Readings & Artist Talk: Michael Patrick MacDonald, Marcus Wicker and Lauren Ewing

In addition to 100 open-enrollment workshops in visual arts and creative writing, the Fine Arts Work Center Summer Program offers free, nightly readings and artist talks for the community. Books will be available for purchase and signing, cash and cards are accepted.

Michael Patrick MacDonald is the author of the New York Times Bestselling memoir, All Souls: A Family Story From Southie and Easter Rising: A Memoir of Roots and Rebellion. He serves as Distinguished Professor of the Practice at Northeastern University’s Honors Department for which he leads a “Dialogue of Civilizations” cohort to post-conflict Derry & Belfast, in the North of Ireland. At Harvard University he teaches Restorative & Transformative Justice movements. At the grassroots level, MacDonald teaches his community-based writing and healing curriculum, The Rest of the Story, working alongside fellow survivors of poverty, violence & the drug trade to transform trauma & find voice on and off the page. He is working on his third book, due out next year.

Lauren Ewing is a sculptor, installation artist and imagist. Her art addresses the vast construct of material culture in relation to memory, seeing and nature. She has shown in Germany; Denmark; London; Australia; PS#1; Castelli Graphics; The New Museum; Hirshhorn Museum; Diane Brown, Sonnabend, and John Weber Galleries in NYC and Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown. Her work is in MoMA, the Metropolitan, San Diego Contemporary, Chase Manhattan Bank, and many other public and private collections.

Marcus Wicker is the author of Maybe the Saddest Thing (Harper Perennial), selected by DA Powell for the National Poetry Series. Wicker’s awards include a 2011 Ruth Lilly Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, as well as fellowships from Cave Canem, and The Fine Arts Work Center. His work has appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Third Coast, Ninth Letter, and many other magazines. Marcus is assistant professor of English at University of Southern Indiana and poetry editor of Southern Indiana Review. He serves as director of the New Harmony Writers Workshop.