Taking the Stage
Through a partnership with the Weisman Collective, Hazel & Wren will host their first in-person open mic, Words at WAM, at 6 p.m. Wednesday.
Image credit: sparetomato/Creative Commons
Local literati sisters Hazel & Wren have built a strong online writing community through their website, hazelandwren.com, which features a unique online open mic that allows writers to share their work.
Now, for the first time, the sisters are bringing their virtual world to an actual stage.
Through a partnership with the Weisman Collective, Hazel & Wren will host their first in-person open mic, Words at WAM, at 6 p.m. Wednesday. The event will include an hour-long open mic segment open to all forms of “literary mischief” on a first come, first serve sign-up basis. Organizers say they have already seen a strong interest from writers so they should have little problem filling the time.
Unlike the online open mic, organizers expect more polished works to come out during the event.
“The online open mics are more of an online workshop for writers to share works-in-progress and get feedback,” says Melissa Wray, the Wren half of the site who serve as its editor-in-chief.
Words at WAM, she says, is “more a place for writers to share their final products with their peers and showcase their work and get it out there in the community.”
The event will also include music, curator-led tours of the Weisman’s exhibit Sympathies, and readings by Coffee House Press poet Lightsey Darst and Miles Walser, a student and spoken word poet.
For Wray, the event is the realization of a long-unfulfilled aspiration to bring the site’s online community together in person.
The logistics of hosting always stood in the way of creating an actual event, but the WAM Collective, a student group that coordinates programs at the University of Minnesota art museum, helped bridge the gap.
Now, Wray says she hopes to begin hosting more local events, so that the Hazel & Wren websites spans both online and local literary worlds.
“Our whole mission of Hazel and Wren is to engage with and provide accessible forums and events for the literary community, both locally and nationally,” she says.
“We’re obviously mostly online, so it’s really great for us to meet all these writers in person who we’ve met through the website and to start conversations with them.”
+ Words at WAM will be held at the Weisman Art Museum, 333 E. River Parkway, on Wednesday, Feb. 22 at 6 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. For more information visit hazelandwren.com or wam.umn.edu.
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