Schedule of Events
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Touché! A festival affiliated event
October 19, 2019 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
$5.00 – $10.00
Touché
A night of mischief, joymaking, and word games to celebrate the launch of Mount Island, the new magazine for rural LGBTQ+ and POC writers and artists!
TOUCHÉ is a tournament-style game show pitting emerging writers and intrepid laypeople against unique takes on word games and writing exercises.
Contestants compete in five kooky and thought-provoking rounds for the love and mercy of the judges panel and you, the audience—yes, you!
TICKETS:
$5 online to guarantee seating
$5-10 at the door.
No one will be turned away for lack of funds!
TOURNAMENT ROUNDS:
1. TALENT SHOW: Each contestant has a chance to charm the judges and audience with a talent. Any talent.
2. CATEGORY IS…: A take on Scattergories in which the judges crowdsource 3 categories for the contestants to write within.
3. THE DREADED SPANDREL: Contestants scavenge words and phrases from the audience to write the best sentence. The audience will be supplied with paper scraps and pencils, and scattered among you will be lines cut from Mount Island’s new issue.
4. EXQUISITEST CORPSE: The beginning of a story from Mount Island’s new issue is read, and contestants must write the end.
5. COMPLIMENT BATTLE: The two finalists compete for the grand prize in a battle of compliments.
THE JUDGES PANEL:
Franky Frances Cannon is a writer and artist currently living in Vermont, where she teaches at Champlain College, the Shelburne Craft School, and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author and illustrator several books of hybrid text and artwork: Walter Benjamin: Reimagined, MIT Press, The Highs and Lows of Shapeshift Ma and Big-Little Frank, Gold Wake Press, Tropicalia, Vagabond Press, and Uranian Fruit, Honeybee Press. She was born in Utah and has since lived in Oregon, Vermont, California, Maine, Iowa, Italy, Guatemala, France, and Mexico making art and writing books. She has an MFA in creative writing from Iowa and a BFA from the University of Vermont.
Donald Mutebi was born in Uganda and pursued his education in the British-based educational system in Kenya. He has lived in Brattleboro for more than a decade, where he works as a psychiatric nurse and home health-care provider. His song, Aniakumanyi, was a number one hit in Kampala for six months when he was in his twenties, where his nickname was Paragon.
GennaRose Nethercott‘s book The Lumberjack’s Dove (Ecco/HarperCollins) was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series for 2017. She is also the lyricist behind the narrative song collection Modern Ballads, author of Lianna Fled the Cranberry Bog: A Story in Cootie Catchers (Ninepin Press 2019), and is a Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellow. Her writing has appeared widely in journals and anthologies including BOMB, The Massachusetts Review, The Offing, and PANK. A born Vermonter, she tours nationally and internationally performing from her works and composing poems-to-order for strangers on an antique typewriter.
And MC’d by Desmond Peeples, editor in chief of Mount Island!
Touché is a Brattleboro Literary Festival affiliated event.
About Mount Island
Mount Island is a literary magazine and small press dedicated to creating space for rural LGBTQ+ and POC voices to be heard on their own terms and find solidarity in community. Mount Island is a magazine by us, of us, and for anybody who wants to see rural America for all it really is.
Editor-in-Chief
Desmond Peeples‘ fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in Five [Quarterly], Big Bridge, Goreyesque, Hunger Mountain, and elsewhere, and their original music is released independently. They were the founding editor of the literary arts magazine, Mount Island, and currently consult for Green Writers Press. Desmond was born and lives still in Vermont; they received a BA in Creative Writing & Critical Theory from Goddard College while traveling the United States, and they are an MFA candidate at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Learn more at desmondpeeples.com.
Editor-Non-Fiction
Shanta Lee Gander is an artist and multi-faceted professional. Artistic endeavors include prose, poetry, investigative journalism, and photography. Her poetry, prose, and personal essays have been featured in Rebelle Society, on the Ms. Magazine Blog, on her former weekly radio segments Ponder This on Green Mountain Mornings, and in The Commons weekly newspaper. Shanta Lee is an editor at the literary arts magazine Mount Island and co-author of Ghosts of Cuba: An Interracial Couple’s Exploration of Cuba in the Age of Trump—Told in Images & Words (Green Writers Press, October 2019). Shanta has an MBA from the University of Hartford and an undergraduate degree in Women, Gender and Sexuality from Trinity College. She is currently completing her MFA in Creative Non-Fiction and Poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
