Iron City Magazine Issue 4 Launch with Iron City Magazine, Ken Lamberton, Lindsey Saya
Date(s): Friday, November 8 ,2019, 7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Location: Changing Hands Phoenix, 300 W Camelback Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85013
Type(s): Conversation, Panel, Q&A, Reading, Talk
Genre and Form(s): Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Human Rights, Mixed Genre, Nature Writing, Poetry, Social Justice
Cost: Free
About this Event
At this moment, the United States of America is holding over 2 million people in state and federal prisons, local jails, juvenile correctional facilities, and other forms of detention—with disproportionate representation of African-Americans, Hispanics, and other groups—at a rate higher than any other country in the world. That's 2 million people—2 million specific, actual people; with families, with friends—who are still a part of our society, with over 95% returning at some point to our communities. They deserve to exist in a system that treats them with justice, compassion, understanding, and dignity. They should have the same chances and opportunities to determine their lives as the rest of us. Whatever crime they may have committed, mass incarceration is part of the story of the United States of America. We cannot understand ourselves without confronting it. It needs to be heard.
Join contributors and staff from Iron City Magazine for a reading, panel, and community conversation around creative writing and mass incarceration at the Iron City Magazine Issue 4 Launch, Friday, November 8, 2019 from 7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at Changing Hands Phoenix (300 W Camelback Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85013). In addition to featured readings of poetry and personal essays by contributors Ken Lamberton and Lindsey Saya, staff members Corri Wells and Jacqueline Aguilar will share their experiences negotiating the prison complex to conduct workshops and put together the magazine amidst a larger conversation about the role of creative writing in advancing social justice and human rights.
Issues of Iron City Magazine will be available for sale. Donations for the magazine will also be accepted. More information about volunteering, getting involved, and supporting Iron City's work will be available, too.
Please note: while encouraged, RSVPs are purely for the purposes of monitoring attendance, gauging interest, and communicating information about parking, directions, and other aspects of the event. Seating is first-come, first-served. You do not have to register or RSVP to attend. This event is open to the public and free.
Iron City Magazine is supported by grants from the Ibis Foundation and Arizona Humanities. This event is presented with the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.
About the Speakers
Ken Lamberton was released from prison in 2000. His first book, Wilderness and Razor Wire: A Naturalist’s Observations from Prison, won the 2002 John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing.
Lindsey Saya was released from prison in April 2019. While incarcerated, he participated in Arizona State University's The Pen Project. His work has been published in Iron City Magazine: Creative Expressions For and By The Incarcerated, AZCentral.com's Poetry Spot, and OysterRiverPages.com.
Cornelia "Corri" Elizabeth Vander Hoek Wells credits her long name for her interest in language. Trained as a scholar, she also negotiates the world through memoir and fiction, as Cornelia Wells, and through poetry, as Corri Elizabeth. Her writing has appeared inPhilosophy and Rhetoric, TIFERET, North Dakota Quarterly, The MacGuffin, 13th Moon, Eclipse, Puerto del Sol, Descant, Xavier Review, and elsewhere.She co-edited with Vernon McLean the textbook Racism and Sexism: A Collaborative Study (2005). Before coming to ASU in fall of 2004, Wells directed the First-Year Writing Program at the William Paterson University of New Jersey. At ASU, Wells directs PEP (Prison Education Programming), offering 30 courses each semester from across the curriculum from biology to creative writing to Arizona prisoners at 7 correctional facilities throughout the Valley.
Jacqueline Aguilar is the Marketing and Managing Editor of Iron City Magazine: Creative Expressions By and For the Incarcerated. She is an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults candidate at Spalding University. Her work has recently appeared in Issue 12 of Write On, Downtown and in azcentral poetry spot. She was a past editor for ASU’s Prison Education Programming (PEP) Newsletter, webmaster for ASU’s PEP website, and mentor for ASU’s distance-learning Pen Project Prison Internship. She was also a past blogger, interview editor, and student editor-in-chief for Superstition Review.
About the Ibis Foundation
The Ibis Foundation of Arizona, a private foundation, was established in December 2006 with the vision that each individual’s quality of life is connected to the overall well-being of the community. We pursue this vision through grantmaking in research and in programs related to health and education. We believe that access to health services and education are basic rights and should not be determined by a person’s socioeconomic status. http://ibisfdn.org.
About Arizona Humanities
Mission: Arizona Humanities builds a just and civil society by creating opportunities to explore our shared human experiences through discussion, learning and reflection.
Arizona Humanities is a statewide 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and the Arizona affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Since 1973, Arizona Humanities has supported public programs that promote understand of the human experience with cultural, educational, and nonprofit organizations across Arizona. http://azhumanities.org
