Sedona AZ (May 21, 2019) – On Friday, May 31st at 5pm at the Sedona Library is pleased to present authors Nicole Walker and Jesse Sensibar along with musical guest Leah Bee. Poetry and Prose organizers recommend that if you are only going to make it to one Poetry and Prose show this year – this is probably the one. Nicole Walker is a very prolific author whose collection of essays Sustainability: A Love Story was recently made a finalist for the Nautilus Award. Jesse Sensibar and his book Blood in the Asphalt: Prayers from the Highway won the 2019 Voila Award for book of the year. Leah Bee has charmed audiences with her eclectic and beautiful musical styles performed upon a variety of musical instruments since her arrival in the Verde Valley.
Nicole Walker is the author of the forthcoming collection The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet from Rose Metal Press. Her previous books include Sustainability: A Love Story, Where the Tiny Things Are, Egg, Micrograms, Quench Your Thirst with Salt, and This Noisy Egg. She edited for Bloomsbury the essay collections Science of Story with Sean Prentiss and with Margot Singer, Bending Genre: Essays on Creative Nonfiction. She’s nonfiction editor at Diagram and Professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.
Jesse Sensibar is unafraid to die but terrified of dying alone. The product of the mean streets of the greatest Midwestern industrial cities of a time now gone, he loves big bore handguns, the uncluttered lines of old outlaw choppers, pawn shop jewelry, quiet bars, and fuzzy creatures with equal abandon. He has a soft spot in his heart for The Virgin of Guadalupe, tide pools, house cats, quiet bars, innocent strippers, and jaded children.
He came west to the high desert of Arizona in the late 1980s and quickly disappeared down the rabbit hole of Southwestern drug culture. He reemerged in 2008, close to death and with a solid quarter of a century of hard drug abuse under his belt. He has a great many regrets. Along the way, he’s worked as a mechanic, heavy equipment operator, strip club bouncer, repossession agent, tattoo shop owner, private investigator, tow truck driver, snowplow operator, wildland firefighter, and college English professor. You can usually find him in the dying Ponderosa Pine forests surrounding Flagstaff, the old barrios of Tucson, or out on the highway documenting the passing of his beloved and disappearing American west.
Sensibar’s book Blood in the Asphalt; Prayers from the Highway is a chronicle of how fragile life can be. Blood in the Asphalt: Prayers from the Highway chronicles a lifetime spent as a tow truck driver on the lonely highways of the American Southwest. Jesse Sensibar explores reinvention and resurrection through his photographs and his linked collection of short stories, mourning and celebrating loss, gratefulness, and forgiveness.
Leah Bee is a deep listener, composer and sound alchemist, pulling inspiration from a wild and ancient muse, through the reed of her being into time space for the benefit of beings. Among other instruments she plays a triple flute and a magical tree with strings on it. A beautiful vocalist, audiences are often moved by the beauty of her original lyrics.
Won’t you join the Poetry and Prose Project, lovers of literature and other friends on Friday, May 31st at 5pm at the Sedona Public Library when they proudly present award-winning authors Jesse Sensibar and Nicole Walker as well as eclectic musician Leah Bee. Poetry and Prose Project shows are always hosted by award winning author, science fiction poet, and professional storyteller Gary Every.
