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The Palabristas will be slinging words this Friday at the Loft Literary Center in celebration of their new chapbook, Outside the Lines. The event celebrates the voices of a diverse group of Latino poets and spoken word artists tackling topics of love, loss, politics, and more. MORE »

To the barricades…or something like that. So say the organizers of the UnConvention, the multi-faceted string of cultural activities that is taking place in tandem with the Republican National Convention (RNC) in St. Paul. As forward-thinking and inclusive as the UnConvention proffers to be, though, it isn’t for every creative type. In fact, some of the most interesting activities will be independent, renegade affairs that may or may not be noticed. Collectively, they constitute a sort of UnUnConvention. MORE »

If you’ve never had a run-in with a collection agent, consider yourself lucky. Either you’ve paid your bills on time, no one’s noticed that you haven’t, or your claims made it safely from the doctor to your insurance company. For those of us who have picked up the line and found a bill collector on the other end, it’s likely been an encounter we’d rather avoid. Collectors can be quite insistent, often compounding the shame of facing debt and being asked for money we don’t have. MORE »

If you’re in the mood for a good chuckle sometime, do a Google image search for the phrase “art collector” and see what turns up. What you’ll see is a few dozen pages of photos of laughing matrons in suspiciously expensive-looking cowboy hats, smug bank presidents in very well-tailored suits standing in front of enormous abstract expressionist canvases, shots of nouveau-riche celebrities you might recognize from the august pages of US Weekly, Turkish rug-strewn oaken interiors, programs from that annual “culture and social highlight of the Americas” that is Art Basel Miami, and a number of black-and-white photos of unsmiling 19th Century robber barons with impressively waxed mustaches and countenances that seems to say “release the hounds.” Terribly funny, but not the sort of thing you particularly associate with your everyday life—most people tend to think of “art collectors” as occupying the same mythical, rarified space as Greek shipping magnates, suave tuxedoed international assassins, and other people you tend not to run into in the express lane at Cub Foods. MORE »