ArtLitPhx

Features upcoming events concerning art and/or literature in the Phoenix area.

#ArtLitPhx: Great Books Discussion

Superstition Review

Stop by the library for a discussion with fellow book lovers. The Great Books Foundation promotes reading, thinking and sharing of ideas. Kathy and Don Dietz will lead discussions on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays from 6-8 p.m. in the Connections Café at Tempe Public Library.

Be sure to pick up a copy of Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser before the book discussion at 6 p.m.

EVENT INFORMATION

Date: Wednesday, August 28

Time 6–8 p.m.

Location: Tempe Public Library, 3500 S. Rural Rd.

For more information, click here.

#ArtLitPhx: ASU Book Group

Superstition Review

The ASU Book Group’s September 2019 reading selection is “By the Forces of Gravity” by Rebecca Fish Ewan. The book group is open to all in the ASU community and meets monthly from noon–1 p.m. in the Piper Writers House on ASU’s Tempe campus. Haven’t read the book? Come anyway! Authors are always present. A no-host luncheon follows at the University Club. 

Synopsis:

Ewan’s illustrated coming-of-age memoir, set in 1970s Berkeley, Calif., reflects on a childhood friendship cut short by tragedy. In an era of laissez-faire parenting, she drops out of elementary school and takes up residence in a kids commune—no parents allowed!—and we follow her, bestie Luna, and their hippie cohorts as they search for love, acceptance, and cosmic truths. Full of adventure and heartache.

The book is available from amazon.com.

Rebecca Fish Ewan is associate professor of landscape architecture in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. Ewan received her MFA in creative writing from ASU in 2004.

The ASU Book Group meetings and selections for 2019-2020 are:

The ASU Book Group is sponsored as a community outreach initiative by the Department of English and organized in partnership with the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing.

Contact: Judith Smith
Email: jps@asu.edu

EVENT INFORMATION

Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2019
12-1 p.m.
Location: Piper Writers House, 400 E. Tyler Mall, Tempe
Price: Free of charge and open to the public

For more information, click here.

#ArtLitPhx: Flourish—The Art of Life on Earth

Superstition Review

EVENT INFORMATION
September 13, 2019
Friday, 6–10 p.m.
Mesa Arts Center, 1 E. Main St.
FREE

Held in September, Mesa Arts Center’s annual Season Kickoff Event celebrates the start of each season and is inspired by exhibitions opening in the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum. The festival offers an evening of celebration and entertainment, with live music, art studio demonstrations, five new exhibitions, hands-on activities, delicious foods and more!

FLOURISH: The Art of Life on Earth

Bloom and grow wild at the 2019-20 season kickoff event! The free, family-friendly festival is inspired by Flora & Fauna, one of five exhibitions opening in the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum this fall. Through the exhibitions, live entertainment, artmaking, demonstrations, delicious food and drink and more, the event invites us all to look closer and celebrate the incredible, fascinating world in which we live.

ACTIVITIES

  • Succulent cuttings by Desert Botanical Garden
  • Compost demonstrations with Recycle City
  • Art Studios open house and demonstrations
    •  Glass hotshop
    • Glass flameworking
    • Ceramics
    • Painting and drawing: instructor exhibition
    • Printmaking
    • Metal

LIVE MUSIC AND PERFORMANCES BY

  • CAZO Dance Company
  • More to be announced soon!

TASTY EATS 

  • Bring your own water bottle! Stay hydrated and fill your own water bottle at City of Mesa’s Water Resources Water Bar 
  • Freak Brothers Pizza
  • Awesomesauce Bowls
  • SuperFarm SuperTruck
  • Udder Delights
  • Paletas Betty
  • Not Your Granny’s Apples
  • Cuties Lemonade
  • More to be announced soon!

BOTANICAL VENDORS
SW Herbs
Holistic Earth Remedies
Ahimsa Essentials

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE

  • Blooming flowers projections by Kendra Sollars
  • Photo station by Lauren Lee

For more information, click here.

#ArtLitPhx: ‘Aladdin’ by Rhythm Dance Company

Superstition Review

Rhythm Dance Company presents: Aladdin, Ek Anokhi Prem Kahani—A unique love story

Enjoy a Bollywood musical presented by Rhythm Dance Company production team that shares the classic love story of Aladdin and Jasmine in the good old city of Agrabah. The Bollywood dancers promise an extraordinarily colorful and extravagant event that is sure to impress!

EVENT INFORMATION

Date: Saturday, August 24

Time: 5 p.m.

Location: Tempe Center for the Arts, 700 W. Rio Salado Pkwy.

For more information, click here.

Buy Tickets

#ArtLitPhx: Long and Short of It

Superstition Review

Long and Short of It Book Club is a new bimonthly club that explores one book and one story collection connected by a theme.

Tonight the group discusses The Gone Dead and The Man Who Shot My Eye Out is Dead, both by Chanelle Benz. The Gone Dead is a debut novel about a young woman who returns to her childhood home in the American South and uncovers secrets about her father’s life and death. The Man Who Shot My Eye Out is Dead is a debut collection about lives across history marked by violence and longing.

Stop by Changing Hands Phoenix or Tempe (or order online by clicking “add to cart” below) to get your copies of The Gone Dead for 20% OFF and The Man Who Shot My Eye Out is Dead for 10% OFF.

Then meet fellow book lovers at First Draft Book Bar to discuss the pick.

FREE PARKING / LIGHT RAIL

  • Don’t want to drive? Take the Light Rail! It lets off at the Central Avenue/Camelback Park-and-Ride, which has hundreds of free parking spaces across the street from Changing Hands.


About The Gone Dead:
Billie James’ inheritance isn’t much: a little money and a shack in the Mississippi Delta. The house once belonged to her father, a renowned black poet who died unexpectedly when Billie was four years old. Though Billie was there when the accident happened, she has no memory of that day—and she hasn’t been back to the South since.


Billie James’ inheritance isn’t much: a little money and a shack in the Mississippi Delta. The house once belonged to her father, a renowned black poet who died unexpectedly when Billie was four years old. Though Billie was there when the accident happened, she has no memory of that day—and she hasn’t been back to the South since.

Thirty years later, Billie returns but her father’s home is unnervingly secluded: her only neighbors are the McGees, the family whose history has been entangled with hers since the days of slavery. As Billie encounters the locals, she hears a strange rumor: that she herself went missing on the day her father died. As the mystery intensifies, she finds out that this forgotten piece of her past could put her in danger.

Inventive, gritty, and openhearted, The Gone Dead is an astonishing debut novel about race, justice, and memory that lays bare the long-concealed wounds of a family and a country.


About The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead:
A brother and sister turn outlaw in a wild and brutal landscape. The daughter of a diplomat disappears and resurfaces across the world as a deadly woman of many names. A young Philadelphia boy struggles with the contradictions of privilege, violence, and the sway of an incarcerated father. A monk in sixteenth century England suffers the dissolution of his monastery and the loss of all that he held sacred.

The characters in The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead, Benz’s wildly imaginative debut, are as varied as any in recent literature, but they share a thirst for adventure which sends them rushing full-tilt toward the moral crossroads, becoming victims and perpetrators along the way. Riveting, visceral, and heartbreaking, Benz’s stories of identity, abandonment, and fierce love come together in a daring, arresting vision.

EVENT INFORMATION

Location: Changing Hands Bookstore, 300 W. Camelback Rd., Phoenix 

Date: Tuesday, August 20

Time: 7 p.m.

For more information about the event, click here.

#ArtLitPhx: Found in Translation Meeting

Superstition Review

This month Changing Hands will discuss China Dream by Ma Jian, translated by Flora Drew.

Whether you’re a seasoned traveler, a voracious reader, or a dreamer who wants to see the world, all are invited to our newest book club focused on international literature. Sometimes visiting other countries doesn’t always give travelers an insider’s view into foreign cultures; sometimes we are still too outside, too different, to get at the heart of a place. Often the best way to understand distant lands and peoples is to read their literature, to get inside the head of a foreign author, to hear their myths and fairy tales molded around words they penned in their mother tongue.

In Found in Translation, you will delve into a work of international literature in a small group setting while enjoying coffee, beer, or wine drinks from First Draft Book Bar, located in Changing Hands Phoenix.

Stop by Changing Hands Phoenix or Tempe (or order online by clicking “add to cart” below) to get your copy of China Dream for 20% OFF.

Then meet us at First Draft Book Bar to discuss the pick and enjoy happy hour prices all through the event.

FREE PARKING / LIGHT RAIL

  • Don’t want to drive? Take the Light Rail! It lets off at the Central Avenue/Camelback Park-and-Ride, which has hundreds of free parking spaces across the street from Changing Hands.

ABOUT THE BOOK 
Blending fact and fiction, China Dream is an unflinching satire of totalitarianism. Ma Daode, a corrupt and lecherous party official, is feeling pleased with himself. He has an impressive office, three properties, and multiple mistresses who text him day and night. After decades of loyal service, he has been appointed director of the China Dream Bureau, charged with replacing people’s private dreams with President Xi Jinping’s great China Dream of national rejuvenation. But just as he is about to present his plan for a mass golden wedding anniversary celebration, his sanity begins to unravel. Suddenly plagued by flashbacks of the Cultural Revolution, Ma Daode’s nightmare visions from the past threaten to destroy his dream of a glorious future.

This darkly comic fable exposes the damage inflicted on a nation’s soul when authoritarian regimes, driven by an insatiable hunger for power, seek to erase memory, rewrite history, and falsify the truth. It is a dystopian vision of repression, violence, and state-imposed amnesia that is set not in the future, but in China today.

EVENT INFORMATION

Location: Changing Hands Bookstore, 300 W. Camelback Rd., Phoenix 

Date: Wednesday, August 14

Time: 7 p.m.

For more information about the event, click here.

#ArtLitPhx: Heather Hillenbrand’s ‘A Girl’s Magic’

Superstition Review

Join author Heather Hillenbrand for a book launch party in Phoenix. A Girl’s Magic is an empowering approach to educating girls about menstruation, puberty, and sex.

Parents will be guided on how to open those tough conversations with colorful symbolism, images, and poetry that help young girls gain a deeper understanding of what it is to be a girl. This book helps parents prepare daughters for physical changes, teach about menstruation from an age-appropriate creative perspective, inspire confidence about natural body development, and empower girls to feel magical.

Created to look like a children’s book, A Girl’s Magic is designed to keep young audiences engaged with this challenging topic. A parent guide in the back of the book offers a language for dialogue as well as other resources to support conscious parenting choices in our ever-changing world.

Please note: This event is primarily for adults.

PARKING / LIGHT RAIL

  • Don’t want to drive? Take the Light Rail! It lets off at the Central Avenue/Camelback Park-and-Ride, which has hundreds of free parking spaces across the street from Changing Hands.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 
While studying and working in spiritual sexuality, Heather Hillenbrand was inspired to create this book. She offers workshops and coaching for women and parents to be able to tackle this challenging area. Heather is working toward certification as a Sex Educator through the American Association for Sex Educators, Therapists and Counselors (AASECT). She has also been accepted to and will complete the Human Sexuality Certificate through the University of Minnesota in Spring 2020. Heather resides in Phoenix with her sweet cat.

EVENT INFORMATION

Location: Changing Hands Bookstore, 300 W. Camelback Rd., Phoenix 

Date: Saturday, August 10

Time: 5:30 p.m.

For more information about the event, click here.

Buy Book

#ArtLitPhx: Come to the Table

Superstition Review

Come to the Table Opening Reception: August 31 at 2:00 PM

Curated by Leela Denver in collaboration with Wren Awry, with additional curation by Dr. Laura Vázquez Blázquez.

Come to the Table presents work about, inspired by, and in conversation with food. This exhibit explores the many forms of food poems that exist while also asking “what can a food poem be?” Organized by four fundamental stages of a food experience—growing, sourcing, cooking, and eating, with a highlight of food culture along the US-Mexican border—this exhibit explores the various ways poetry uses food and food uses poetry. Come to the table and join us for an interactive exhibit where you can explore the world of food poetry and share your own with us.  

Exhibitions are displayed in the Jeremy Ingalls Gallery of the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona, 1508 E. Helen St., Tucson.

#ArtLitPhx: Faye Hamilton’s ‘Rescue 12 Responding’

Superstition Review

Hamilton discusses and signs her independently published debut novel.

David and Jonathan are paramedics who deal with life and death and the consequences of human choice. On Rescue 12, they respond to the tragic drug overdose of a group of teenagers at a high school party. One girl survives to tell what she witnessed during her near-death experience. This encounter results in the spiritual awakening of David and forces Jonathan to confront his own Christian faith, which he abandoned when he came out to his father. What happens when the ambulance arrives? What happens when a patient dies? Why does God allow for sin, death, and suffering? What’s the point of trying? These questions are answered, the emergency rescue calls are shared, and the lives of the two paramedics are forever changed by the spiritual warfare they encounter.

PARKING / LIGHT RAIL

  • Don’t want to drive? Take the Light Rail! It lets off at the Central Avenue/Camelback Park-and-Ride, which has hundreds of free parking spaces across the street from Changing Hands.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

FAYE HAMILTON writes, “I was a paramedic for many years. 25 years ago, while assigned to Rescue 12 in Gibsonton, Florida, I wrote the novel – Rescue 12 Responding. Shortly after I completed the novel, my life went crazy and the book found its way to the back of the closet.

I returned to School, got a bachelor’s degree with a major in Religion then continued to graduate school, and am now working as a Physician Assistant in an Emergency Department in the Phoenix, Arizona area.

Recently my husband died and in that quiet, I decided to pick up this novel and share it with others. I knew when I wrote it, that I would write a sequel to the story. I have recently begun to work on the second book, this time, set in an Emergency Department.”

EVENT INFORMATION

Location: Changing Hands Bookstore, 300 W. Camelback Rd., Phoenix 

Date: Tuesday, August 6

Time: 7 p.m.

For more information about the event, click here.

Buy Book

#ArtLitPhx: Art Reception with Koryn Woodward Wasson

Superstition Review

Local artist Koryn Woodward Wasson celebrates the opening of her new art show, “Just a Thought,” an exploration of her father, Stephen Lucas Woodward, and the objects and memories he left with us.

August 7, 2019 marks a year since his passing, and these drawings are both a gift to him and the fulfillment of a life-long request: “You should make cards.”

PARKING / LIGHT RAIL

  • Don’t want to drive? Take the Light Rail! It lets off at the Central Avenue/Camelback Park-and-Ride, which has hundreds of free parking spaces across the street from Changing Hands.

ABOUT THE ARTIST 
Koryn Woodward Wasson was born and raised in Tempe, AZ. She is a teaching artist, and works with her husband, Roy Wasson Valle as Fireweather Studio, focusing on intergenerational interactive art installation. Her daily practice of art making is watercolor and mixed media. She is currently teaching for the Phoenix Center for the Arts and raising her two magical daughters, Cora and Xochi.

EVENT INFORMATION

Location: Changing Hands Bookstore, 300 W. Camelback Rd., Phoenix 

Date: Wednesday, August 7

Time: 5 p.m.

For more information about the event, click here.