The Yard | 2017 Yard Arts Summer Season | H.O.W.: an Art and Literary Journal CONTACT: David R White 508-338-2019 Alison Manning 646-696-1768 Sofia Strempek (press inquiries) 415-572-7465 Information, Tickets & Groups 508-645-9662 FOR IMMEDIATE LISTING and RELEASE July 13, 2017 GAME OF (LITERARY) THRONES: RULING WRITERS FACE OFF WITH FLUENT DTY DANCERS AS H.O.W. JOURNAL WRITES AND READS FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE WORLD’S ORPHANS Featuring Writers: Daphne Merkin, Amy Kurzweil, Victoria Redel, John Reed, and Tiphanie Yanique. “H.O.W. Journal…promotes via an all-star cast of editors and excellent contributions awareness of the 15 million children orphaned by HIV/AIDS” – Library Journal “The Vineyard is such a natural home for writers. We wanted to invite some fresh blood onto the island. Voices that haven’t been heard here before.” — Alison Weaver, Executive Editor, HOW Journal H.O.W.: an Art and Literary Journal Twigs, Trees, and Trailblazers Tuesday, July 25, 2017, 6:30-10pm Location: The Yard, 1 The Yard, Middle Road, Chilmark, MA 02535 Tickets: Levels: Maya Angelou: $500 (Includes 6 tickets and a reserved table, VIP seating for the performance, names listed in the program and H.O.W. Journal website), Virginia Woolf: $200 (1 ticket to the event, VIP seating for the performance, names listed in the program and H.O.W. Journal website), Audre Lorde: $100 (1 ticket to the event, and a copy of H.O.W. Issue 13), Gertrude Stein: $50 (1 ticket to the event), Sylvia Plath: $20 (Island/Student Ticket) This event is co-presented by The Yard and H.O.W. Journal. All ticket proceeds go to H.O.W. Journal. Tickets available at: http://www.dancetheyard.org/how-journal17. SEATING IS LIMITED! In collaboration with The Yard for the second year in a row, H.O.W. Journal invites you to Twigs, Trees, and Trailblazers, a festive benefit fundraiser event and celebration of HOW Journal's Issue 13. H.O.W. Journal was founded in 2006 and is an art and literary journal that publishes an eclectic mix of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art of prominent and upcoming writers with an effort to 1 The Yard | 2017 Yard Arts Summer Season | H.O.W.: an Art and Literary Journal raise money for needy children throughout the world. This year, H.O.W. Journal marries dance with literature and honors fearless women throughout history. The event includes dance pieces by Alison Manning and Jesse Keller Jason´s company, DanceTheYard, and readings by acclaimed writers Daphne Merkin, Amy Kurzweil, Victoria Redel, John Reed, and Tiphanie Yanique. Complimentary dinner and cocktails will be available. H.O.W. Journal is a participant in the community-driven celebration of equality and diversity in Pride, Not Prejudice 2017. ABOUT ALISON WEAVER Alison Weaver is the founder and executive editor of the literary and art journal, H.O.W., the proceeds of which go to support needy children throughout the world. Weaver is also the author of the memoir, Gone To The Crazies, published by HarperCollins in 2006. Her short fiction has been published in Opium Magazine, Small Spiral Notebook, Red China, The Fifth Street Review and Ins and Outs Magazine. In 2016, her short story, Paramour, was a finalist for the Narrative Fiction Prize. She currently teaches weekend workshops at The New School University, and lives in New York City with her wife and three daughters. ABOUT DANCETHEYARD DanceTheYard (DTY) is The Yard’s resident dance collective. Co-directors and choreographers Alison Manning, The Yard’s Executive Director, and Jesse Keller, The Yard’s Director of Island Programs & Education (with Artistic Advisor David R. White), have been building a body of work and presenting an annual weekend of performances each summer, as part of the Yard Arts season. DTY is comprised of professionals living on Martha’s Vineyard and in New York City, and each member has become a part of The Yard’s greater service mission: working together to present performances for the public, participating in educational residencies and dance making programs for children and adults, along with other community based events around Martha’s Vineyard. Each component of DTY’s work contributes to The Yard’s overarching mission of support for emerging choreographers through residency and financial support, dance and related arts presentations, and a commitment to arts education in the local and national communities. DTY’s directors have created an emerging body of work and a collective of professional artists who are committed to seeing the work presented in the local and national dance arena. ABOUT DAPHNE MERKIN Daphne Merkin is the author of the novel Enchantment, which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for best novel on a Jewish theme. Merkin has also written two books of essays, Dancing with Hitler and The Fame Lunches, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, as well as This Close to Happy: A Reckoning with Depression. She has been a film critic for The New Yorker and is a regular writer for Elle. Her essays and reviews appear in countless periodicals including Elle, Bookforums, Tablet Magazine, Vogue, Departures, T, Travel + Leisure, and The New York Times Magazine, among others. Merkin has taught writing at the 92nd Street Y, Marymount College and Hunter College. ABOUT AMY KURZWEIL Amy Kurzweil is the author and artist of Flying Couch: a group memoir. Her graphic work has appeared in The New Yorker, Mutha Magazine, Narrative zzzszzzZ, and other places. Her short fiction has been published in The Toast, Washington Square Review, Shenandoah and elsewhere. Kurzweil teaches writing and comics at Parsons and the Fashion Institute of Technology. 2 The Yard | 2017 Yard Arts Summer Season | H.O.W.: an Art and Literary Journal ABOUT VICTORIA REDEL Victoria Redel is the author of three books of poetry and five books of fiction. Her new novel, Before Everything, will be out in June 2017 and is forthcoming in the U.K., France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Turkey and China. Her novel The Border of Truth, weaves the situation of refugees and a daughter’s awakening to the history and secrets of her father’s survival and loss. This book was part of the Barnes and Noble Great New Writers Discovery Selection. Loverboy was awarded the 2001 S. Mariella Gable Novel Award, the 2002 Forward Silver Literary Fiction Prize, and was chosen in 2001 as a Los Angeles Times Best Book. Loverboy was adapted for a feature film directed by Kevin Bacon. Her other book Swoon, was a finalist for the James Laughlin Award and her work has been widely anthologized and translated. Redel’s fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and journals including Granta.com. Harvard Review, The Quarterly, The Literarian, The New York Times, The L.A. Times, O the Oprah magazine, Elle, Bomb, More and NOON. Redel is on the graduate and undergraduate faculty of Sarah Lawrence College. She has taught in the Graduate Writing Programs of Columbia University and Vermont College. Redel was the McGee Professor at Davidson College. She has received fellowships from The Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment For The Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center. ABOUT JOHN REED John Reed is the author of the novels, A Still Small Voice, The Whole, the SPD bestseller, Snowball's Chance, All The World's A Grave: A New Play By William Shakespeare, Tales of Woe, and Free Boat: Collected Lies and Love Poems. He received a fellowship from Columbia University with an MFA in Creative Writing, where he published in Artnet, the Brooklyn Rail, Tin House, Paper Magazine, Artforum, Hyperallergic, Bomb Magazine, Art in America, the PEN Poetry Series, the Los Angeles Times, the Believer, the Rumpus, the Daily Beast, Gawker, Slate, the Paris Review, the Times Literary Supplement, the Wall Street Journal, ElectricLit, Vice, The New York Times, and Harpers. His work has been translated into German, French, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Korean, and Latvian among others and his performances, workshops, and readings of plays have been presented in New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Texas, including the Public Theater in NYC, the Brooklyn Books Festival, and a two-term member of the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle. Currently, he serves as faculty at The New School University and The New York Arts Program. ABOUT TIPHANIE YANIQUE Tiphanie Yanique is the author of the poetry collection, Wife, which won the 2016 Bocas Prize in Caribbean poetry and the United Kingdom’s 2016 Forward/Felix Dennis Prize for a First Collection. She is also the author of the novel, Land of Love and Drowning, which won the 2014 Flaherty- Dunnan First Novel Award from the Center for Fiction, the Phillis Wheatley Award for Pan-African Literature, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, and was listed by NPR as one of the Best Book of 2014. Land of Love and Drowning was also a finalist for the Orion Award in Environmental Literature and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. Yanique is also the author of a collection of stories, How to Escape from a Leper Colony, which won her a listing as one of the National Book Foundation’s 5Under35. Her writing has also won the Bocas Award for Caribbean Fiction, the Boston Review Prize in Fiction, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship and an Academy of American Poet’s Prize. She has been listed by the Boston Globe as one of the sixteen cultural figures to watch out for and her writing 3 The Yard | 2017 Yard Arts Summer Season | H.O.W.: an Art and Literary Journal has been published in the New York Times, Best African American Fiction, The Wall Street Journal, American Short Fiction and other places.