1,000 Words one year anniversary! And Farewell My Lovely Hein

Well, with teaching and writing and more teaching and more writing and more parenting, man I've been away awhile. But welcome to our upcoming reading! We're celebrating a year of fastidious writing and reading while drinking wine, etc. Here's the press release for our reading on Monday, November 3--come out and take your mind off of the election the next day!
XO,
Mel
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 1,000 WORDS ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY READING AND MATTHEW HATTIE HEIN BON VOYAGE PARTY
7PM, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3 AT THE MAIDEN, 639 SE MORRISON STREET (503-232-5553)
CONTACT: MEL FAVARA, 971-506-3340, mel.favara@gmail.com

Please join the 1,000 Words Reading Series for our one-year anniversary and local all-around performer Matthew Hattie Hein’s bon voyage party. Four great writers—Matthew Hattie Hein, Kristy Athens, Parker Staley, and Geneva Chao, will each read four tiny pieces written for the occasion over the past month, based on a set of prompts and arbitrary rules provided by series curator Mel Favara on the theme TRANSIT. It will be fast and fancy if not furious. Vancouver emo-punk trio We Play Quiet will also play.

Reader Bios
Geneva Chao's work has appeared in Satellite Telephone, Boxkite, Aught, Transfer, Diagram, Can We Have Our Ball Back?, and a host of other magazines you may not have heard of. Her chapbook National, Anthem is forthcoming from Oakland's Taxt Press. She is hoping for a Bay Bridge series in 2009 and agrees with Marianne Moore about baseball: "Studded with stars in belt and crown,/the Stadium is an adastrium./O flashing Orion,/your stars are muscled like the lion."

Kristy Athens is a freelance writer and editor who writes short fiction from a small farm near Husum, Washington. She coordinates the Columbia Center for the Arts Plein Air Writing Exhibition and serves on the board of the Hood River County Cultural Trust. From 1999 to 2006, she ran the Oregon Book Awards and Oregon Literary Fellowships programs of Literary Arts. Her work has been published in a number of magazines, newspapers and literary journals, including Poor Mojo’s Alamanc(k), 2 Gyrlz Quarterly apt and forthcoming in Greenbeard.

Parker Staley was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and is a descendant of British Lieutenant Robert Maynard, who struck the first of the blows that felled Blackbeard. Also, he (not Maynard) almost drowned in the Deschutes once, as a child, some time ago. He has an MFA from New Mexico State University.

Matthew Hattie Hein bikes to and from PSU, where he teaches English.
He contributes to the PDX Writer Daily (www.pdxwriting.blogspot.com),
and recently published musings on Portland hipster houses in Oregon
Humanities magazine. His thoughts on the parlor game Psychic
Dictionary appeared in the last issue of Verb, and he occasionally
sings on 7" records.

We Play Quiet: August, 2006 saw the birth of a fantastic thing. I'll give you a hint: it wasn't babies. We Play Quiet is the trio of Zachary Holcomb, Reid Trevarthen, and Ethan Camp playing their own blend of the 80's, the 90's, the Weakerthans, and Weezer. This will be their fourth installment of 1000 Words; as usual, they have written a song that includes all of the prompts, in order.

We've Been Away Too Long

But are back. The next reading goes down Monday, September 8 at the Maiden. Featured readers will include Jill Stukenberg, Joe Pitkin, Kate Schwab, and Eric Stern, taking a break from fronting Vagabond Opera to write words without music. Our house band We Play Quiet has been busy--they just played on KPSU & threw us a nice shout out--listen to their music & musings here: http://archive.kpsu.org/. Our next theme is Beginnings, so get ready to begin tearing things up, I guess. My daughter turned 2 since the last reading, and I'm finding it not at all terrible.
XO,
Mel
PS:
Here is the first prompt for the next reading--write it up if you want and let me know what you make.

Rules:
Your weekly piece should be veryclose to 250 words.
You may write each piece in the genre of your choice; you may write in
a different genre for each piece; you may write entirely disconnected
pieces, or pieces that hang together in a theme or plotline--writers
have succeeded wildly doing any/all of the above.
I will provide a phrase and several words as the prompt: you must use
the phrase and all of the words, but feel free to change person,
number, tense, or grammatical role as you like. I remember "nail"
particularly as a word people had fun with.
Keep the month's theme, BEGINNING, in mind as you write. Sort of near
the front of your mind.

And so, the prompt: write 250 words this week including the phrase

It is difficult to learn that you know nothing about

and the words
pry
erase
wing
table
and flurry.

Dreadfully Late

We're doing this all again tonight, Monday, July 14--many excellent readers and We Play Quiet at the intermission. Come early for good seats, and look for prompts & responses soon.

Major highlight of May Reading

Was the band's contribution at halftime. I made so bold as to ask a former student if his band might play the show and cc'ed him on the prompts as I sent them out. He and his bandmate chose to write a 6-minute epic song including all of the prompts IN ORDER to play at intermission. They've recorded a rough cut of it, which about killed the house. It was sort of like I imagine seeing the Clash when they were playing in the basement must have been. Go here to hear it! Or more easily, just click on We Play Quiet on the links to your right--it will play automatically.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=133130725

You'll be changed. May reading plus July readers & bios soon.

The July reading: Regrets

Look for goods in the next few days. Also, the folks who did May were kind enough to let me publish their findings, but my old laptop crashed for good this week & I have to recreate the document from email. Soon!

Final prompt

when I thought I couldn't take any more, I found myself taking more

words

flush
crank
refill
sped

Third prompt

Phrase:

It has come to this, a thumbnail paring

words

ashen
clove
fidget
turnof