The next few days are are packed full of story and spoken word happenings for people of all ages and sensibilities.

1. Author Nick Belardes has devoted his life to poking around the peculiar and perplexing.  He’ll be sharing strange stories, random obsessions and bizarre trivia at the Random Obsessions Book Tour on Wednesday, September 23 from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the UA Student Union Bookstore, 1209 E. University Blvd., Call 621-2814 for more information.

2. Refugees’ amazing stories of hardship, courage and hope come to life using music, song, dance and live performance via the talents of the Stories that Soar! professional acting troupe on Saturday, September 26, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Catalina High School Auditorium, 3645 E. Pima.

This free community event hosted by Chairman Richard Elias is open to the public.  The stories start at 6 p.m. and a public forum to discuss issues and share ideas  follows at 7. Food provided by the refugee community will be offered during the intermission.

3. Poetry Joeys, a Saturday morning reading and activity group for children ages four through ten will meet this Saturday, September 26 at 10 a.m. at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, 1508 East Helen Street (At Vine Avenue).

Two experienced teaching artists divide children into age-appropriate groups and inspire them to develop their flexibility with language. Participants in each session read and write poems and enjoy creative movement activities that spark the imagination. Poetry Joeys meets in the Children’s Corner of the library.

4.  Edge 17: a Reading Series of Emerging and Younger Writers, curated by Melissa Buckheit will be featuring three poets on Thursday, September 24 at 7:30 p.m. at Casa Libre en la Solana, 228 N. 4th Avenue.  There’s a suggested donation of $5.

Stephanie Balzer is executive director of VOICES Community Stories Past and Present, Inc., a Tucson nonprofit that mentors youth in the documentary arts and publishes their work.

Rafael Otto writes fiction (long, short and flash), poetry, spoken word, and lyrics.

Orlando White is originally from Tólikan, Arizona. He holds a BFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Brown University.

According to the Casa Libre website, you can join White for a workshop, Let Err Poetry, focusing on “reexamining and rewriting the English alphabet from an imaginative perspective of one’s own ethnic and/or social sensibilities”.  The workshop is on Saturday, September 26 from 10 to 1 and costs $50.  Contact Casa Libre to register.

San Francisco invades Tucson!  Mark you calendar for some Bay Area entertainment here in the Old Pueblo.

Sister Spit: The Next Generation

Friday October 2, 8:00 PM at Gallagher Theater, University of Arizona, Free and open to the public

Sister Spit: The Next Generation is hitting the road again, with a whole new all-girl lineup of zinesters, fashion plates, novelists, performance artists, slam poets and fancy scribblers. Inspired by the legendary Sister Spit Ramblin’ Roadshow of the 90s, Sister Spit: The Next Generation is hauling a vanload of killer underground female talent across the USA carrying on the tradition of rowdy, raucous literary adventure. Come and meet your new favorite performers!

Beth Lisick, author of the books Monkey Girl, Everybody Into the Pool, and Helping Me Help Myself. Nude performance artiste. Comedienne.

Ariel Schrag, comics artist who documented her queer youth in a series of graphic novels — one of which, Potential, is being made into a movie by Killer Films.

Sara Seinberg, poetic powerhouse. Creator of the multi-city K’Vetch Queer Open Mic. Artistic Director of the past three Homo-A-Go-Go festivals. Photographer extraordinaire.

Kirya Traber, slam poet superhero. Teacher of poetry to the youth. Organizer of performances exploring queerness, race and more.

Ben McCoy, performance artist, novelist-in-progress, force of nature. Whose writings have been made into the short films My Hustler Boyfriend and The Face of God.

Rhiannon Argo, skater, future librarian, present novelist. Author of the queer tour-de-force The Creamsicle, which takes you into the lives of pill-popping, pole-dancing, heart-breaking, gender-fucking young queers

Hosted by Michelle Tea, co-founder of Sister Spit and the muscle behind Sister Spit: The Next Generation. Author of a bunch of books, including the Lambda Award-winning Valencia, and the coming-of-age-on-drugs novel Rose of No Man’s Land.

And special guest Tania Katan.

More info: http://www.myspace.com/sisterspitnextgen,

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Mighty Real with Lynnee Breedlove and Silas Howard

Saturday, October 10, 8 p.m., Dinnerware Artspace 264 E. Congress St. Sliding scale $7 +, all ages show

An evening of dueling solo shows

Lynnee Breedlove is an improv comic. Silas Howard makes 50-Cent videos. Lynnee is funny and ugly. Silas is poignant and handsome. Always disarming, alarming, and keeping you on your rocker boot toes, both use multimedia performance to trace the queer history that made them the men they are today.

Lynnee Breedlove’s all new solo show, Confessions of a Poser is a comic look at the mystery of the purple dick, how to use legacies of cultures not your own, and how to kill things, eat them and still be a Buddhist. He’s been told, “Too many props for standup,” and “Too many punchlines for theater.” Buckets, knives, and body parts are still integral to the show. Although dickless himself, weirdly, his biggest fans are straight bio boys, DWD, Dudes With Dicks, probably due to his constant appropriation of straight non-trans male culture.

Opening for Lynnee is Silas Howard’s one-man-show, Thank you for Being Urgent, tale of a transman in the queer punk world of San Francisco, spilling into the crappy and exalted glitter of Hollywood, searching for true tales of fierce outsiders, re-imagining the mainstream, traversing serendipitous heights and punishing ironies, Thank you for Being Urgent chronicles burlesque dancers with dementia, tranny jazzmen and film executives, using archival photos, film clips, and monologue.

More info: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Mighty-Real-Tour

As a producer and occasional performer for the past few years I’ve learned what Rita Mae Brown says so well: “Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides”.  Spoken Word artists and writers employ the same basic tool, words.  How and where they use them is part of the mystique of the two separate yet connected artforms.  Mark Amidon says: “Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery.”

Communicating meanings or feelings is the essential goal and there are many ways to get there.  Reading, listening, watching a performance, participating in spoken word events, all can produce the ultimate experience of understanding someone else’s creative expression.  Fellini explained it in this way: “A different language is a different vision of life.”

Chuck Larkin is talking specifically about storytelling when he writes: “All branches to various degrees are forms of entertainment and information transfer”, and I think the same applies to writing.

Writers reading their work or performers writing out their performance blur the lines.  There really aren’t any lines, it’s a continuum of the same craft.  The most important thing is the keep practicing, keep moving the pen and/or getting in front of an audience.  Colette said: “Writing only leads to more writing” and the same can be said about most creative endeavors.

To sum up, Jane Wagner puts it in perspective this way:  “I personally believe we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.”