Curated by the Literary Ladies
Toni Oswald & Sarah Elizabeth Schantz
May 30th 2025
7-9:00pm
$5.00 Suggested donation, no one turned away for lack of funds
Friday’s Frequency Reaches for the Ambrosia in the Magdalene’s Embrace
Readings:
Toni Oswald, Sarah Elizabeth Schantz, Lisa Birman,
Erin Michelle, Alex Miller, Ahja Fox
Visual Art:
Casey Niccoli
Music:
Max Davies
Toni Oswald is a writer, singer, and visual artist who has performed and shown her work across the United States and Europe. She has released four albums under the altar ego The Diary of Ic Explura & writing publications include The Oyez Review, Bombay Gin, Heroes are Gang Leaders Giantology, The Tattered Press, Zani UK, HOAX & Shame Radiant. She is currently working on a novel about a girl clown set in the 1950s entitled The Gorgeous Funeral, as well as a collection of short stories set in Los Angeles called Dying on the Vine. Her book Sirens, was released by Gesture Press in 2020. She likes gold teeth, cats, and trees, and lives with her husband Max, and their cats Kiki Pamplemousse Fontaine and Charlie Chaplin in Boulder, Colorado.
Sarah Elizabeth Schantz is a writer living alone on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado in a rambling Victorian-era farmhouse where she is surrounded by century-old cottonwoods, open sky, coyote, and ghosts. Her first novel Fig debuted from Simon & Schuster and was selected by NPR as A Best Read of the Year before winning a Colorado Book Award. Her short stories, and the occasional lyric essay or poem, have been published in literary journals such as Midwestern Gothic, Hunger Mountain, Third Coast, The Los Angeles Review, and many others. She is faculty at Lighthouse Writers Workshop where she is one of the mentors for the Post-Grad Book Project and won the 2022 Beacon Award for Excellence in Teaching. She adjuncts for the MFA program at Naropa University and teaches for (W)rites of Passage, a divinatory poetics space she has owned and operated since 2014. She is currently working on two novels and one collection of short stories as well as a book on craft.
Lisa Birman is a poet and novelist who splits her time between Australia and the United States. Her first novel, How To Walk Away, was awarded the 2016 Colorado Book Award in Literary Fiction. She is also the author of a hybrid poetry collection, For That Return Passage—A Valentine for the United States of, editor of Dearest Annie, You wanted a report on Berkson’s class: Letters from Frances LeFevre to Anne Waldman, and co-editor of the anthology Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action . Lisa worked with Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program for over a decade and served as writing faculty and faculty director of Naropa’s Study Abroad Semester in Prague. She is a freelance editor and co-founder of The Refuge Journal Project 2025.
Erin Michelle is a neurodiverse writer, writing coach, parent, and survivor of domestic abuse. Her short fiction has been published in a variety of journals and anthologies, and she is currently working on a novel that explores the narcissistic cycle of abuse through the frame of speculative fantasy.
Alex Miller is the author of the novel White People on Vacation, published by Malarkey Books in 2022, and the story collection How to Write an Emotionally Resonant Werewolf Novel, published by Unsolicited Press in 2019. Dozens of his stories have been published in literary magazines including Flyway Journal, Bullshit Lit, and MoonPark Review. He lives in Denver.
Ahja Fox is a mother, educator, and the Poet Laureate of Aurora, Colorado. She spends most of her time tending to toddlers and fitting herself into various suitcases. Such portmanteau has included being a youth instructor with Lighthouse Writers, being a board member for Soul Stories, running Muse Mentorship, curating Aurora Speaks (a poetry/art exhibit), teaching odd workshops, performing with Poetry Brothel Denver and more. She is currently submitting what she hopes to be her debut poetry book, Dis/Articulate, which you can see a mock proof of or inquire about after the show.
Casey Niccoli is an award-winning, self-taught multimedia artist, filmmaker, and creative visionary known for shaping the alternative music and art scenes of the late 1980s and early 1990s. She grew up in 1960s Bakersfield, just a few doors down from country legend Buck Owens. A shy child, she spent hours in her purple bedroom listening to Light My Fire by The Doors on repeat, crafting Mod Podge Holly Hobbie plaques and papier-mâché animals, all while nervously watching the sun, convinced it might crash into the earth at any minute. Even then, her work blended the divine with the handmade, a theme that would carry into her later artistic vision. Based in Los Angeles, Niccoli made her mark as a music video director and key collaborator with Jane’s Addiction, including the iconic Been Caught Stealing video, which won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Alternative Video in 1991. Her distinctive aesthetic helped define both the band's visual identity and the broader alternative culture of the era. Niccoli is best known for directing the cult classic Gift (1993), a semi-autobiographical film exploring love, addiction, and art. Fusing raw emotional honesty with experimental storytelling, her work blends music and film into an immersive artistic experience. Beyond filmmaking, she has built an extensive career as a visual artist, working in collage, photography, mixed media, and installations. Her work explores themes of femininity, redemption, counterculture, individuality, and the human condition, leaving a lasting impact on the creative community.
Max Davies is known for his diverse musical work on guitar and as a producer and multi-instrumentalist. His music has been featured in Artforum, Guitar World and Guitarist magazines, at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the American College Dance Festival, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and the Everest Awakening benefit album. He has worked with a variety of artists, musicians, and writers including: Thurston Moore, Anne Waldman, Lydia Lunch, Toni Oswald, Clark Coolidge, Cecilia Vicuna, Eleni Sikelianos Gregory Alan Isakov, and many others.
