Elastic Collision

Friday, December 10 ·
8:00pm - 10:00pm
Links Hall
3435 N. Sheffield
Chicago, IL


The SMASH edition of the Calisthenics for Shrapnel festival at Links Hall is proud to present

PATRICK ROSAL -- author of "Uprock, Headspin, Scramble, and Dive" and "My American Kundiman" -- and local favorite poet superstar playwright KRISTIANA COLON

with opening showcase of emerging poetic talent including Victor Ortiz, Malcolm London, and more!
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For tickets, visit www.linkshall.org. Get yours today!!!

PATRICK ROSAL is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive , which won the Members' Choice Award from the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and more recently, My American Kundiman, which won the Association of Asian American Studies 2006 Book Award in Poetry as well as the 2007 Global Filipino Literary Award. In 2009, he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to the Philippines. He currently teaches at Drew University's Low-Residency MFA program and Sarah Lawrence College. The son of immigrants from the Ilocos region of the Philippines, Rosal is a New Jersey native, a life-long amateur musician, an old-school b-boy and DJ. In the late 80s and early 90s, he produced music for Metropolitan Recording Corporation, working with acts like April Kelly, Laissez Faire, and Joey Gold. He can still uprock and do baby swipes.

Kristiana Colón, one of Chicago's Def Poets, is a poet, playwright, actress, and educator who has been writing and performing for eight years. Kristiana has rocked the mic at some of the Midwest's top venues including the Park West, the Metro, the Star Plaza Theater, the Aragon, the HotHouse, Darkroom, Subterranean, the Funky Buddha Lounge and Sonotheque, as well as venues across the nation and abroad. Kristiana's first original play, "but i cd only whisper" was produced at the University of Chicago. It has since received a reading at the Lincoln Center in New York and won 2nd place in the 2008 Theodore Ward Playwriting Competition. She believes in the power of art as an educational tool and is committed to arts integration as a way to reinvigorate the learning experience, build social awareness, and provoke critical analysis of the world in which we live.