We Exist to Prove the Living Artist: 38th Anniversary Gala

Please join us at Woodland Pattern's 38th Annual Anniversary Gala, a cultural milestone celebrating American poetry, the arts, and everyone—including you—who have for nearly four decades made our organization’s work possible.

The evening will feature a collaborative performance by award-winning writer Nathaniel Mackey and acclaimed jazz pianist Marilyn Crispell, as well as an address by Jen Benka, President of the Academy of American Poets. Our honorees will include longtime Woodland Pattern Board Chair Karen Campbell and volunteer Jean Gurney, with special gratitude to philanthropist Lynde Uihlein for magnanimous support of Woodland Pattern and cultural life in Milwaukee.

Proceeds from the gala will benefit Woodland Pattern’s many activities that support writers, artists, and musicians from Milwaukee and beyond.

5 pm: Reception

(Hors d’oeuvres, cash bar, & silent auction)

7 pm: Program

Address by Jen Benka

Recognition of honorees

Performance by Nathaniel Mackey & Marilyn Crispell

Reception + Program: $80 individual / $150 couple

Program Only: $25 advance / $30 door

Nathaniel Mackey is the author of ten books of poetry, the most recent of which are Blue Fasa (New Directions, 2015) and Outer Pradesh (Anomalous Press, 2014); an ongoing prose work, From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, whose fifth and most recent volume is Late Arcade (New Directions, 2017) and whose first three volumes have been published together as From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate: Volumes 1-3 (New Directions, 2010); and two books of criticism. He is the editor of the literary magazine Hambone. His awards and honors include a Whiting Writer’s Award, election to the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets, a National Book Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches at Duke University.

Marilyn Crispell has been a composer and performer of contemporary improvised music since 1978. For ten years, she was a member of the Anthony Braxton Quartet and the Reggie Workman Ensemble, and she has performed and recorded extensively as a soloist and with players on the American and international jazz scene, also working with dancers, poets, filmmakers, and visual artists, and teaching workshops in improvisation. She has been the recipient of three New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust composition commission.