Spring 2024 Events
First Fridays at Furious Flower Broadside Gallery | April 5 & May 3 | 5-7 p.m. | Cardinal House, 500 Cardinal Dr.
Join us for another Arts Council of the Valley First Friday Downtown Art Tour reception featuring our seventh exhibition, El Ánimo: Exploring Afro-Latinx Poets, curated by Iliana Cosme-Brooks on Friday, April 5 and Friday, May 3 from 5-7 p.m. at Furious Flower Poetry Center, Cardinal House, 500 Cardinal Dr. Light refreshments provided. Free and open to the public.
Mahogany L. Browne: Poetry Reading | April 4 | 5:30 p.m. | Grafton/Stovall
JMU Honors College and Furious Flower Poetry Center are thrilled to announce a reading by award-winning poet, curator, and author Mahogany L. Browne on Thursday, April 4 at 5:30 p.m. in Grafton/Stovall Theatre at James Madison University. Browne, selected as Kennedy Center's Next 50 and Weseleyan's 2022-23 Distinguished Writer-in-Residence, the Executive Director of JustMedia, Artistic Director of Urban Word, a writer, playwright, organizer, and educator. Browne has received fellowships from Arts for Justice, Air Serenbe, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research, and Rauschenberg. She is the author of recent works: Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky, Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, Woke Baby, and Black Girl Magic. Founder of the diverse lit initative Woke Baby Book Fair, Browne's latest poetry collection Chrome Valley is a promissory note to survival and available from Norton.
This event will be livestreamed and recorded. It is free and open to the public. This is a JMU Passport event.
A Reading & Conversation with Shane McCrae | March 21 | 7 p.m. | Wilson Auditorium (Wilson)
Join us Wednesday, March 21 at 7 p.m. in Wilson Hall Auditorium at James Madison University for a reading and conversation with Shane McCrae, award-winning poet and memoirist. McCrae's most recent books of poetry are Cain Named the Animal, a finalist for the Forward Prize and longlisted for the PEN/Voelcker Award, and The Many Hundreds of the Scent. His memoir, Pulling the Chariot of the Sun, was published in 2023. That same year, he was awarded the Arthur Rense Poetry Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His other awards include a Lannan Literary Award and a Whiting Writer's Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.
This event will be livestreamed and recorded. This is a JMU Passport Event.
First Fridays at Furious Flower Broadside Gallery | March 1 | 5-7 p.m. | Cardinal House, 500 Cardinal Dr.
Join us for another Arts Council of the Valley First Friday Downtown Art Tour reception featuring the continuation of our sixth exhibition, Shades of Strength: Black Women's Resistance, curated by Furious Flower Carmen R. Gillespie Fellows India Williams and Taylor Nauflett on Friday, March 1 from 5-7 p.m. at Furious Flower Poetry Center, Cardinal House, 500 Cardinal Dr. Light refreshments provided. Free and open to the public.
Sean Hill: Faculty & Staff Workshop | February 23 | 12-1:15 p.m. | Pathways (Wine-Price)
Faculty and staff of James Madison University are invited to join us for a writing workshop with poet Sean Hill on February 23 from 12-1:15 in Pathways in the Wine-Price building at James Madison University. RSVP via email to attend.
Sean Hill: Poetry Reading | Febraury 22 | 5 p.m. | Highlands Room (Festival)
Join us for our first poetry reading of the 2024 Spring semester featuring Sean Hill, the author of Dangerous Goods, awarded the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, and Blood Ties & Brown Liquor, named one of the Ten Books All Georgians Should Read in 2015 by the Georgia Center for the Book. Hill's poems and essays have appeared in Callaloo, Harvard Review, New England Review, Orion, Oxford American, Poetry, Terrain.org, Tin House, and numerous other journals, and in almost two dozen anthologies including Black Nature and Villanelles. He has served as the director of the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference at Bemidji State University since 2012. Hill is a consulting editor at Broadsided Press, a monthly broadside publisher. He has taught at several universities, including at the University of Alaska – Fairbanks and Georgia Southern University as an Assistant Professor.
The reading will be held on Thursday, February 22 at 5 p.m. in the Highlands Room in the Festival Conference & Student Center at James Madison University and virtually via Facebook Live. The recording will be uploaded to YouTube the following day.
First Fridays at Furious Flower Broadside Gallery | February 2 | 5-7 p.m. | Cardinal House, 500 Cardinal Dr.
Join us for the first Arts Council of the Valley First Friday Downtown Art Tour reception of 2024 featuring the debut of our sixth exhibition, Shades of Strength: Black Women's Resistance, curated by Furious Flower Carmen R. Gillespie Fellows India Williams and Taylor Nauflett on Friday, February 2 from 5-7 p.m. at Furious Flower Poetry Center, Cardinal House, 500 Cardinal Dr. Light refreshments provided. Free and open to the public.
