The Bloom: Reading #50

ABOUT THE EVENT
Members of MIXED WRITES, a group of mixed race women writers, will honor Father’s Day and the Summer Solstice—the most light-filled day of the year, by reading work on the theme of fathers and inner light.

We will be celebrating the 50th Reading of The Bloom, and the anniversary of Mixed Writes (Faith Adiele, Maria T. Allocco, Jackie Graves and Audrey T. Williams).

ABOUT THE WRITERS
MARIA T. ALLOCCO is a South Korean and Italian Voices of Our Nation alum and was an Academy of American Poets Prize winner by age twenty. Her pieces have been featured on KPFA andMutiny Radio, and performed for SOMArts, LitQuake, Kearny Street Workshop, The Intersection For The Arts, and The San Francisco International Arts Festival. Her work has been published inThe Lantern Review, Fusion Magazine, Monday Night, Sparkle and Blink, and in the new book Pariahs: Writing From Outside The Margins. She’s a co-founder of the bay area’s first mixed race meditation group, and teaches yoga to ‘at-risk’ youth. Find her at: writetoheal.us

JACKIE GRAVES believes in the transformative power of words. She is currently working on a memoir of healing that celebrates family, spirituality, and sisterhood. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including residencies at the Julia and David White Artist Colony, Jentel Artist Residence Program, Djerassi Resident Artist Program, and Soapstone, a Writing Retreat for Women. She received theCity of Oakland Spoken Word Fellowship, the Ardella Mills Prize for Fiction, and was a finalist in the Poets & Writers California Voices Contest. She teaches English at Laney College.

AUDREY T. WILLIAMS is an Oakland-based writer. She is a VONA alum, and working towards an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at CCA. Audrey is currently writing the manuscript for “Chutney and Chitlins,” a mixed-race family memoir that makes use of hybrid creative nonfiction using narratives and images. The book begins with stories from her African-American father as he joined thenewly integrated US Marines in the late 1950’s (possibly the first African American US Marine sent to US embassy duty in Rangoon, Burma). In Burma, he mets Audrey’s mother, whose heritage is a mixture of European and South Asian ancestry (Anglo-Indian-Burmese). Her website:audreyTwilliams.com.

ABOUT THE BLOOM
The Bloom is a literary series featuring Bay Area writers, where a past reader curates five readers around a theme. It’s an entertaining evening of diverse voices and personal style, bridging narratives and communities. It was founded by Margaret Bacon, Tara Dorabji, and Jason Wyman in the summer of 2012.