Nasty Women Reading

To celebrate Women’s History Month, ALL is hosting a Nasty Women Reading to benefit Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. Readers will use mythical and historical figures as well as their own selves, mothers, daughters, sisters, and lovers to explore what it means to be identified as a “nasty woman.” As one poet writes, “We can learn from this, nasty women.”

Our featured readers come from Madison, Milwaukee, and Athens, GA. They are Kara Candito, Cindy Carlson, Robin Smith Chapman, Dana Maya, Freesia McKee, Katrina Schaag, and Lindsay Tigue.

The Watershed Reading Series is supported by Dane Arts with additional funds from the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation, The Evjue Foundation, Inc, charitable arm of The Capital Times, the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation, and the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation. This event is sponsored by Union Hair Parlor.

Donations will benefit Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. Donors can give by going to support.ppwi.org and noting “Nasty Women” in the COMMENT field.

Robin Chapman

Robin Chapman's poems have appeared recently in The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Hudson Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and online on One Art and Poem-A-Day. She is author of eleven books of poetry, including Panic Season (Tebot Bach 2022), Six True Things (Wisconsin Library Association's Outstanding Book of Poetry Award); the eelgrass meadow (honorable mention for the Council of Wisconsin Writers' Edna Meudt Award); The Dreamer Who Counted the Dead (WLA Outstanding Book of Poetry Award); Abundance (Cider Press Editor's Award); Images of a Complex World: The Art and Poetry of Chaos (World Scientific, with physicist J.C Sprott's fractals and explanations; recipient of the Posner Poetry Award from CWW); and The Only Home We Know (WLA Outstanding Book of Poetry Award). She is recipient of the Helen Howe Poetry Award from Appalachia and residencies from Vermont Studio Center... Read More

Lindsay Tigue

Lindsay Tigue is the author of System of Ghosts, which won the Iowa Poetry Prize and was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2016. She writes poetry and fiction and her work appears in Prairie Schooner, Blackbird, ... Read More

Kara Candito

Kara Candito is the author of Spectator (University of Utah Press, 2014), winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize, and Taste of Cherry (University of Nebraska Press, 2009), winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and scholarships and awards from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Council for Wisconsin Writers, the MacDowell Colony, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program.

Cindy Carlson

Cindy Carlson, born in the U.P., began writing poems on birch trees. She now lives, teaches, writes, and sings in her band Linda, in Madison, WI. Her work has appeared in Sentence, Shampoo, Bloom, The Madison Review, Transom, among other fine literary journals. Her chapbook Queering was finalist for the Gertrude prize. Her book backwards rapture was finalist for the Sarabande prize. She received her BA from UW Madison and her MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Dana Maya

Dana Maya is a writer and educator from what Américo Paredes called “Greater Mexico”—a space transcending geopolitical, cultural, linguistic, and creative borders. Her poetry, essays, and multimedia work appear in Feminist Formations, the Volta, So to Speak Journal, Basta: 100+Latinas Against Gender Violence, Listen to Your Mother, Migrations and Home: Elements of Place, the A Line Meant Anthology, museums, memorials, and other public sites. Her research background is in Mexican-American/Chicanx Literature and culture, US immigrant literatures, and queer studies. A collaborator with community organizations and visual artists on projects for social change, she coordinates POEMA [] PINTURA, has been a Writing the Land poet since 2023, and was Artist in Residence for Dane County Arts in 2025.

Dana has collaborated with video artist Aaron Granat on two live video events for the Midwest Video Poetry Fest in 2022 and... Read More

Freesia McKee

Freesia McKee (she/her) writes about the influence of personal and collective histories on how we experience place. Freesia's writing practice includes poetry, hybrid-genre work, lyric essay, memoir, flash fiction, book reviews, and literary criticism. Freesia grew up in Milwaukee and earned an MFA in poetry at Florida International University. She welcomes you to connect with her at freesiamckee.com.

Katie Schaag

Katie Schaag is a poet, playwright, and multimedia artist whose work has been published by Ugly Ducking Presse, Metatron, Rabbit Catastrophe Press, Requited Journal, Nat. Brut, and Word For/Word. She is a PhD candidate in English Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to her solo art practice she has a collaborative practice with SALYER + SCHAAG; their four-month participatory project Performing MMoCA was part of Madison Museum of Contemporary Art's 2016 Wisconsin Triennial.

PLAN YOUR VISIT

Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.

Our galleries are normally open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday noon to 5pm, and other programs take place throughout the week. Please check the events calendar and education section for details.

CALENDAR