Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Silo City Reading series will take place on Saturday, August 12th at 7pm (100 Silo City Row, Buffalo, NY 14203). The event will feature Maggie Smith, Annette Daniels Taylor, Bean Fiend, and Nancy Hughes. This interdisciplinary event is free and open to the public.

Maggie Smith wrote The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison (Tupelo Press, 2015) a year after her first child was born. The book is the form of fairy tales which she said she needed at the time: “When I became a mother, I didn’t want to write about family and become a “mommy poet”. If a woman writes about her family the reaction is, “We expected that from you, why aren’t you writing something more cerebral?” There’s a stigma. During the first year of my daughter’s life, I didn’t write at all. Writing about her would’ve been the natural thing. Then I thought, “This is ridiculous!” So the fairy tale poems allowed me to write again, while keeping family at arm’s length. The lyric I would be a persona, or the poems would be in the 3rd person. Since, I’ve gotten over it. Now I’m back to writing about me and my experiences and people are really responding to it.”

Responding to it is putting it mildly. The titular poem of her forthcoming book, Good Bones (Tupelo Press), has resonated with readers around the world, has been translated into numerous languages, and was named by Public Radio International as “The Official Poem of 2016.”

Also performing alongside Maggie Smith is Anette Daniels Taylor. Annette Daniels Taylor has done it all: playwright, poet, actor, teacher, singer, and costumer. She’s worked with HBO’s Def Comedy Jam, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and at the Nuyorican Poets Café.

Bean Friend is a natural fit for the Silos. “I picked up a free piano off of Craigslist, hauled it down to the silos, and started experimenting with the sounds of the silos!” said Bean. “It’s been a great experience and I’m really excited about the sounds that I’ve been capturing. The space of the silos is just as important of an instrument as the piano. As the songs go on, the “drone” sound is the sound of the room microphones that are about 20 feet up in the air, in the middle of the silos. Nothing was added in post production. The silos really offer an amazing natural reverb!”

Rounding out the evening is Nancy Hughes & Center Dance. Nancy Hughes graduated magna cum laude from Texas Woman’s University and has studied modern dance and contact improvisation. Hughes’s primary dance vocabulary is contemporary dance and she has also practiced modern dance styles such as Graham, Limon and Cunningham.