Saturday, March 27: BONK!

Saturday, March 27 from 6-8pm, the Racine Public Library will once again host "BONK!", the free monthly performance series that has quickly become an established entertainment event in downtown Racine. Now being held at the Racine Arts Council, 316 Sixth St., the series was created to expose the public to both local and nationally-recognized artistic talents. Each event showcases poets, writers, musicians, film makers and other talented artists. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. with seating available on a first come/first served basis. Each BONK! event features a short question and answer session with the artists. Gracing the stage this month will be a unique group of poets and musicians. Join us for performances by poet JULIE STRAND, poet MAURICE KILWEIN GUEVARA, and musician WORTH HAWES.

Julie Strand, Education Coordinator at Woodland Pattern Book Center and editorial assistant for the innovative poetry publisher Tarpaulin Sky, is a resident of Milwaukee, WI. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the literary journals Caffeine Destiny, FOURSQUARE Editions, Wicked Alice, Arsenic Lobster, WOMB Poetry, BOO: A Journal of Terrific Things, Cant Journal and others. Julie's second chapbook, The Mae West Defense was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2009. In 2008, her poem "Neon Yellow" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Maurice Kilwein Guevara was born in Belencito, Colombia in 1961 and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, where he teaches in the MA and PhD Programs in Creative Writing as well as in the Latino Studies Program. His first book of poetry, Postmortem (U. of GA Press), won the National Contemporary Poetry Series Competition and was published in 1994. He has also written three other collections: Poems of the River Spirit (Pitt Poetry Series, 1996), Autobiography of So-and-so: Poems in Prose (New Issues Press, 2001), and POEMA, (University of Arizona Press, 2009). A dynamic presenter of his own work, Kilwein Guevara has given poetry performances and workshops in Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Spain, Cuba, Ecuador, and throughout the United States. His work has appeared in a number of poetry journals including in Poetry, Ploughshares, Exquisite Corpse, Kenyon Review, among others. His poetry has been anthologized in Touching the Fire: Fifteen Poets of Today's Latino Renaissance (Anchor/Doubleday), American Poetry: the Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon University Press), The New American Poets: a Bread Loaf Anthology (U. Press of New England), and No Boundaries: Prose Poems by 24 American Poets (Tupelo Press), among others.

Worth Hawes has been playing guitar for over 25 years, generally as a hobbyist, and occasionally as a performer. A native of the many places in the southeastern United States, he moved with his wife and two children to Racine nearly five years ago. While the most obvious reason for moving to town was for his wife's job at SC Johnson, secretly, his primary goal was to move to the mecca of fingerstyle guitar that is southeastern Wisconsin. Worth's music has many influences, but his original acoustic compositions probably owe most to his upbringing amidst the sounds of Appalachia and his long-running appreciation for the music of Leo Kottke. Worth is a proud graduate of Lake Forest College in nearby Lake Forest, IL and has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Vanderbilt University. For the past 11 years he's worked in a variety of roles in higher education publishing.

Local artists and performers are encouraged to consider sharing their talent/craft with the community via the BONK! series. For more information on how to participate or to view video of past performances please visit http://bonkperformanceseries.wordpress.com. You may also contact the Racine Public Library at 262.619.2571, Becky Spika at becky.spika@racinelibrary.info or Nick Demske at nick.demske@racinelibrary.info.

BONK! is sponsored by Gary's Music World, The Racine Arts Council, and the Racine Public Library.