The fifth annual Austin Superslam will take place Tuesday, April 6 at 8pm at the Electric Lounge, which will be closing on April 10. Winners from the weekly Austin Poetry Slam series, which has been held each Tuesday at the Lounge, will compete against each other, and the top four finishers will become the 1999 Austin Poetry Slam Team and then compete at the 1999 National Poetry Slam, to be held this August in Chicago. The Superslam, traditionally the largest-attended and highest-energy local slam of the year, will be the last slam ever held at the Electric Lounge, the home for Austin slam since 1994. The Austin Poetry Slam will be looking for a new location and will announce that new location at the Superslam; meanwhile, the Hyde Park Theatre Slam will begin April 14 and be held the second Wednesday of every month at, obviously, Hyde Park Theatre. And now it’s time to say goodbye to one of Austin’s premier slam (or otherwise) poets, Tammy Gomez, who needs to “try some other terrain”: Nepal, where she’s going for about three or four months, should do the trick. After Nepal, she’ll be conducting a “vagabond tour” of the U.S., visiting friends and performing poetry. And that’s hardly all the poetry news: This being National Poetry Month, Barnes & Noble Guadalupe hosts the kickoff of the 2nd Annual Austin International Poetry Fringe Feast on Saturday, April 10 at 7pm…
St. Edward’s hosts Southwest Texas State poet Kathleen Peirce reading from her work on Wednesday, April 7 at 8pm in the Maloney Room in the Main Building. Peirce is the author of The Oval Hour (1999), Divided Touch, Divided Color (1995), and Mercy (1991). She is the recipient of several awards, including the Iowa Prize for Poetry, and has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. Reading with Peirce is Charles Chargois, a student of Peirce’s, who will read from his recently completed manuscript, Nun’s Luck…
The Famous Poets Society of Hollywood is offering $1,000 to the best 21-line-or-less poem sent to: Free Poetry Contest, 1040 Fairfax Ave., Ste. 208, West Hollywood, California 90046 by April 26. The poem may cover any subject; entry is free. The poet’s name and address should appear on the top of the page. Creative writing students at SWT and the Michener Center are coming together to present a reading of their works, poetry and fiction, at Cafe Mundi (1704 E. Fifth) on Friday, April 9 at 8pm, to which the public is invited…
More prose: UT’s Division of Rhetoric and Composition will host its first author in what it hopes will be an annual reading series on Thursday, April 8 at 7:30pm at the Texas Union Ballroom, and they’d like the public to attend, for free. Stephen Carter, a Yale law professor and the author of Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, The Confirmation Mess, and Civility, among other works, will be talking about “Integrity and the DC Mess.”…
Local author David Lindsey will read from and sign his new literary thriller The Color of Night at Book People on Thursday, April 8 at 7pm (see a review of The Color of Night on page 45)…
John Graves fans: The April issue of National Geographic has an article by Graves on the Hill Country… “Marvelouly mature” women may be interested to know that Austin romance novelist Evelyn Palfreyhas just published her third romantic suspense novel, Dangerous Dilemmas, from her small press, Moonchild Books, because Palfrey writes with you in mind. Dangerous Dilemmas can be purchased at local bookstores or ordered from Palfrey’s Web site, http://www.flash.net/~moonchld.
This article appears in Ass Backwards.