ARTSPEAK RADIO with Annette Billings, Vania Soto, and Janie Harris

Wednesday, August 26, 2020, 12noon – 1pm CST, 90.1fm KKFI Kansas City Community Radio, streaming live audio www.kkfi.org

Producer/host Maria Vasquez Boyd welcomes writer/poet Annette Billings, artist/educator Vania Soto, and educator/poet Janie Harris.

ANNETTE BILLINGS is an African-American Kansas poet, playwright, actress and nurse, who now offers by sharing her poetry and prose. She has written two collections of poetry, one-act plays and numerous short stories. Annette’s readers have dubbed her “the Maya of the Midwest,” a moniker she allows with all due humility and gratitude. Known for her performance delivery style, she has been received enthusiastically in many diverse venues.
Her first book of poems, A Net Full of Hope, garnered the Topeka, Kansas, 2015 ARTSConnect Arty Award for Literature. Her second book, Descants for a Daughter, is a collection of affirmations/meditations and very timely. Annette’s third and newest work, Just Shy of Stars, is now available!
www.anetfullofhope.com

VANIA SOTO Kansas City Local artist Vania Soto was born in Juarez, Mexico and began selling paintings at age 13. Inspired by proud cultural icons such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, she connects with her by heritage by maintaining influential traditions from this rich past. Building on this theme, Day of the Dead symbolism is prevalent in her work, again as a way of connecting to the longstanding customs of her family and community and expressing its beauty through art.
Her main media is acrylics and she also works in mixed media. She describes her work as realism with a pop of surrealism. Vania’s artwork can be found inside of the Police Athletic League in Kansas City Kansas on the windows. A mural in downtown Kansas City, Missouri in front of the Sprint Center of the Kansas City Chiefs celebrating the Super Bowl win. And you can also find my Wyandot Nation Mural inside Kansas City Kansas Community College. Soto paints on commission, teaches art, and runs a food pantry at the PAL KCK center.
www.vaniasoto.com

JANIE HARRIS was born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1960. A mother of four, Melinda, Eric, Arwen, and Khiana. A registered massage therapist and postal worker of several years has been writing since the age of fourteen. Janie has been previously published in an anthology, Whispers Before Dusk, through the Library of Congress. Janie has also self-published a compilation and My Slice of Pie. She also competed in Washington, D. C., in 1996, in a competition sponsored by, The International Society of Poetry.

Another Slice of Pie by spoken-word poet Janie Harris is journey led by the heart. Written in the cadences of her own voice, this work is a compilation of her unique and powerful expressions of the social ills of our time, the passions of love, its sometimes disillusionments, the tragedy of racism, and ultimately the strength of the human spirit. She addresses these timeless issues in a contemporary yet strikingly original and well-crafted style. Spanning over several years in the making, each poem holds its place in the magnificent whole. This collection offers something to every appreciator and lover of poetry.

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