Join the creative team behind A Late Style of Fire for a breakfast salon and talk.
A Late Style of Fire is the first documentary film to explore the life and work of renowned American poet Larry Levis (1946 - 1996) and features original music by Iron & Wine.
Director/Producer Michele Poulos and Producer Greg Donovan will discuss the filmmaking process, the joys and difficulties of diving into Levis's life story, and the growing importance of Levis to American poetry.
RSVP is required.
ABOUT THE FILM
The brilliant writing and troubled life of Californian Larry Levis came to an abrupt halt when he died at age 49. Is self-destruction required for a serious life of art? Featuring an original score by Iron and Wine and film excerpts by award-winning Spanish filmmaker Lois Patiño, this innovative documentary explores his childhood working alongside Mexican-American field hands, three marriages, friendships with America’s greatest poets, and his own words for answers.
Featured poets include US Poet Laureate Philip Levine, US Poet Laureate Charles Wright, Carolyn Forché, David St. John, Carol Muske-Dukes, Norman Dubie, Colleen McElroy, Gerald Stern, Stanley Plumly, Kathleen Graber, and more.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
Michele Poulos (Director/Producer) is an award-winning screenwriter, award-winning poet, and filmmaker. She earned a BFA in film from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, an MFA in creative writing (fiction) from Virginia Commonwealth University, and an MFA in creative writing (poetry) from Arizona State University. While at NYU, she worked as an intern for Albert Maysles at his production company Maysles Films. Her original screenplay, Mule Bone Blues (about Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes [with consultations by Zora's niece, Lucy Ann Hurston]), won the 2010 Virginia Screenwriting Competition and placed in the second round of the 2015 and 2017 Sundance Screenwriters Lab Competition and the second round of the 2010 Austin Screenplay Competition. Her first full-length poetry collection, Black Laurel, was published by Iris Press in 2016. Her poetry chapbook, A Disturbance in the Air, won the 2012 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition. She recently completed co-writing a romantic comedy about a stand-up comic.
Gregory Donovan (Producer) is the author of Torn from the Sun (Red Hen Press, April, 2015) and Calling His Children Home (University of Missouri Press), which won the Devins Award for Poetry. His poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, New England Review, 42opus, diode, Crazyhorse, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Gulf Coast, Copper Nickel, and many other journals, as well as in a number of anthologies, including Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets of Virginia (University of Virginia Press). Among other awards for his writing, he is the recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Award from New England Writers, as well as grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and fellowships from the Ucross Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.Donovan is on the faculty of the graduate creative writing program of Virginia Commonwealth University, where he has often served as its Director of Creative Writing, and he is Senior Editor for Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts.