Celebrating Bethlehem's Southside Culture
“To The Others” & “There is no need to enforce discipline…” About Nia Watson: Nia began has been working in early childhood and development for the past decade. In 2016, she completed her first yoga teacher training. She has been singing most of her life. Over the course of her evolution she has found ways…
PC: Emma Ackermman On October 24th, Basement Poetry hosted a live poetry reading at Touchstone Theatre that Diedre Van Walters, the MC of the event, framed as a form of protest. As Van Walters put it at the start of the event, these artists and poets did not share their thoughts and experiences, their ways…
H.D. and her poignant poetry continue to have wide resonance with readers around the world as well as a unique influence on her hometown, our Bethlehem community. On September 8th, Ice House Tonight hosted a live-streamed event to celebrate her influence and legacy by pairing readings of a selection of H.D.’s poems with the poetry…
On Thursday, July 23, people from the Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia came together over Zoom to share their insights and reactions to Danez Smith’s powerful and haunting poetry collection, Don’t Call Us Dead. The Queer Poetry Reading Group discussion was hosted by the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center, and sponsored in part by the Lehigh Valley…
This featured photo, “Southside Public Library,” by Ryder Griffith at Southside Proud, is licensed by CC. BY-NC 2.0. Bethlehem Area Public Library (BAPL) is taking action on the call by the Black Lives Matter movement and The Fight 4 Black Lives to have difficult conversations about race and racism in our communities and across America….
This featured photo, “Roxanne Gay – Montreal – 2015” by Eva Blue is licensed by CC. BY 2.0. On Tuesday, June 16th, Bethlehem community members worked through the brutally honest reflections in Roxane Gay’s memoir Hunger. The Queer Memoir Reading Group discussion was hosted by Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center, and supported by Lehigh University Humanities…
In 1976, Bethlehem Area Public Library’s (BAPL) South Side Branch became an intellectual haven for Bethlehem’s Latinx residents and a “fiesta para todos” would celebrate the library’s new multi-cultural vision and resources available for the Hispanic community. In 2019, through a Mellon Grant from Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium and in partnership with Lehigh University‘s…
Despite my fear of sharing personal stories, Waxler created a space where vulnerability was not something to be feared, but something to be explored with kindness toward one’s self and other participants…
During her Notations lecture in the Lower Gallery at Zoellner Arts Center, poet Brenda Shaughnessy posed a question the audience could not answer: what would the world look like if it were taken over by octopi? Shaugnessy’s fifth poetry collection, The Octopus Museum, explores such a world. She admitted that she didn’t plan for the…
It was a dark, wet, and cold Wednesday night. The sun had long ago said its goodbyes, leaving the slickened streets to be illuminated by nothing but orange and purple string lights. Front lawns were home to eerie ghouls and rattling skeletons and grimacing jack-o-lanterns that matched the chill seeping into your bones. Bethlehem was…