new site

Keep up to date with the Allan Street PRINT OUT LOUD! residency on this tumblr we've set up. Follow the day-to-day progress in the gallery and in the print shop. New events every week too so stay in touch.

CLICK HERE!

The Allan Street PRINT OUT LOUD Residency

Eyelevel Gallery and Letter Press Gang of the Dawson Print Shop present:

Print Out Loud! Featuring Artist-in-resident Jenner Brooke-Berger

March 9, 2011 – April 3, 2011

During the Print Out Loud! residency, Jenner-Brooke Berger will create a fiction anthology made up of twenty-four single edition broadsheets. This will be based on readers from the Allan Street Reading Series, each including a small introduction about the featured writers, and a compressed version of the story they read at Allan Street, each accompanied by an illustration.

Throughout the residency Jenner will be present, using the Eyelevel Gallery space as an open studio residency, while accessing the Dawson Printshop to produce a new work. The residency will conclude with a presentation in Halifax, as well as at Thunder & Lightning Ltd. in Sackville, New Brunswik as part of A Handmade Assembly, a four day event dedicated to the handmade.

Schedule of Events:

Friday, March 11th at 6pm - Friendly Neighbourhood Pot Luck Social at Eyelevel Gallery. Come meet artist in residence Jenner-Brooke Berger and bring your own jello mould to share!

Thursday, March 24th at 10pm - Gallery Warming Punk Rock Party - With special musical guests (TBA). At Eyelevel Gallery.

Wednesday, March 30th, 8pm - Allan Street Book Launch, with special guests. A presentation by Jenner-Brooke Berger about her latest production at the Print Out Loud! residency. At Eyelevel Gallery.

Saturday, April 2nd, (time TBA) - Launching event with live spoken word performances as part of A Handmade Assembly at Thunder and Lightling Ltd. in Sackville, NB.

Eyelevel Gallery
2159 Gottingen St.
Halifax Nova Scotia
B2K 3B5
902 425 6412
www.eyelevelgallery.ca

Allan Street has gone on the road.

For me Allan Street is no longer a place, it's an idea. The Allan Street Reading Series has housed literature for many months, and now it will do so in a different way.

Please consider this an OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS. Allan Street will begin to post your poems, short stories, letters, whinges, and voice recordings.

Slowly this website will be adapted into an online resource as I teach myself html and other things (keyword-slowly). Two podcasts of past Allan Streets are also being edited (slowly). Please consider this an operational hiatus while I attempt to continue curating the Allan Street Reading Series ON THE ROAD.

OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Please send your poems, stories, letters, or voice recordings of literature to jennerberger[at]gmail.com. Please include a brief email telling Allan Street a bit about yourself. Cv not required, like, at all. Please send your best draft. If you haven't had any work published before though, you should really really still send it. I'll be able to go over it with you and talk about editing. I don't have a ton of time, but we can definitely put something wonderful together if you put in some work beforehand.

Poetry guidelines: 1-4 poems

Fiction guidelines: Anything over in the 2500-3000 word range will be released in installments. 50-2000ish words is a preferred length.

Letters: Letters, especially back and forth correspondence are loved, cherished and encouraged. Especially if they maintain a narrative but they don't gotta.

Voice Recordings: Video or .mp3 files of you reading something are so highly encouraged.

Email me with any questions. Tell your friends. Allan Street can't offer compensation until she gets her act together and applies for some grants, but until then you can definitely put a publication on your resume.

Press

Don't forget, Rememberer launches tonight
Readings and treats at the Allan Street Reading Series' first book launch.
Posted by Sue Carter Flinn on Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 1:25 PM

Tonight is the launch for Invisible Publishing's Rememberer, at the Allan Street Reading Series. Edited by Jenner Berger, Allan St.'s lovely host, tonight's reading will include Andrew Hood, Laura Dawe, Geordie Miller, Joshua Tibbetts and Berger.

If you can't make it, be sure to stop by the Invisible table at Saturday's Zine Fair, where they'll also have copies of Bats or Swallows, a new collection of stories by Montreal's Teri Vlassopoulos.

Here's more about the book, written by Sean Flinn for our Fall Arts Preview:

Rememberer (Invisible Publishing), combines the convenience of a planner with a collection of short stories from a variety of contributors, plus illustrations (text, visuals and activities) by Yo Rodeo. "I always had this image in my head of someone reading one story after pencilling their to-do list over morning coffee," reveals Jenner-Brooke Berger, who edited the stories. Even with an organizer, life can't always be "compartmentalized"; the feeling informs the writing.

"Part of our approach was to just try to keep everything very simple, but we wanted it to still read as very handmade, and scrappy," explains Paul Hammond, co-creator, with Seth Smith, in Yo Rodeo. (Coast production designer Megan Fildes designed the book.) "The coolest thing about this book, is when you've used it up, it's half ours, and half yours. It's a collaborative project to the end." Pick one up at the Zine Fair, October 23 at St. David's Church Hall, noon-5pm. Admission is free.

Allan Street Alumni: Alison Creba

Alison's post office-art installation is featured in the Coast this week.

Press

The Art of Correspondence
Allan Street Reading Series shows how letters can preserve and empower

Rebecca Spence, Arts Editor

As the lights began to dim, guests’ attention turned away from their micro-brewed beers and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, and towards the makeshift stage set up in the cozy Allan Street apartment. A sign made out of patterned fabrics and strings of twinkling white Christmas lights decorated the wall behind an empty chair. Soon enough, six writers would occupy not only that chair, but also the complete attention of about 50 people packed into the living room. From a theatrical performance from Nate Crawford, the director of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, to a poem delivered by Ben Gallagher, who just sailed across the Gulf of Maine, the Allan Street Reading Series featured a variety of creative expression.

It is inspiring to learn that all of this started with Dalhousie graduate Jenner Berger. The 23-year-old began hosting these gatherings monthly back in March when she was taking creative writing classes and working for a publisher. Having met a lot of writers who were willing to share their work with her, she hoped to be able to share that work with others.

The Sept. 29 reading was special because it doubled as a CKDU fundraiser. It was also the first reading to incorporate a theme. Called “Open Letters,” it aimed to emphasize the importance of the art of correspondence.

“By the time this month came I was feeling a detachment from my city, from writing, from people in general,” says Berger, who finished her degree in English and Creative Writing in August. “Open Letters is about getting in touch with each other.”

One of the event’s highlights was a show and tell performance from Lindsay Stewart, a visual artist whose primary medium is mail. She shared her most profound mail experiences, from trading teen magazines with her pen pal from England when she was 12 years old, to starting up a mail club at her high school in grade nine. The NSCAD student keeps all of her mail in a multitude of boxes at home. “My letters are my most cherished possessions,” she says. “I would never give them away or sell them for an infinite amount of dollars. I love them.”

Alison Creba, the founder of City Mail, a free postal service, also shared her essay about letter writing. She spoke of letters as “narrative artifacts” that helped great writers such as Jack Kerouac practice their craft of spontaneous prose. She spoke about how reading old letters transforms the way we see ourselves, and it allows us to play biographer. “We have come to write our own histories,” she says earnestly.

A mailbox was set up in the kitchen for anybody who wanted to write a letter postage-free. Guests could also sign up to be part of a “Mail Swap”, in which one sends and receives an anonymous package within the group. In this case, you were supposed to send something that inspires creativity such as a piece of writing or a photograph.

Ben Gallagher had never attended or performed at the Allan Street Reading Series before, but he found that the event’s theme helped draw links between the diverse styles of literature. “The works start to speak to each other and it’s pretty beautiful,” he says.

There were a lot of first-timers at last week’s reading, and Berger hopes that they will continue to come back and show their support. She assumes that the idea of being in someone’s home, sitting on their couch, looking at their bookshelves, would help people feel comfortable. “I feel like we have a nice space for it,” she says. “When you go to a reading at a bar I find it doesn’t always fill up and the emptiness can be nerve-wracking.”

Overall, the hostess couldn’t be more pleased with the way the night turned out. “Everyone was so courteous and quiet, and you could really feel that there was something people were appreciating,” she says as she calmly takes a sip of her Strongbow cider. “It was really nice.”

Printed in the Dalhousie Gazette Friday October 8th
Thanks Rebecca!