’t know where my life would have been if I’d known what [Carver] was talking about. On the one hand, I suffered for not getting published. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have the material I have now.”

The Poster Girl Who Was Cut Out of the Picture
By Kwame Dawes

Early last year, Annesha Taylor’s face was plastered on billboards, posters and flyers across Jamaica. Dancing and smiling brightly, she looked vibrant in her yellow blouse. The caption told her story: She was living with HIV, taking her medication, eating well and, above all, “getting on with life.”

There were television spots as well, and radio ads. In a blitz organized by the Jamaican Ministry of Health, Annesha became the poster child for the country’s fight against HIV/AIDS. Some people assumed that the 27-year-old was an actress. (How could such a beautiful woman be living with such an ugly disease?) Others took her apparent well-being as evidence that HIV isn’t so dangerous after all.

I met Annesha last September, when I was reporting on the impact of the disease in Jamaica, the country where I grew up. She was confused by the fame the ad campaign had brought her. Yes, many people on the island recognized her, but she was not a superstar making superstar money. She still lived in Arnett Gardens, one of the toughest neighborhoods in Kingston’s inner city. Her work with the Ministry of Health was just that: work, a shot at some income, some support for the three children she was raising with the help of her mother.

But less than a year into the campaign, Annesha lost her poster-child status. She was pregnant. The billboards and posters stayed up, at least for a while, but her role as the campaign’s public ambassador was over.

More here.

Contributors to the new anthology “Primera Pagina: Poetry from the Latino Heartland” — including one with ties to Wichita — say they want to express and draw attention to the Hispanic experience in the middle of the country.

“I don’t think Hispanics in the Midwest have really been able to have a voice,” said Marcelo Xavier Trillo, 30, who was raised in Wichita and participates in the Kansas City-based Latino Writers Collective.

More here.