Women Writers Series: Arab and Jewish Poets II
Guild Complex

Bridge of Voices? is the second annual reading bringing together Arab and Jewish poets living in Chicago. Last year?s ?Bridges of Voices? reading was a thought-provoking evening that united two communities and highlighted the range and diversity within each group.


10/29/1998 - 10/29/1998


?Bridge of Voices? is the second annual reading bringing together Arab and Jewish poets living in Chicago.

Last year?s ?Bridges of Voices? reading was a thought-provoking evening that united two communities and highlighted the range and diversity within each group.

The readers are: Mary Abowd is an associate editor at Chicago magazine. A graduate of the Medill School of Journalism, she has been the managing editor of The Neighborhood Works and a senior research assistant at The Chicago Reporter, where she won an award of excellence from the Chicago Association of Black Journalists. While living in the West Bank in 1992, she wrote feature stories for Al-Fajr, an English-language Palestinian weekly. She is a founding board member of the Arab-American Action Network.

Helen Degan Cohen is the recipient of Staqnd Magazine?s international First Prize in fiction, a NEA Fellowship in poetry, two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and an Arts council Fellowship among other awards. For years she was Artist-In-Education through the Illinois Arts council, and then returned to teaching ? humanities this time ? at Roosevelt University. She has also returned to co-editing RHINO, having co-founded the magazine and the Poetry Forum years ago.

Julie Parson-Nesbitt, author of Finders (West End Press 1996) and Clark St. Lullabye is a past winner of the 1989 Gwendolyn Brooks Award. Her work has been widely anthologized in such collections as Identity Lessons (Penguin 1998) and A More Perfect Union (St. Martin?s Press 1998). She has edited works including Naming the Daytime Moon: Stories and Poems by Chicago Women for which she received and Editor?s Choice Award from Spirit That Moves Us Press.

Melysha Sargis is a published poet, writher, storyteller and educator. Her book, ?Fountain of Youth,? is an Iranian folk tale for children (Rigby Educational Publishers). She received her B.S. in Psychology and Sociology from DePaul University and is currently attaining her Masters degree in Fine Arts in Writing from the School of the Art Institute. She has performed at The Chicago Cultural Center, The University of Chicago and the Evanston Ethnic Arts Festival, among others.

Director
Larra Clark

Performers
Mary abowd, Helen Degen Cohen, Julie Parson-Nesbitt, Melysha Sargis

Tags: Literary, Rest Of The World, 1998