Pay Artists for their Art

About Us…
Our courtyards (Photo by Hannah Ensor)

Logan Phillips, Kristen Nelson, & Roger Bonair-Agard at the November Fair Weather Reading Series

Aisha Sabatini Sloan & Samiya Bashir from the December Fair Weather Reading Series

Lidia Yuknavitch from the October Fair Weather Reading Series (photo by Michael Dauphinais)


Casa Libre en la Solana is an arts and letters non-profit that works to cultivate and enrich Tucson’s vibrant community of writers and artists through the invention, presentation, and appreciation of creative work. As demonstrated by our rich history and current roster of diverse programs, we have a dedication to local and national communities of artists. Through our monthly Fair Weather Reading Series, workshops, salons, and community collaborations, Casa Libre provides space and means for underrepresented voices in writing and art to speak out, be heard, and make dreams into realities. Monetary support is an important way to say to LGBTQ writers, female writers, writers of color, emerging writers, and other underrepresented groups that we value all voices. In short: we want to pay artists, especially artists who are most commonly asked to present their art for free. Although we recognize that statistics have their limits, they are one way to take a snapshot. The artists in our 2015-2016 Fair Weather Reading Series are:

·         74% Female Identified / 16% Gender Non-Conforming / 10% Male Identified

·         74% LGBTQ / 26% Straight

·         47% People of Color / 53% White

·         50% Emerging Writers / 50% Established Writers

Our Goal…

Our dream here is modest, but important: we want to pay all of our writers and artists legitimate stipends for their travel, appearances, and workshops in our Fair Weather Reading Series. While half of our writers and artists come from the greater Tucson area we also have visiting artists from all over the United States. The greatest gift that one can give an artist is the time and space to create and to share their work; by paying all of our artists for their work we are doing just that—helping them take time away from their “day jobs.” Artists are asked, in ways that people with other expertise aren’t, to show up and do what they’re the best at for free. Casa Libre, starting in 2015, wants to promise that we will always pay artists for doing what they’re the best at; that we will help compensate their years of showing up, being present, and making extraordinary art that helps us all live and breathe and think deeper in this world. Can you help us show LGBTQ writers, female writers, writers of color, emerging writers, and other underrepresented groups that we value their work?

Here is a list of artist who are reading in our 2015-2016 Fair Weather Reading Series. These are the folks that you will be supporting with your donation to this campaign:

·         Lidia Yuknavitch

·         Aisha Sabatini Sloan

·         Roger Bonair-Agard

·         Logan Phillips

·         Samiya Bashir

·         Jen Casale

·         Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

·         Hannah Ensor

·         Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

·         Danielle Cadena Deulen

·         Teresa Carmody

·         TC Tolbert

·         Selah Saterstrom

·         Lisa Birman

·         Elizabeth Frankie Rollins

·         Annie Guthrie

·         and more!

Some more information on why we need your help supporting Female Writers, Writers of Color, and LGBTQ Writers:

·         9/21/15: The Unbearable (White) Maleness of US Poetry: And How We Can Enable a Structural Response to Literary Yellowface and Gender Inequity in Publishing 

·         4/24/15: 25 Queer Authors You Absolutely Should Be Reading If You're Not Already 

·         4/4/2015: The 2014 VIDA Count (Women in Literary Arts) 

·         4/20/2014: #WeNeedDiverseBooks: The Twittersphere Rallies for Diversity in Literature 

·         6/11/2012: Why 88% of books reviewed by The New York Times are written by white authors 

While Casa Libre is one entity among many people and organizations in our state suffering from budget cuts to education and the arts, we have been working hard to restructure and survive. We recently made the decision to close our indoor library space in order to make room for Casa Libre’s growth in vision and for our ever-growing audiences. With less overhead venue expenses, we have shifted more of our income to pay our artists. These transitions have already made a big difference, but to make this dream a reality, we need your help. Will you chip in today to match our commitment to artists?
 

What You Can Do To Help…

The lamp beside the red door is glowing here at Casa Libre, but we need your help to keep it shining bright. In order to continue our mission of making artist’s dreams into reality we are asking our community, and the world, to help us pay our artists. Donations from the heart, at any level, are greatly appreciated. They are also tax deductible and go directly to professional artist(s) to compensate them for the original work they create. Can you spare the cost of a cup of coffee or your morning smoothie to pass on thanks for some inspiring words, for speaking out, for standing up and saying I AM HERE?