Official uVu Blog

Windy City Retreat

Fresh from Chicago, South Florida's gain is Jenny McKnight who will be performing at the Mosaic Theatre in Plantation for the next month.

The play, "Dusk Rings a Bell," is a South Florida premiere rom the playwright Stephen Belber.

Here's a chance to hear from Jenny about her live on stage and the last production at the Mosaic.

 

Poetry for Black History Month

Miami Dade College’s Hialeah campus faculty hosted an open mic poetry reading event on February 8, 2010 for Black History Month. The event brought out about 25 students, Student Life’s very own Nelson Magana, campus president Norma M. Goonen and several professors including Victor Calderin. One by one, each student or faculty member came up to the lectern to speak to us about a poem that spoke to them. Some recited classic poems like Maya Angelou’s ‘Still I Rise’ while others showed off original works. Most of the poems were short but in this case, quantity did not necessarily equal quality. Whether short or long, published or original, well-known or unfamiliar, each poem carried with it a sense of power and emotion that its reader helped to solidify. Although many of the students seemed to be underclassmen, their demeanor and shy extroversion helped to make the event what it was. It was real, unstructured and open. It seemed to elicit a “Come as you are” type of feeling. And students did just that. They poured their hearts out for the world (or in this case, a group of peers) to hear. And what resulted was raw human emotion shown off to the core. This was one of the first events, if not the first, that Hialeah campus organizers have had for Black History Month this year. More events are scheduled at this campus, as well as the seven others, throughout the month of February. More information is available at http://www.mdc.edu.

By Danny Carratala 

A Lincoln Town Hall: Lincoln, Miami and the American Dream

"Lincoln, Miami and The American Dream” is one of 11 “Lincoln Town Halls” presented throughout the United States, focused on the 200^th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday and sponsored by the Congressionally established Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, with national funding from the Fetzer Institute. The town hall took place on Sunday, November 1, 2009 in the Knight Concert Hall at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.

A conversation with Edwidge Danticat

Local author Edwidge Danticat, a recent MacArthur ``Genius Award'' winner, spoke at a Florida International University on Sept 30th, 2009.

The Haitian-born author, who received the prestigious award that comes with a prize of $500,000, spoke at an event of the Honors College at the Mary Ann Wolfe Theater on the Biscayne Bay Campus. ``A Conversation with Danticat'' was free and open to the public. Danticat discussed her work, which focuses primarily on Haiti and Haitian culture.

Danticat has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Book Award and the Pushcart Short Story Award.

She holds a B.A. from Barnard College and an M.F.A. from Brown University and has served as a visiting professor of creative writing at New York University and the University of Miami.

Watch the entire conversation on uVu

Tigertail's Wordspeak

Tigertail'sWordSpeak is an ongoing spoken word project for teens that includes workshops in writing and performing, and public events such as open mics, poetry slams and readings. Each year Tigertail's WordSpeak sends a team to the national teen spoken word slam and festival Brave New Voices. This year's WordSpeak includes a weeklong residency for teens with Mayda del Valle, a writer and performer who recounts deeply personal narratives steeped with the cadence and beats of her Puerto Rican heritage. Del Valle has also appeared on HBO's Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry and in the Broadway version.