WIRED POETRY NIGHT/CLOSING PARTY

EVENT: "@Wired," a multimedia explosion of poetry, song, music and image

TIME, DATE, AND PLACE: 8 p.m. Friday, November 13, at the Rudolph Projects ArtScan Gallery, 1836 Richmond Ave, Houston, TX 77098-3510

ADMISSION: Free and open to the public Note: Parking is available

Local poets Radames Ortiz, Lupe Mendez and Byron Jones have joined forces to bring Houston @Wired: A Multi-Media Explosion of Poetry. @Wired is a revolutionary approach to exposing the literary masses to a new type of poetry reading. By incorporating social media, music, song, imagery and technology to enhance their poetic performances, @Wired seeks to reconstruct the poetry reading and to engage local creatives to actively participate in making a unique event even more special.

@WIRED will be presented at 8 p.m. Friday, November 13, at the Rudolph Projects ArtScan Gallery.

Radames Ortiz work has appeared in numerous literary journals including, Gulf Coast, Texas Observer, Open City, Hayden's Ferry Review, Cortland Review, and Exquisite Corpse. His work has also been collected in various anthologies which include, US Latino Literature Today, Regeneration: Telling Stories from Our Twenties, and Is This Forever, Or What?: Poems and Paintings from Texas. He was nominated for a 2003 Pushcart Prize. He was also awarded a 2003 Archie D and Bertha Walker fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He was the 2006-2008 Naomi Shihab Nye Scholar and was a featured poet at the Poetry at Roundtop Festival. You can follow him on twitter @radameso and read his blog at http://theamplifiedbard.blogspot.com/

Lupe Menendez, a writer/educator/performer working with to establish free poetry and creative writing workshops with Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say and the Brazilian Arts Foundation. He has also served as an organizer and host for the former Latino Book and Family Festival and the "Word Around Town" Poetry Tour. He has performed with authors Dagoberto Gilb and Oscar Casarez. His work has been published in the Panhandler Quarterly, the Houston International Poetry (HIP) Anthology, and in What Should Run in the Mind of a Caballero; An Anthology of Latino Short Fiction forthcoming from W.W. Norton & Company. You can follow him on twitter @thepoetmendez visit his website at http://www.thepoetmendez.org

Byron Jones began his career as a slam poet over six years ago, following the steps of the great Micheal Guinn and Saul Williams. He is nationally ranked in the competitive poetry circuit until retiring and seeking greater purpose for his writings in 2006. Byron is now an inspirational speaker, spoken word poet and emcee for the band Purposed. You can follow him on twitter @byronjonespoet and his blog at http://byronjonespoetry.blogspot.com/