GREETINGS, GARDEN STATE DENIZENS.

We’re heading down the tunnel and crossing the Hudson to pop-up and set-up shop for the Newark Arts Council Open Doors Citywide Arts Festival. We’re showcasing Asian American writers and encouraging attendees to share their voices – New Jersey, we want to get better acquainted. How’s this for a first date? We’ll be joined by Nidhi Thakur and Amanda Levie, a few of the powerful voices behind In Full Color (Art House Productions, 2015), an all women of color annual performance, for a brief reading and discussion moderated by Eileen Ramos on how we write, why we write, and what we write about. Grab a seat and get experimental on introductory zine-making and flash fiction workshops—you are among the writers of tomorrow.

Open Doors welcomes residents and tourists to participate in Newark’s biggest festival of the visual arts and other art forms. For four days, Newark’s bustling arts scene will explode with an array of exhibits, talk-backs, performances, street displays, studio open houses, and more. The citywide arts tour and community event celebrates Newark’s unique and diverse contributions to the arts and to American culture. More than 40 venues will join forces to showcase visual, performing, and literary art. The Newark Arts Council was created to advance and expand the artistic and cultural resources of the City of Newark, New Jersey. Their mission is to bring the transformative power of the arts into the lives of those who live in, work in, and visit Newark through programs, advocacy, promotion, education, and coordination.

Gallery Aferro’s mission is to bring cultural education and aesthetic engagement with contemporary issues to all people equally, and to create an environment where artists can gather and share physical and intellectual resources in an arts community that is available to everyone, without sacrificing standards or quality of experience.

Summer Dawn Hortillosa is a an award-winning writer, director and actress from Jersey City, NJ. She is the founder of In Full Color, an annual Women’s History Month event featuring women of color sharing their stories. As a woman of Chinese, Spanish and Filipino descent, she knows just how hard it can be for WOC to find platforms to share their real experiences. She is also the director of Thinking In Full Color, their offshoot educational outreach program, and is the co-founder of 68 Productions.

Eileen Ramos is a queer Filipina American writer with bipolar disorder. Her work focuses on her evolving identity between psychoses and this reality. She is the head event and donation space coordinator for The Asian American Literary Review’s Open in Emergency: A Special Issue on Asian American Mental Health, which will be published in Spring 2017.

Nidhi Thakur was born and raised in a picturesque valley town of Dehradun in North India, in a largely all women household. She moved to the US for graduate work, has a Ph.D in Economics from University of Arizona and a Post-Doc in Health Economics at the University of Chicago. She remembers, rejoices, reads, and writes. Her recent poem was published in the anthology In Full Color (Art House Productions 2016) and has just finished the final draft of her manuscript—a debut collection of short stories on immigrant sensibilities and tales of longing.

Amanda Levie is the founder of No Peeking LLC, a blind live arts company. She graduated from Kean University with a BA in Theater.

HOURS
Friday, October 21, 5-9pm
Saturday, October 22, 12-6pm
Sunday, October 23, 12-5pm

SCHEDULE TBA

DIRECTIONS
85 Market Street
Newark, NJ 07102

Accessible by Newark Penn Station.
WALKING
Newark Penn’s Market Street exit, go down Market Street to 85 Market Street, a 15 minute walk.

FROM NEW YORK PENN STATION to NEWARK PENN STATION
Take the NJ Transit lines (Northeast Corridor, North Jersey, or Raritan), about 20 minutes in transit.

NJ TRANSPORTATION
Take Amtrack/PATH/Newark Light Rail

Open to the public
& writers of all ages, races, and genres
RESERVE A SEAT!
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