Saymoukda Vongsay Reading at Intermedia Arts! 1/25/11

Beyond the Pure 
Color Theory for the 21st Century: Readings by Writers of Color
Tuesday, January 25, 2011, 7PM at Intermedia Arts
Intermedia Arts | 2822 Lyndale Ave South, Minneapolis, MN, 55408
$5 suggested donation supports the series!
For more information, call (612) 871-4444 or email Info@IntermediaArts.org

Featured Artists:

Saymoukda Vongsay is a queer Lao American poet and playwright who's taken risks, often incorporating surrealism and speculative literature with hip hop and a no holds barred approached to Lao American history. She's a co-founding member of The Unit Collective of Emerging Playwrights of Color, author of No Regrets, Chair of the 2010 National Lao American Writers Summit, inaugural winner of the 2010 Alfred C. Carey Prize in Spoken Word from New York, recipient of a Loft Literary Center scholarship to attend Robert McKee's Story Seminar, advisory board member of the 2010 MPLS Asian Film Festival, and was recently recognized by the Lao Professionals of Illinois for her literary accomplishments. Vongsay continues to work actively to support the work of Lao women writers and artists across the country to celebrate heritage, diversity, and community development. Get to know her at www.refugenius.com

Stephani Maari Booker, originally from Michigan and currently living in Minneapolis, is an editor of the African American newspaper Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder and holds an MFA from Hamline University of St. Paul, MN. Her creative work has been published most recently in the online journals Blithe House Quarterly and Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette, the collection 60 Seconds to Shine: 221 One-minute Monologues For Women (Monologue Audition Series, Volume 2) edited by John Capecci and Irene Ziegler Aston (Smith & Kraus Inc., 2006), and the anthology Longing, Lust, and Love: Black Lesbian Stories edited by Shonia L. Brown (Nghosi Books, 2007). Visit Stephani's website for more information about her work: www.mnartists.org/Stephani_Booker.

Madame MiMi discovered the Art of Spoken Word through the African oral tradition, where proverbial talk is a high quality. In African societies, she finds her deepest roots in the Lunda tribe. Madame Mimi first started writing her poems in French as a teenager than later in English. Her father inspired her to play the guitar and she was influenced by artists such as Tracy Chapman, Billy Holiday, Zap Mama, Les Nubians. Growing up in France she admired Jacques Brel and Edith Piaffe as well. Madame Mimi marked her performance debut in the mid-nineties. She imposed herself as an avant-garde multi-talented artist in Land of the Lakes. Hip-Hop came to her life in the mid-80s; she was residing in Sarcelles, France then. This new vibe had a great influence on her and many young Africans living in the H.L.M's (urban projects of Parisian suburbs) who were looking to express their fight for identity. In Minneapolis, she co-founded a spoken word venue called DA Initiation (1998-2003) with MC TruthMaze, a platform that would give artistic exposure to artists of color. Madame Mimi is multilingual and her voice and melodies are unique to most. She takes pleasure into playing with words and sounds in her own particular way and makes no apologies for defining linguistic through music in her terms.

Lori Young- Williams' writing focuses on family/family relationships. She is currently completing a MLS degree at the University of Minnesota focusing on the migration of Black families from the South to the North, in particular the migration her father's family made from South Carolina to Philadelphia. 1992, she earned a bachelor's degree in Human Relationships with an emphasis of family relationships. She comes from a working class family that believes in laughter, crying, and praying when times are good, or when times are bad. Lori has been published in Interrace magazine, the Turtle River Press, the National Library of Poetry, Quill Books, Dust & Fire and other anthologies. Also, she has self- published two chapbooks. She has read in various bookstores, coffee shops, and spoken word events in the Twin Cities, including several collaborative readings with Sherry Quan Lee, Chinese Black White Women Got the Beat. Lori was a participant for the Givens Black Writers Retreat, 2008 with mentors Sonja Sanchez and Carolyn Holbrook. Lori has taught a writing workshop in early spring 2009 called Women of Color: Writing our Stories. She has also taught two other workshops, with Sherry Quan Lee. One about women writing their stories at the University of MN October 2009 and the other for a poetry group in Mankato October 2010. Lori is in the process of editing her final project for her masters and will have a reading at Intermedia Arts on March 26th, 2011.

Robert Farid Karimi is an interdisciplinary playwright/poet/multimedia humorist, & storycook from the SF Bay Area. A Creative Capital recipient, a National Poetry Slam Champion, a Def Poetry Jam poet, and creator of the critically acclaimed works: Self (the remix), Farid Mercury and the live comedy cooking experience: The Cooking Show con Karimi y Comrades, his performances have fed audiences across the Americas in theatres, grocery stores, backyards, and off Broadway. A UCLA graduate, he has received awards from the NEA, Verve Grant, MSAB, MAP, and others. In 2009, he represented the city of Los Angeles at la Feria del Libro Internacional in Guadalajara, Mexico. In 2010-2011 he will be artist in residence at Intermedia developing his new project Diabetes of Democracy, a Cooking Show focusing on type 2 diabetes in communities of color and beyond.