In June, VSC was lucky to have two additional writers visit on residency for a week, actor/writer/activist Alan Cumming and poet/musician/editor Matt Hart. They joined a wickedly talented group to conclude a great night’s resident reading on June 23, 2015. Alan shared an essay he worked on while VSC and Matt read a series of recent poems.
Alan Cumming is a Tony and Olivier award winning theatre actor (Cabaret, Hamlet, Threepenny Opera, Design for Living, Macbeth, etc), National Board of Review winner and Independent Spirit Award nominated film actor (Goldeneye, Emma, X2:X Men United, The Anniversary Party, etc), and a Golden Globe, Emmy and SAG award nominated television actor (Sex and the City, the L Word, The Good Wife, etc), as well as an author and activist. Alan trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. In addition, he is an Independent Spirit award-winning producer and National Board of Review winning director, has sung at Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, the London Palladium and the Sydney Opera House, and received humanitarian awards from AMFAR, Human Rights Campaign, the Matthew Shepard Foundation, GLAAD and the Trevor Project, to name but a few.
Matt Hart is the author of several books of poems, including Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless (Typecast Publishing, 2012) and Debacle Debacle (H_NGM_N Books, 2013). Additionally, his poems, reviews, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous print and online journals, including The Academy of American Poets online, Big Bell, Cincinnati Review, Coldfront, Columbia Poetry Review, H_NGM_N, Harvard Review, Jam Tarts Magazine, jubilat, Kenyon Review online, Lungfull!, and POETRY Magazine, among others. His awards include a Pushcart Prize, a 2013 individual artist grant from The Shifting Foundation, and fellowships from both the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he lives in Cincinnati where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and plays in the band TRAVEL.
