The Black Rose Caffe continues its poetry reading series on the third Friday of every month.  This month we will be presenting two well known poets: Meg files and Charles Alexander.  As a curtesy to the poets we will not be preparing milk shakes, smoothies or other noisy drinks during their performances.  There will be an intermission between readings for this purpose.

Meg Files

Armed with a vision, award-winning writer/poet Meg Files has made Pima Community College the go-to place for writers. At West Campus, she oversees 17 creative writing courses and a growing journalism curriculum. In 1988, Files inaugurated the annual Pima Writers' Workshop; now nationally known, it drew 300 students this year. In 2001, she developed the pioneering weekend writers' workshops, where working professionals teach different facets of writing. "They're enormously popular," she says. "I don't know of anyone else who is doing this."The secret to Files' dramatic success is clear: "The atmosphere I've really worked to cultivate is rigorous and challenging, yet supportive and non-competitive," she says. "Students need to take risks with the material and voice and technique. If they're writing nothing but safe little poems and stories, they're not going to grow as writers."

Charles Alexander

Charles Alexander is a poet, book artist, editor & the executive director of                  Chax Press. His books of poetry include Hopeful Buildings (Chax Press, Tucson, 1990) and arc of light / dark matter (Segue Books, New York, 1992), Pushing Water: parts one through six (Standing Stones Press, Morris, MN, 1998), and Pushing Water: part seven                  (Chax Press, Tucson. 1998), Four Ninety Eight to Seven (Meow Press, San Diego, 1998), Etudes: D & D (Quarry Press, Lambertville, NJ, 2001) and Near or Random Acts (Singing Horse Press, 2004). He edited Talking the Boundless Book: Art, Language, the Book Arts (Minnesota Center for Book Arts, 1996). He is a Summer 2005 faculty member at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.

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