Watershed Reading Series

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courtesy Arts + Literature Laboratory

Nikki Wallschlaeger

In a grand opening shindig originally planned for fall 2020, Arts + Literature Laboratory is finally getting to celebrate its new space at 111 S. Livingston St., in the heart of Madison’s new culture hotspot on the near east side. The weekend kicks off with a Gallery Night reception (5-9 p.m. Nov. 12) for current exhibits by Jason S. Yi and Alice Y. Traore, also featuring Bridge Work artists and ALL studio residents. Concerts include the Arts Quartet (3 p.m., Nov. 13) and the Emma Dayhuff Trio (7 p.m., Nov. 14), and the Watershed Reading Series continues with poets Nikki Wallschlaeger and Ellen Samuels (7 p.m., Nov. 13). The weekend also includes workshops focusing on screen printing, Anishinaabe/Métis beadwork and medicine bundle making, hip-hop dance and fabric dyeing. Everything is free to attend; find more details at artlitlab.org.

media release: We're thrilled to (finally!) host our first Watershed Reading in the gorgeous new space! We're bringing in one of Wisconsin's most exciting up-and-coming poets Nikki Wallschlaeger with Madison's own talented poet and essayist Ellen Samuels. Both have new books out which are available through our Bookshop affiliate site and in the smALL Press Library. 

This special reading is part of ALL's Open House weekend, which kicks off on Gallery Night with a reception for Jason Yi. Check out our calender for more events!

Nikki Wallschlaeger’s work has been featured in The Nation, Brick, American Poetry Review, Witness, Kenyon Review, Poetry, and others. She is the author of the full-length collections Houses (Horseless Press 2015)  and Crawlspace (Bloof 2017) as well as the graphic book I Hate Telling You How I Really Feel (2019) from Bloof Books. She is also the author of an artist book called Operation USA through the Baltimore-based book arts group Container, a project acquired by Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee. Her third collection Waterbaby is available from Copper Canyon Press. 

Ellen Samuels earned her M.F.A. at Cornell University and has published poetry and creative nonfiction in numerous journals including Nimrod, Mid-American Review, Disability Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of the American Medical Association, and in a chapbook, December Morning (Finishing Line Press, 2004). She has received two Lambda Literary Awards and a Pushcart nomination and is currently an Associate Professor in the departments of English and Gender &Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She enjoys biting off more than she can chew, so she is working on three books right now, a poetry collection titled Hypermobilities, a memoir titled Body of Mine: A Memoir in Genetic Sequence, and a hybrid scholarly and creative nonfiction book called Sick Time: Disability, Chronicity, Futurity. She lives in Madison, WI, with her partner, her son, and a dog named Krypto.