Bobby LeFebre is an award-winning spoken word artist, actor, and social worker. He is a two-time Grand Slam Champion, a National Poetry Slam Finalist, an Individual World Poetry Slam Finalist, and has been a member of three National Poetry Slam Teams, according to University Relations’ Newswire.

The program is free and open to the public. Bring some dollars, as RZ’s offers stimulating beverages and snacks.

UA has more details at this link.

Future slams this spring will feature:

• Isis Speaks on Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2012
• Shihan the Poet on Wednesday, Feb.29, 2012
• Kelly Tsai on Wednesday, April 11, 2012

University Programs Coffeehouse Committee explains that all the events are slams for students to compete in. They must have two poems which can not exceed over three minutes in length. Each evening also has open mic, in which any one can participate.

Orlis, as his many friends know, has a huge record collection. The article, by Christie Swanson, states more than 50,000 albums.

And once a month, the last Tuesday of each month, Orlis sets up the mike and amplifier at Nightbird Books on Fayetteville’s Dickson Street for the meeting of the Ozark Poets & Writers collective.

We who attend the readings always have a clue: the tunes Orlis plays (not on a turntable but an audiocassette deck) before and after the program — rock and roll classics, some on the obscure sides, or rare takes of known standards.

He knows his stuff.

Here is the article link: nwaonline.com/news/2011/dec/25/record-sales-rise-20111225/. NWA Media pays its staff and pays for bandwidth and thus charges to be read online. Sorry about that. If you’re a subscriber to any of its papers — Northwest Arkansas Times, Springdale Morning News, Bentonville Daily Record, Rogers Morning News and/or the Northwest Arkansas edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette — you have full free access to its website.

Nelson, , 2001-06 Connecticut poet laureate, is an author, children’s author, and translator, with 14 books and five chapbooks. She is a professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut.

Details from UA are at this link.

Full details are in the UA press release.

Giovanni grew up in Cincinnati and first came to national prominence in the late 1960s with the publication of her first books of poetry, Black Feeling, Black Talk and Black Judgment. She has published 30 books so far in her career, including poetry, essay collections and children’s books.

In 1987 Giovanni began teaching writing and literature at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, where she is now a distinguished professor of English. Giovanni received national attention as she sought to comfort and rally her students and colleagues after the 2007 massacre on the Blacksburg campus.

John was a frequent reader at the OPWC’s open-mic portion of our monthly program.

John generally read just a single poem, often a very personal one, straightforwardly. Invariably the verses showed dry wit and strong insight.

He was a great guy. His wife, Darla, and their family are holding services for him at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 30, 2011. The funeral home details are at this link. The Northwest Arkansas Newspapers obituary (is essentially the same) is at this link.

The free event provides regional authors a chance to promote and discuss their work, and writing workshops for budding new talent will be offered, according to the press release from the library. This link also gives a schedule for the day.

Poet and memoirist Jo McDougall will deliver the keynote. Other speakers or workshop leaders include Larry Foley on screenwriting, Pat Carr on storytelling, Kenneth Smith on nonfiction, Denton Gay on theme, and others. The “Beyond Paper and Ink” panel will discuss online publishing options.

A musical performance at noon and a quilter’s showcase complete the day. Books will be sold during the public event, which runs 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and will be in the library’s Walker Community Room.

More information about Ozark Writers Live is at its website ozarkwriterslive2011.wordpress.com.

They are listed at the Fayetteville School District community blog.

The magazine itself, writers and staff members were honored by the Arkansas Scholastic Press Association. National honors to the annual publication were awarded by the Columbia Scholastic Press and the National Council of Teachers of English. Those are detailed at the link above.

Congratulations, our young friends!

The “finalist.” or runner-up, was the collection Paradise by Stephen Gibson.

Details are on UA’s Newswire.

Deulen, a doctoral student at the University of Utah, will read from her collection at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 7, at Giffels Auditorium on the Fayetteville campus. The event is free and open to the public.

All books will be discounted at least 10 percent, and many will be discounted as much as 50 percent. There will be door prizes, and the shop will be giving away piles of advance reader copies of books.

Ben Bedford (website opens with sound) will be playing music throughout the evening as part of the store’s new partnership with Hembree House Concerts. There will be a $20 cover charge, to be split between the musician and Nightbird Books.

What’s behind the live-music shopping soiree? Summer and fall 2010 were not good for Nightbird. We were back on track for the holidays, but still came up short for the year, and all these snow days have only added to the problem. So it needs to sell some books soon!

Nightbird has been the congenial host of the Ozark Poets & Writers Collective for some time, and we are glad to help by sending the word out. It is an independent bookstore. The evening’s title, “Feed the Bird Sale,” refers to the aviary for which the store is famous. The store also features the bhk cafe, open the same hours as the shop.

The bookshop’s management notes, “Because the goal of the evening is to bring in cash, I won’t be ordering in lots of copies of the current bestsellers. However, I will happily extend the sale prices to prepaid purchases that we need to order from the warehouse.”

Longtime Collectivist Dr. Mohja Kahf writes:

Dear friends,

I and my family, and many of my students, and those of my colleagues here and elsewhere– of whatever background Arab or not–who work in Arab world studies, are glued to the news. More so by the day, by the hour.

We appear to be witnessing—maybe, maybe—a historic moment in the Arab world the like of which has not happened in our lifetimes, and for which it has always, quite firmly and unquestionably, seemed to most reasonable people that there would be no hope even to the end of the lifetimes of our grandchildren, at the very, very least. The entire shape of the world there is changing, has changed already, in ways we never imagined we would live to see. At my home, we are gripped. We can barely get work done, slash, we are getting work done with giant blasts of energy–both are true. Events are unfolding hourly, in at least a dozen countries. Are we witnessing at long last the beginnings—the glimmers— of the grass-roots overthrow of dictators who have ruled the Arab world for several lifetimes? The beginnings, in some of these places, of accountable government with checks on its power? It looks—do I dare say it—almost like a clean and legitimate YES, for Tunisia. Which is enough to blow my mind. Egypt is teetering—but which way will it go, crackdown or stepdown? Libya, Algeria, Jordan, my land of birth Syria, Yeman, Sudan—who knows. Yet whatever the outcomes, it is something, what is happening, it is S.O.M.E.T.H.I.N.G. I am way too cautious and cynical to feel joy. There are no magic beans. And this is only a beginning. But I do feel utter amazement. I’m writing just by way of fyi. I may be in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and very far away from being able to go out to show solidarity at an Egyptian or Syrian embassy (I don’t think there is a Syrian embassy on the Square, alas), but I’m thinking that people where I live should know what this feels like. And our shire is part of the greater world too—we are all [ok fill in something here yourselves that doesn’t sound like a 1985 song by pop artists fighting world hunger! any more words are beyond me, and I don’t want to slide into clichés].

So if you see one of us, and we spontaneously hug you, or burst into poetry or tears, just so you know, for some of us right now, these are intense, incredible, world-altering days.

- Mohja Kahf