The first Out Loud in Bellefonte at the Print Factory event will take place on Friday, February 7 at 6 p.m. with the launch of a memoir and new collection of poems by distinguished Penn State professor Keith Gilyard.
A two-time American Book Award winner, Gilyard will read from The Promise of Language: A Memoir as well as forthcoming On Location: Poems. His vivid coming-of-age story, set against the rhythms of Black America’s vernacular language and music, recalls the Cold War Era, and Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Power movements. Always tuned into words, Gilyard brings his experiences and realizations to life with memories of barbershops, churches, schools, and his own emergence as a poet, scholar, and professor.
Organized by Julia Spicher Kasdorf, the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Penn State University, Out Loud in Bellefonte was named for a line attributed to Émile Zola: “If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.” The project was initially inspired by Colina Seeley Colina (1928-2017), a local woman who also lived out loud.
At a meeting of the Bellefonte Historical and Cultural Association (BHCA) during the bitter January of 2013, Colina demanded, “We must have poetry!” Colina was a child resister of German occupation in her home in Utrecht, the Netherlands, where her father, an anthropology professor at the University, was targeted by the Nazis. As a young woman, she migrated to the United States to study social work, and went on to become a politically engaged social worker, mother, and wife of a Penn State chemistry professor who was also an immigrant. On the death of her first husband in the 1990s, Colina moved to Bellefonte and joined the BHCA.
From 2013 until 2020, BHCA sponsored Out Loud in Bellefonte at the Bellefonte Art Museum for Centre County. The range of events included literary readings, storytelling, and children’s readings. After the pandemic, Out Loud sponsored one poetry festival and one full season of readings hosted by St. John’s Episcopal Church.
Out Loud at The Print Factory will resume as a literary series with readings scheduled for the first Fridays of February, April, and May, then September, October, and November. Mark your calendars for 6 pm on May 2, when Print Factory volunteer Huzaifa Malik will host a PSU student poetry reading in the Out Loud series.
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