Brain Candy is a free, live program of prose, music, poetry, and visual art curated by the Emerging Writers Network.
This month's featured artists:
Music - Matt Dmits
Prose - Sharon Emery
Poet - Stacy Gnall
Visual - Becca Goodman
Matt Dmits has been writing and performing music in the Detroit area and the Midwest since the late 1990’s. Working as a vocalist, songwriter, and guitar player, he has shared the stage with numerous local and national artists- both as an accompanist and as a solo performer of Detroit Americana.
Check out Matt Dmits Bandcamp page:
https://mattdmits.bandcamp.com/
Sharon Emery has worked as a communicator throughout her career – as a newspaper reporter and editor, a university journalism instructor, and a PR consultant. She’s here today in her latest incarnation: author of the award-winning memoir, “It’s Hard Being You, A Primer on Being Happy Anyway.” Sharon grew up in Roseville, went to Wayne State, then to Columbia University. She now lives near Lansing, where she and her husband raised four children. She wrote her memoir – recently named a 2023 Michigan Notable Book – to help guide her children on their own life journeys, stressing the amazing resilience of human beings. Exhibit A: herself. Sharon is hell-bent on demonstrating that fast-talkers aren’t as effective as our glib culture would have you believe. They may be more entertaining – maybe – but Sharon is ready to turn that idea on its head, too, in this, her first-ever talk in a comic book store. The occasion is not without its drama: Will disfluent, slow speech mean her allotted time will run out before her message is delivered? Will there be so much time spent struggling between utterances that meaning is lost? Ultimately, will anything come out of her mouth? Stay tuned.
https://www.sharon-emery.com/
Becca Goodman is the owner and conservator of Goodman LaFon, LLC, an art conservation studio located just outside of Detroit. Becca specializes in the conservation of paintings, painted surfaces, and frames. She previously worked at the Detroit Institute of Arts before opening her private practice in 2020 with her toolmaker husband, Adam LaFon. Becca earned a Master of Arts degree and Certificate of Advanced Study in art conservation from SUNY Buffalo and holds two Bachelor of Arts degrees in art history and studio art from the University of Maryland, College Park.
http://www.goodmanlafon.com/
Stacy Gnall is the author of the poetry collections Dogged (winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry from The University of Massachusetts Press, 2022) and Heart First into the Forest (Alice James Books, 2011). A finalist for the Georgia Poetry Prize, her work has appeared in numerous journals, most recently Pleiades, Massachusetts Review, Bennington Review, and New American Writing. Gnall holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California, and is also a graduate of the University of Alabama’s MFA program in Creative Writing and Sarah Lawrence College. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, she is currently Poet-in-Residence at the University of Detroit Mercy.
https://www.stacygnall.com
