Giovanni Singleton, Jack Schouten, and Toni Wynn
Monday June 4, 2012 at 7:30 PM
Sacramento Poetry Center at 1719 25th Street
Host: Bob Stanley
giovanni singleton a native of Richmond, Virginia, is founding editor of nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts, a journal committed to experimental work of the African Diaspora and other contested spaces. Winner of the California Book Award in poetry, her debut collection, Ascension (Counterpath Press, 2012) is informed by the life and music of Alice Coltrane. Singleton was also selected for the Poetry Society of America’s New American Series, which recognizes recent first book poets. Her writing has recently appeared in Volt, Poet Lore, Zen Monster, I’ll Drown my Book: Conceptual Writing by Women, and is forthcoming in What I Say: Innovative Poetries by Black Artists in America, and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. Over he past 15 years, she has taught poetry at St. Mary’s College, Naropa University, and in museums and schools throughout the Bay Area. She coordinates Lunch Poems, the monthly poetry reading series at UC Berkeley under the direction of Robert Hass. Singleton collects bookmarks and enjoys figs and greek style yogurt.
Jack Schouten teaches Creative Writing at Solano College in Fairfield, CA. He lives in Sacramento with his two wonderful children, Griffin, 13, and Tallulah, 10, and his lovely wife, Ruth. Schouten has published work in various periodicals, and was the poetry editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review out of Arizona State University, and he won the Kathleen Turner award and second place in CSU Sacramento’s Bazzanella Award—all of this a long time ago. This represents a coming out party for Jack, as he hopes to start writing poetry again after a lengthy hiatus. Jack enjoys chicken farming and a good book.
Toni Wynn publishes limited editions of her poems with book-art artisans and visual artists. Toni’s first chapbook, the place where the universe resides, led to a book Color Voices Place, featuring her poems and the work of Carla Martinez and the late John Sousa. She and Bay Area visual artist Barry Ebner collaborated on Reckoning, a visual and poetic exploration of domestioc violence. Ground, a book art edition of poems about the earth, is her most recent collaboration with the artisans at Shakespeare Press Museum in San Luis Obispo.
Toni’s creative non-fiction piece, “Cornrow Calculations,” appears in Tenderheaded: A Comb-Bending Collection of Hair Stories, (2001, Pocket Books). Toni’s poetry is featured in anthologies and journals such as Black Nature, Gathering Ground, and The International Review of African American Art, and online at poecology and toad.
Toni is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She has served as advisor to the California Arts Commission and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. She read at the memorial gathering 73 Poems for 73 Years: Celebrating the Life of Lucille Clifton at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. Toni formally studied International Relations, Social Welfare and Instructional Technology at Clark University, the University of Copenhagen and San Francisco State University. She is currently pursuing graduate studies at Virginia Tech.
Toni writes professionally for museums and historic places, and she blogs about motherhood at toniwynn.squarespace.com/callyourmother, and about the intersection of jazz, hip-hop, the arts and STEM for Jam Session at jamsessionjvae.wordpress.com/.
Toni is a third-generation Jersey girl who lives by the water in Hampton, Virginia.
