Red Hen Press: M Simon, EK Healy, DC Moderow and more

Red Hen Press presents a reading with Maurya Simon, Eloise Klein Healy, Debbie Clarke Moderow and Amber Flora Thomas, with dance by Sheetal Gandhi.

Sheetal Gandhi is a National Dance Performance (NDP) and MAP award winning choreographer, performer, and teacher based in Los Angeles, CA. As a multi-hyphenated artist (singer, dancer, actor) her career has spanned genres and disciplines including her work as a creator and performer in Cirque du Soleil's Dralion, playing a leading role in the Broadway production of Bombay Dreams, dancing throughout Ghana with the traditional West African dance company Novisi, and singing with the New York based, all-female a cappella group, Anamcara. Gandhi creates intercultural, interdisciplinary works that are sophisticated yet accessible, culturally specific yet ‘border-crossing’. In exploring traditional forms of dance and music through decidedly postmodern compositional structures - all to comment on the social world in which we live - her practice references the past, grounds itself in the present, and comments on the possibilities of the future.

Eloise Klein Healy is the first Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. She is the author of six previous books of poetry and three spoken word recordings. She was the founding chair of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles where she is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing Emerita. Healy directed the Women’s Studies Program at California State University Northridge and taught in the Feminist Studio Workshop at The Woman’s Building in Los Angeles. She is the founding editor of Arktoi Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press specializing in the work of lesbian authors.
Debbie Clarke Moderow, originally from Connecticut, went to Alaska in 1979 for a mountain-climbing expedition and met her husband, Mark. For the Moderows, dog mushing has always been a family affair. Debbie ran the Iditarod in 2003 and 2005, completing the latter in 13 days, 19 hours, 10 minutes, and 32 seconds. In 2013, Debbie graduated from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop with an MFA in creative writing.

Maurya Simon’s tenth volume of poetry, The Wilderness: New & Selected Poems, 1980-2016, was recently published by Red Hen Press. Simon’s third book, Speaking in Tongues, was a Pulitzer Prize nominee, and her seventh book, Ghost Orchid, was nominated for a 2004 National Book Award in Poetry. Other recent publications include: The Raindrop’s Gospel: The Trials of St. Jerome & St. Paula (2010), and Questions My Daughter Asked Me, Answers I Never Gave Her (2014). Simon has received an NEA Fellowship in poetry, two awards from the Poetry Society of America, and she’s served Visiting Artist residencies at the American Academy in Rome and at The MacDowell Colony. She’s currently a Professor of the Graduate Division and a Professor Emerita at the University of California, Riverside, where she taught literature and creative writing for nearly thirty years. She lives in the Angeles National Forest in Southern California’s San Gabriel Mountains.

Amber Flora Thomas is the author of two collections of poems: Eye of Water, selected by Harryette Mullen as the winner of the 2004 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and The Rabbits Could Sing, selected by Peggy Shumaker for the Alaska Literary Series in 2011. A recipient of the Dylan Thomas American Poet Prize, Richard Peterson Prize, and Ann Stanford Prize, her poetry has appeared in Callaloo, Orion Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review, Saranac Review, and Crab Orchard Review, as well as Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry and numerous other journals and anthologies. She is a Cave Canem Fellow and faculty member. She received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 1998. She was born and raised in northern California.
Red Hen Press is a place for writers’ work to be published and celebrated; a literary family for a diversity of voices that articulate the variety of human experience. The Press has been in partnership with Beach=Culture since the 2009 opening season. redhen.org

Beach=Culture programs are made possible by Santa Monica Cultural Affairs. smgov.net/arts #ArtSaMo
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Stop by early to save your seat and check out the historic site. Picnickers welcome (no pets, alcohol or glass permitted onsite.) 

Tickets are free but space is limited and reservations are required. Arrive by 15 min before start time to retain your reservation. Late seating, even for reservation-holders, is not guaranteed. To adjust or cancel your reservation for this event, email [email protected]. We appreciate your keeping in touch!

Getting Here: The Beach House is located at 415 Pacific Coast Highway, Santa Monica, CA 90402 on the west side of Pacific Coast Highway. Enter off PCH at the Beach House Way traffic light.

Parking: The parking rate is Apr - Oct: $12/day or $3/hour; Nov - Mar: $8/day or $3/hour, payable at the park and pay machines in three areas of the ACBH parking lot. Credit cards or exact change only. Handicapped placards and Senior Beach Permits are accepted. For other parking info and lot hours, please check the website for details.

Other events: To view & make reservations for future free Beach=Culture events, check annenbergbeachhouse.com/beachculture.

General Info: For hours, events and more, visit annenbergbeachhouse.com, or call (310) 458-4904. Back on the Beach Café hours are subject to change but are generally through 8pm in the summer and 3pm in the off season, call (310) 393-8282 to confirm.