Out Loud Huntsville is celebrating 10 years of local literary arts with an epic showcase at the Orion Amphitheater!
Join us on April 21st for a showcase featuring favorites from Out Loud over the last decade. Hosted by Kimberly Casey, we’ll be welcoming Sam Mitchell, Josh Baker, Chloe Philpot, TC Caldwell, and Alabama State Poet Laureate Ashley M. Jones to the stage for an unforgettable evening of storytelling and poetry. Admission is only $5 per person. Doors at 6:30 PM, show at 7 PM. We encourage you to buy your tickets in advance. Tickets can be purchased online, or at the North Box Office of the Orion.
ABOUT THE PERFORMERS
Kimberly Casey is the Founder and President of Out Loud Huntsville, a nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring community outreach and activism through written and spoken word. She received her MFA from Pacific University in 2021, and her work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, Southern Women’s Review, SWIMM and other publications. Her first book of poetry, Where The Water Begins, is available through Riot In Your Throat Press.
Sam Mitchell likes to tell stories when he’s not binging Netflix or listening to Hall and Oates. Sam is host and co-founder of Bramble Stories. He has been featured at Write Club ATL, Tenx9 Nashville, the Princess Theater: Center for Performing Arts, The Southern Fried Film Festival and on Sundial Writers Corner.
Joshua Baker is a social, creative and movement worker and third-year PhD student. His work, which has been featured in Aura Literary Arts Review, Out Loud! HSV: A Year in Review (2016-2019) and Hypertrophic Press, among others, is committed to the visibility, commemoration, and liberation of Black, Trans and queer life. Baker has also self-published three poetry chapbooks entitled This Here Side of Creation (2018) Love Poems & Other Ways to Lose A Poetry Slam (2018) and Excerpts from the Wilderness (2022).
Chloe Philpot is a poet and workshop organizer currently rooted in Tennessee. She was an Out Loud regular during high school and a member of Out Loud’s slam team in 2018 and 2019, competing at Southern Fried Poetry Slam. Her work has been featured at TEDx, NPR, Scholastic, CMT, Brave New Voices, and on stages across the United States. Her poetry is unapologetically Southern and she is constantly pushing the limits on how many poems one poet can write about tomatoes.
TC Caldwell is a Black trans non-binary organizer, narrative photographer, performance artist, and the Community Engagement Director for The Knights & Orchids Society. For the past four years, TC has co-chaired the grassroots committee for the Cover Alabama Coalition-a nonpartisan alliance of over 120 community partners advocating for the state of Alabama to provide quality, affordable health coverage to its residents and implement a sustainable health care system. They grew up in the rural south. TC believes in people, community, and storytelling. Their goal is to create spaces that allow people to tell their own stories and reclaim their power.
Ashley M. Jones is the Poet Laureate of Alabama. She is the first person of color and the youngest person to hold this position in its 93 year existence. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel, dark / / thing, and REPARATIONS NOW!. She is the co-editor of WHAT THINGS COST: An Anthology for the People. Her poetry has earned several awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, and more. Jones has been featured on news outlets including Good Morning America, ABC News, and the BBC. Her poems and essays appear in or are forthcoming at CNN, POETRY, The Oxford American, and many others. She co-directs PEN Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival. She is the Associate Director of the University Honors Program at UAB, and she is part of the Core Faculty of the Converse University Low Residency MFA Program.