From Here to Caketernity
Posted by Christine On July 18, 2019
Live Recording Release
One of my favorite stories to tell-my failed career as a cake baker- has been selected for the Mouth-Off podcast
NOTE: While I was onstage a woman in the front row at the Mark Twain House theater began sinking lower and lower in her seat, covering her face with her hands. After the show, she introduced herself as the owner of a bakery. “That story is my worst nightmare,” she said. Then she offered me a job as a cake decorator. For the safety of cake-eaters everywhere, I turned her down.
Story & Song
Posted by Christine On June 4, 2019
I’m so excited about this!
In March I contacted my friend Maria Sangiolo, a musician, folk singer, and song writer. I wanted to collaborate with her but my ideas were completely unstructured. This was unusual for me. Usually, I work alone and to say that I am a planner is a casual term for how I walk around this planet. To my surprise and delight, Maria agreed to work with me.
This Friday, June 7th is the result of her talent and my leap into the unknown. Hope to see you!
Spring Dance Collective
Posted by Christine On April 19, 2019
this is so cool
An all-girl improv troupe of high schoolers will dance in front of a live audience while I read a personal essay about lying to get into a ballet audition when I was sixteen years old.
Don’t miss it!
Tickets are $10 and available HERE
Spring Workshop
Posted by Christine On March 3, 2019
To find out more or to register, click HERE!
My Word!
Posted by Christine On January 28, 2019
Prose and Poetry
February 16th 7:30 PM
Published Writers + Open Mic*
Nick Beams
Joe Miragliuolo
Emcee: Christine Kalafus
Suggested Donation of $10 to Benefit TEEG
*Sign-up sheet first come, first served
Pushcart Nominee
Posted by Christine On October 26, 2018
i’m honored that my poem Horses is a pushcart prize nominee and featured in the fall 2018 TNG Volume VII.
My prose poem “Horses,” featured in the issue, was selected the 2017 winner of their Knightville Poetry contest and now available for purchase HERE. I am in very talented company: the Machigonne Fiction Contest winner is Maureen Connolly with Featured Authors, Grace Carpenter and Eamon Murphy. Judges were Mark Doty (poetry) and Chris Abani (fiction). The letters section theme is “Letters to Aliens.” Contributors include Claudia Manley, Jessica Lipnack, Lyndsie Manusos, Naomi Ulsted and more.
The cover artist is Abraham Danso.
congratulations all!
Connecticut’s Emerging Writers
Posted by Christine On August 14, 2018
I’m honored that an excerpt from my memoir
Blueprint for Daylight
has been published in:
Connecticut’s Emerging Writers, An Anthology.
Reading at KGB Bar’s red room
Posted by Christine On May 28, 2018
WHOA. And after the readings, there’s something called Mistress Velvetina’s Variety HOUR.
I’ll probably be over-dressed for that.
Ekphrasis: April 2nd 7 PM
Posted by Christine On March 6, 2018
Ekphrasis: from the Greek: a description of a work of art produced as a rhetorical exercise.
I would love to say, “Sure, ekphrasis. I use that word all the time.” Except that I don’t. I have a master’s degree in creative writing and I’d never heard or read the word before.
Which is a little sad considering I have been known to fall asleep with the Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms over my eyes.
So it was with relief when I looked up the definition (after I’d already said yes to the reading event) and discovered I had ekphrasis-ed before. I just didn’t know it. When I was a young art major undergrad writing compare and contrast critical papers on pieces of artwork, I’d been ekphraisis-ing all over the place!
And now (too many years later to count), thanks to the wonderful invitation from Jotham Burrello, captain of the publishing ship Elephant Rock Books , director of the Yale Writing Workshop, and host of the ROAR Reading Series, I get to ekphrasis my little heart out. In public! And to a work by Edward Hopper! (I have a personal and very one-sided relationship with Hopper’s Rooms By the Sea.) Spoiler: I didn’t pick that painting.
April just can’t come soon enough.
If you’re looking for me before then, I’ll be in the corner with the literary dictionary.
Spoken Word at The Complex!
Posted by Christine On February 24, 2018
One of my favorite things to do is celebrate writers
and bring them to the attention of the Quiet Corner public. I mean, I really LOVE it.
Last year, Nichola Johnson, the one-woman whirlwind at the helm of The Complex for Performing Arts in Putnam, asked if I’d be interested in emceeing Spoken Word events, something she’d been wanting to do for years. Who needed to the think about it?! Not me. I was all in.
We held two events in 2017, each featured five writers, including poets, writers of fiction and non-fiction, playwrights, and songwriters. The best and most unexpected benefit of these events was bringing multiple generations together. This happened organically after the scheduled performers, when we opened the stage to the audience for open mic. There’s something especially resonant when a 60 year-old speaks about an enduring love followed by a 16 year old speak about having his heart broken.
The applause for each performer was consistent and warm, and totally addictive. What began as accident is now intentional: a celebration of diversity.
I’m over the moon to present five local writers next Thursday, March 1st 7 PM at the first Spoken Word of 2018.
Tim Peck is a noted composer and performer hailing from the Quiet Corner of Connecticut. He has held residencies at Le Moulin à Nef in Auvillar, France, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Willapa Bay Air. Tim has produced two albums of original music: Rivulets and Ms. Matched. Currently, Tim is Artist-in-Residence and Director of Contemporary Music at Pomfret School, where he guides students through a centuries-old musical conversation, teaching courses in contemporary music, composition, and improvisation. Tim keeps an active performance calendar, and his upcoming shows can be found at his website www.tpeck.com.
Erin Reid is a student of Fine Arts and English at Framingham State University and Theatre Performance at the Hanover Theater Conservatory. She writes poetry and memoir where she lives in Oxford, MA while doting on her fluffy, black kitten Coco.
John Etheridge is an engineer and Digital Systems Enterprise Architect, a surprisingly ‘techie’ background for someone who also writes poetry. That tension between the sciences and the arts explains much about him. Born a Canadian, but now also an American, John is married to the long-suffering, but infinitely patient and wonderful Lyn, and has lived in New England for the past 20 years. Who knows, he may even retire here, if something can be done about these winters…
Parker Kalafus is a junior at the Woodstock Academy where he is also a tutor at the writing center. Parker enjoys writing outlandish short stories which range from comical to extremely morbid and has submitted one such works to the Connecticut Student Writers magazine at UConn. Parker also acts from time to time and has been in two school plays at Woodstock schools. When not consumed by homework, video games, writing or sketching, Parker will be found reading a wide variety of novels ranging from classics such as “Frankenstein,” “The Three Musketeers,” the entire James Bond series, and most recently “The Silence of the Lambs.” He hopes to attend Roger Williams University with a double major in architecture and psychology.
Bridget Tsemo is a speaker, a thinker, and writer who loves participating in the lives of her two extraordinary teenagers, Kayta and Mambi. She is the co-host of “The Lighthouse” a radio show on arts and culture on WBVC 91.1 FM every Tuesday night from 7 to 8 PM. Bridget has a completed manuscript on nineteenth-century African-American writers that she can’t wait to share with the world as soon as she can get a publisher to knock down her door and demand to publish it. In the past two years, Bridget has been writing poetry and essays about her life as a mother, teacher, parent, and student in the 21st century. Bridget is an English teacher and English Department Chair at Pomfret School.