Readers & Writers in Conversation
In preparation for a conversation with Annex Arts artist-in-residence, Julia Bouwsma and scholar, curator, and performance artist Myron Beasley.
Read:
Midden by Julia Bouwsma (2018)
Julia Bouwsma has just been announced by Governor Mills as Maine’s sixth Poet Laureate and lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is also a farmer, freelance editor, critic, and small-town librarian. She is the author of two poetry collections: Midden and Work. She is the recipient of the 2018 Maine Literary Award; the 2016-2017 Poets Out Loud Prize and the 2015 Cider Press Review Book Award. Her poems and book reviews can be found in Grist, Poetry Northwest, RHINO, River Styx, and other journals. A former Managing Editor for Alice James Books, Bouwsma currently serves as Book Review Editor for Connotation Press: An Online Artifact and as Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, Maine.
Myron Beasley is an Associate Professor in the areas of American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Bates College. His ethnographic research includes exploring the intersection of cultural politics and art and social change, as he believes in the power of artists and recognizes them as cultural workers; He has conducted fieldwork in Morocco, Brazil, the US, and currently in Haiti. The Andy Warhol Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and most recently the Reed Foundation (The Ruth Landes Award), have awarded him fellowships and grants, for his ethnographic writing about art and cultural engagement. He has also been recognized for his teaching (awarded teaching awards) and works in the area of pedagogy from the International Communication Association, Ohio University, and Brown University. His writing has appeared in many academic journals including The Journal of Poverty (which he served as guest editor for a special issue on the topic of Art and Social Policy), Text and Performance Quarterly, Museum & Social Issues, The Journal of Curatorial Studies, Gastronomica, ELSE and Performance Research. He is also an international curator.