Chez Robert Giron

Here's the latest from Kim Roberts:

Due to popular demand, we've added a second Langston Hughes/Harlem Renaissance walking tour!

There are still a few spaces available for the Saturday Jan. 31st tour, but with the great interest we decided to add a second tour in order to accommodate as many people as possible. This tour will take place the following day, Sunday, Feb. 1st (Langston's birthday!) from 10:30am to 12:00pm. Space is limited to 20 participants. The tour is free but you must RSVP to LangstonDays@gmail.com to reserve your spot. Please specify the date when registering.

Also, there will be an intimate lunch time round-table discussion following the tour on Saturday, Jan. 31. This will take place at Busboys & Poets and will be led by American University professor Keith Leonard.

WALKING TOURSDATE/TIME: Jan. 31 & Feb. 1, tour from 10:30am-12pm (weather permitting)
WHAT: Langston Hughes/ "Harlem" Renaissance in DC walking tour
LOCATION: tour leaves from Busboys & Poets, 2021 14th St. NW @ V St. NW
ADMISSION: Free. Limited to 20 participants. RSVP required. Email LangstonDays@gmail.com for reservations. Please specify if reserving for walking tour on 1/31, 2/1 tour. Led by Kim Roberts, this walking tour will visit places in the U Street/Cardozo area where Hughes and other black poets of his time lived and worked. Complimentary coffee and hot chocolate will be offered by Busboys & Poets beforehand. Books of Hughes poetry can be purchased in the bookstore.

LUNCHTIME TALKDATE/TIME: Feb. 1, guided lunchtime discussion, noon-2:00pm
WHAT: Langston Hughes/ "Harlem" Renaissance in DC post-tour discussion
LOCATION: tour leaves from Busboys & Poets, 2021 14th St. NW @ V St. NW
ADMISSION: Suggested $10 food/drink minimum. Limited to 10 participants. RSVP required. Email LangstonDays@gmail.com for reservations. After the Jan. 31 tour, participants can choose to engage in a lively lunchtime discussion facilitated by Keith D. Leonard, professor of literature at American University and author of Fettered Genius: the African-American Bardic Poet from Slavery to Civil Rights. Participants can order brunch from the Busboys & Poets menu.

Just speaking/writing those 5 words are awesome. Who would have thought over 4 years ago that a senator from Illinois would be our 44th president? Though when I heard then Senator Obama speak at Kerry's nomination convention I knew then that Obama had something special that would one day affect this country.

After having lived through the 2000 election fiasco and then 4 more years of Bush, I thought I would never see the light of day, but good things come to those who wait. Thank God that America woke up and that Obama was there to inspire them. The fact that he is Black is a plus.

In the end, this country had to change and President Obama has succeeded in bringing us a step closer to making this happen.

No, I didn't leave this country I love so much, but I lived through the trauma thrust upon us by zealots gone awry and instead focused my energy in trying to instill in my students creative thinking and objective logic. Little by little, many others across this land did the same and using our collective energy we rallied around the man we could believe in.

Just like President Obama stated today, there may be mistakes made in the future, but at least he is willing to acknowledge them and learn from them.

Today, President Obama gave us all a charge to try to make a difference in the country we all love, be we Democrats, Republicans, Independents, conservatives or liberals--not a dirty word. In fact, we collectively must do our best to stop the nonsense of foxing news that creates lies and repeats them to make them believable to the really nonthinking.

To those who refuse to face up to the task at hand, may they awake up and realize that if they do not go with the flow to add to it or perhaps even change the makeup, they must realize that they will be left in the past.

Also to those who are stuck in the past, may they realize they must move forward and work with what they have and not focus on what they do not have because in the process of working with what they have they will in fact change the present and the future.

May God bless President Barack Obama and the USA.

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Gival Press
~An Award-winning Independent Publisher~
Gival Press, LLC ~ P. O. Box 3812 ~ Arlington, VA 22203 ~ USA
Tel: 703.351.0079 ~ Email: givalpress@yahoo.com ~ Website: www.givalpress.com
_______________________________________________________________________________

Arlington, VA (January 10, 2009)—Gival Press is pleased to announce the release of Poetic Voices Without Borders 2, an international anthology including over 150 poets, including Philip Levine, Rita Dove, Dana Gioia, Joy Harjo, Naomi Shihab Nye as well as many local Washington, DC poets. The anthology is edited by Robert L. Giron.

On Sunday, January 18, 2009, from 3:30 to 5:30 PM Busboys and Poets will host a special reading with the following poets: Karen Alenier, Christopher Conlon, Patricia Gray, Sydney March, Yvette Neisser Moreno, and Joseph Ross. The poets will read from the anthology and their current work in a joint celebration for President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration. The poets’ bios follow.

The voices found within these pages are passionate and enlightening while echoing a desire in their own way to transform, to change, to transcend borders, be they personal, cultural or national, in a poetic manner as if to say that within literature there isn’t a border for the human spirit, for it is that energy that keeps us going.

Melissa A. Tuckey, co-director of Split This Rock Poetry Festival, will open the event at the 1390 V St., NW, Washington, DC location. For further information, please call 202. 387.7638.



Special Joint Event in Celebration
of the Release of Poetic Voices Without Borders 2
and President-elect Barack Obama’s Inauguration

Sunday, January 18, 2009 from 3:30 to 5:30 PM
Busboy and Poets ~ 1390 V St., NW, Washington, DC ~ 202.387.7638
A Special Reading with the Following Poets

Karren LaLonde Alenier is the author of five collections of poetry, including Looking for Divine Transportation, winner of the 2002 Towson University Prize for Literature. Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On, her opera with composer William Banfield and Encompass New Opera Theatre artistic director Nancy Rhodes premiered in New York City in June 2005. Her latest book is The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas. Website: www.steinopera.com.

Christopher Conlon is the author of three books of poems Gilbert and Garbo in Love, The Weeping Time, and Mary Falls: Requiem for Mrs. Surratt as well as a novel, Midnight on Mourn Street. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Patricia Gray’s book Rupture was chosen by the Montserrat Review as one of the best books of poetry for 2005. In 2006, she received an Artist’s Fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and in June 2007 she was a guest poet at the South Carolina Spoleto Festival. Gray coordinates the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress, where she has directed the Poetry at Noon reading series for 14 years.

Sydney March, a Jamaican poet, essayist, musician, and journalist, resides in Washington, DC. A former member of the WritersCorps 1996-1998, he is a recipient of grants from The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and Poets and Writers (2007), as well as Jenny Moore and Lannan Fellowships. He has recently served as a panelist for the DC Commission’s Artist Fellowship Grants in Literature. Publications include Dark Warriors of the Spanish Main (Smithsonian New World, Smithsonian Institution, 1992), The Maroons of Jamaica (Encounters, University of New Mexico Press, 1994) and a collection of poetry, Stealing Mangoes (Mica Press, 1997).

Yvette Neisser Moreno is a poet and translator whose work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her translation of Luis Alberto Ambroggio's Difficult Beauty: Selected Poems is forthcoming from Cross-Cultural Communications in 2009. She teaches poetry in public schools in both Arlington County, Virginia, and Washington, DC, as part of the Folger Poetry Program.

Joseph Ross is a poet in the Washington, DC area. His poetry has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies including Poetic Voices Without Borders, Sojourners, Solo Cafe, DC Poets Against the War, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly. He co-edited a collection of poetry responding to Fernando Botero's Abu Ghraib paintings, published by American University.

Robert L. Giron, founder of Gival Press, has written five collections of poetry and is the editor of the Poetic Voices Without Borders series and the online journal ArLiJo.com. He teaches English and creative writing at Montgomery College-Takoma Park/Silver Spring, Maryland, where he also serves as a poetry editor for Potomac Review.
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ArLiJo.com is featuring author Julie Wakeman-Linn.

Chapter one of her novel Chasing the Leopard; Finding the Lion, which is set in Harare, Zimbabwe, can be read by clicking on the link below:

ArLiJo.com


Biography:
Julie Wakeman-Linn edits the Potomac Review and teaches at Montgomery College. This excerpt is from her novel, Chasing the Leopard; Finding the Lion which was a finalist for Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize Literature for Social Change 2008.