Sky. Pond. Mouth. Book Launch
May 8
ACT will be hosting the book launch for Hemispheres, a collection of poetry produced by ACT staff member, Kevin McLellan. The event will feature a series of poetry readings, musical performances, and a film screening by a group of other artists and writers as well as the author.
Nancy Dayanne Valladares (b. Tegucigalpa, Honduras). Her work engages the colonial legacies and agricultural histories of Honduras through the lens of human and non-human migration. Her ongoing project Botanical Ghosts traces the voyage of the Ackee tree or Blighia Sapida. Deeply entangled with the colonial landscape of the Caribbean; the Ackee tree’s story of botanical exchange unearths the crossing of non-human migrants and their submerged histories. Nancy is in her second year of the ACT Master of Science in Art, Culture and Technology program.
Thera Webb is a poet and anarchist. Her work can be found in Forklift Ohio, Finery, No Infinite, Hinchas de Poesia, and in Privacy Policy, The Anthology of Surveillance Poetics. She is the author of two chapbooks: Reality Asylum (h_ngm_n) and On the Shoulders of the Bear (Fractious Press). Previously the managing editor for Black Ocean, she is currently working on a novel, a memoir, and a full length poetry collection. Thera is a Project Archivist at ACT.
The Mystery appears–but can never be solved. Manifesting in the form of guitar, loop pedal, cheap theatrics, words, and vox, The Mystery’s “songs” are divined by forces greater than earth or death or life or time or infinity or Chaos and brought into a form commonly understood to be sound. The Mystery’s first release, Eternity Without Limits, is on Bandcamp. The Mystery’s spokesmodel, manager, and assistant Gilmore Tamny’s book of poems HAIKU4U was published in 2019, she plays with local band Weather Weapon, listens to a lot of audiobooks, is interested in art crime, and just generally wants to know what people had for breakfast.
Kevin McLellan is the author of Hemispheres (Fact-Simile Editions, 2019), Ornitheology (The Word Works, 2018), [box] (Letter [r] Press, 2016), Tributary (Barrow Street, 2015), and Round Trip (Seven Kitchens, 2010). He won the 2015 Third Coast Poetry Prize and Gival Press’ 2016 Oscar Wilde Award, and his poems appear in numerous literary journals including: Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, West Branch, Western Humanities Review, and others. Also, with Laura Knott, he co- wrote, co-directed, and co-produced a short experimental film titled, Exordium. Kevin lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is the Financial Assistant at ACT.
