Experienced art professionals teach the seminars, including Mary Virginia Swanson, whose credentials include directing special photo projects for the famous NYC photojournalism collective Magnum. A brand-new space, slated to open later this fall, will house a darkroom and more etching equipment that will allow for additional printmaking techniques and 19th-century photographic processes. So fold your laundry later. You've run out of excuses, pal.
First Fiction was born. It was such a smash hit, on its 2003 debut at the outdoor patio at Monti's La Casa Vieja in downtown Tempe (including a reading by Nell Freudenberger, that year's It Girl of the fiction world), that Dach had requests to expand First Fiction outside Arizona.
So she took the authors on the road. Last fall, five debut novelists (including Joshua Braff, brother of Zach, whose New Jersey-set coming-of-age tale The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green is an amazing companion piece to Zach's Garden State) ended a six-city tour at Monti's in Tempe, laughing and joking and acting like teenagers who'd just returned from summer camp together. It was standing room only; the authors felt like rock stars. A tour this spring skipped the Valley, but in October, First Fiction starts in New York City and winds up back at Monti's, this time with three female authors whose work includes a fictitious take on the life of Rudyard Kipling.
We can't resist saying that this was a novel idea. And we're glad First Fiction can call the Valley home.
We gotta say, we didn't think it was funny at all when Ron Babcock and Ryan McKee, the dynamic duo behind the Modest Proposal mother ship -- which encompasses a magazine, short films, and a music night as well as this Third Saturday comedy showcase at the Paper Heart -- fled Phoenix for the L.A. scene. We certainly don't begrudge their career opportunities, but it's still nice to know that they've kept their ongoing comedy gig intact -- in downtown Phoenix.