New Voices: Performance Class Reading No. 1
Participants in Elizabeth Austen’s class, “Performance: Making the Transition from Page to Stage” will perform poems and excerpts from stories and essays.
Tonight will bring poetry and prose by Kim Kent, Fran-Michelle Reichert, and Anne McDuffie.
Fran-Michelle Reichert comes to writing from a background in criminal defense, having worked as a public defender at both the trial and appellate level. During that time Fran represented everyone from streetwalkers to convicted murderers, and learned much about human nature from each. After a number of years away from the legal field to raise two sons, she returned to manage her husband’s law firm, Dixon & Cannon, Ltd. She writes memoir, which is informed by her experiences as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. She draws inspiration from her rich circle of family and friends.
Anne McDuffie writes poetry, essays and reviews. When not engaged in the wondrous and maddening work of parenting, she does some freelance editing, and works on archive and manuscript projects for poet Madeline DeFrees, who will turn ninety-four next month. Anne’s work has appeared most recently in Fugue and Poetry International, and is forthcoming in the Colorado Review and the Los Angeles Review. She was a 2011 fellow in the Jack Straw Writers Program, and was awarded a 2012 Individual Artist grant from 4Culture to collaborate with painter Ann Vandervelde. Their project, “Deep Geography,” explored human presence in the natural world, and was shown at Gallery I|M|A last January. She lives on Capitol Hill with her husband and two daughters.
Kim Kent hails from New England where she grew up amongst Maple trees and cows. She received a B.A. in Literature and Creative writing from Cornell University in 2010, after which she promptly packed everything she owned in the back of a Beetle and pointed west. She likes Fairy Tales, eavesdropping, and talking with her hands. Most recently you can find her procrastinating studying for the GRE, baking many loaves of banana bread, and serving you dinner most nights of the week.
