Welcome digital comrades to the first faculty reading of Naropa's 2024 Summer Writing Program season. This marks the 50th anniversary of Naropa's "100 Year Project".

Reading this evening, 27 June 2024, will be:

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Amy Bobeda is a multidisciplinary artist originally from the Central Coast of California. With degrees in theater, cosmetology, and creative writing, her work spans many genres and mediums from film and fashion art to illustration and poetry. Her works have been exhibited, read, and watched in the US and abroad. Menstruation, the origins of culture, and Native American prose, poetry, and pottery are central to her artistic practices. She’s an alum of Mud House Residency & Writers Workshop Paris. Her work explores myth, fairytales, dreams, and ecology. She is the author & illustrator of Red Memory (Flowersong Press), What Bird Are You? (Finishing Line Press) and Mi Sin Manitos (Ethel Press).

Cass Eddington is a queer poet, educator, and community arts organizer from Utah. A former Denver Quarterly poetry editor, they are the author of Vernal Hurt (Magnificent Field) and TRANSIT (Spiral Editions) with recent work found in Trilobite journal, luigi ten co, and Annulet. Cass is the founder of Vocational Poetics, a currently virtual teaching and learning platform with offerings from teaching artists and radical educators. They hold a PhD in English and Literary Arts from University of Denver and an MFA in Poetry from Colorado State University. As a regenerative landscaper, they help create place-based relationships in conversation with the land and its inhabitants. Cass lives in so-called “Denver” with their dog Jupiter.

Jade Lascelles is a writer, musician, and artist based in Colorado. She is the author of the full-length collection The Inevitable (Gesture Press). Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, various literary journals, and the anthologies Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism, Dwell: Poems About Home, and Precipice: Writing at the Edge. She has been featured in the Ed Bowes film Gold Hill, the Bologna In Lettere festival’s International Poetry Review, the visual art exhibits and accompanying books Shame Radiant and Disgust: Unhealthy Practices, and the Natalia Gaia short film A Spark Catches, which won second prize at the 2022 Maldito Festival de Videopoesia. Jade holds an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University and plays drums in a few different musical projects.

Steven Taylor is a poet, musician, songwriter, and ethnomusicologist. He has published two books of poems and a musical ethnography, False Prophet: Field Notes from the Punk Underground (Wesleyan Press, 2004) . He has composed music for the theater, film, radio drama, and installations and made more than a dozen records with various artists His articles, reviews, essays, and poems have appeared in various anthologies and zines. From 1976-1996 he collaborated on music and poetry works with Allen Ginsberg, and has been a member of the seminal underground rock band The Fugs since 1984. He has also toured and recorded with Anne Waldman, KenwardElmslie, and the New York hardcore band False Prophets. From 1990-2008 he was on the faculty at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. He is senior editor at Reality Sandwich. He lives in Brooklyn.

Thurston Moore moved to NYC at 18 in 1976 to play punk. He started Sonic Youth in1980. He edited the music and literary fanzines KILLER, Sonic Death, and Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal and started the Ecstatic Peace records + tapes label. He has worked collaboratively with Yoko Ono, Merce Cunningham, Cecil Taylor, Rhys Chatham, Lydia Lunch, John Zorn, Takehisa Kosugi, Glenn Branca and Mary Jane Leach. He has composed music for films by Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, and Allison Anders. He presently records and tours both solo, with various ensembles and with his own band who’s most recent recording is Rock n Roll Consciousness. He is senior editor of Ecstatic Peace Library, the poetry imprint Flowers & Cream and has edited books at Rizzoli and Abrams. His own writings have been published through various imprints. Since 2011 Thurston Moore has been on faculty at the Naropa University summer writing program. He resides in London.

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Summer Writing Program thrives on the support from its community. We offer many scholarships in the name of beloved faculty and community members to bring students with unique perspectives and talents to Naropa University. Please consider making a gift to Summer Writing program in the ongoing support of these writers and poets.

https://www.naropa.edu/office-of-deve...

Learn more about Summer Writing Program here: https://www.naropa.edu/academics/swp/

Naropa University’s 50th Anniversary: https://www.naropa.edu/about-naropa/5...

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Now join us, for the archive!