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San Miguel Writers, Artists, Performers 

by Maia Williams 

Five writers, expounding on life’s journeys in San Miguel de Allende and beyond, will share their new books at the March 14th Poetry and Prose Café.

Carolyn Simsarian developed a passion for teaching in the National Teacher Corps in inner-city Detroit. She retired after a career as a high school English teacher and department head in East Hampton, CT. She continued to work with young people and their parents through the Los Ricos Education Project in Mexico. Carolyn’s new book, The School on the Other Side of the River: the Educational Journey of Los Ricos de Abajo, is co-authored with Dianne Walta Hart. Carolyn writes poetry, creates fabric collage, and rides an e-bike on Vermont back roads in the summer. She and her husband, John, have lived in San Miguel for 14 years, loving it all — especially the people, the culture, the lifestyle, and the diverse circle of friends they’ve made here. 

Chloe Kemp is an award-winning best-selling author, creative director, multimedia artist, and former editor-in-chief and publisher of an award-winning magazine. Chloe’s extraordinary journey is filled with visions, lucid and prophetic dreams, parallel universes, collective dreaming, and knowledge of past lives. She healed from deeply embedded trauma, an incurable illness, and serious medical conditions. Wisdom Keeper: My Extraordinary Journey to Unlock the Sacred Within, is the story of an ordinary woman’s extraordinary spiritual journey. Wisdom Keeper reveals the Divine pathway to a more peaceful, happy, fulfilled, and healthy life. Awards for Chloe’s memoir include: 2022 Living Now Book Awards Gold Winner, Memoir by a female. chloekempwisdomkeeper.com

Collette Sell is a committed poet, gardener, and Buddhist practitioner. Her recent book of poems, Collecting Wonder Where We Will, began life in San Miguel and, with this reading, returns full circle. Even the cover art, a painting by beloved San Miguel artist, Terry Hertz, evokes the feeling of this place. Collette counts the poets Hafiz, Mirabai, Li Young Lee, Lorca, Jennifer Boyden, Patti Smith and Judyth Hill as primary influences. When she writes, she listens to the music of Laurie Anderson, John Luther Adams, Tord Gustavsen, Bill Evans, Jordi Savall, Django Reinhardt, Augustin Lara, and Paco Pena. Her work has been published in Tiferet: Offerings, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & the Arts, and Passager. Her recently published collection, Wonder Where We Will, offers us deep spiritual seeking and insight. “These are beautiful poems, rich in images of soul, nature, and spiritual guidance, joyful and elegiac.” — Anne Lamott. For her most recent work follow @collettesdesk on Instagram.

Joan Hall is best known for her artwork, collages and assemblages, exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City. She was commissioned by the American Cultural Center to lecture, exhibit, and conduct workshops in France, India, Brazil, and Mexico. Joan’s poetry won the Miriam Chaikin Foundation 2018 award. Joan’s books of poetry, Journey to Somewhere and Behind My Mind, a book of rhymes colorfully illustrated with her collage, are available on Amazon. Joan divides her time between her apartment in the West Village in New York City, her country house upstate, and she winters in San Miguel. Currently, an exhibition of her Strings Attached artwork can be seen at Galleria Intersección Arte Contemporáneo in the Fábrica La Aurora. joanhallcollage.com

Marilyn Bullivant has been writing for the stage, on and off, since age 10. She wrote skits and humorous songs for the popular San Miguel based, and internationally performed, The Literary Cabaret, for twenty years. Since discovering the short play, she has contributed to eight consecutive San Miguel Playwrights Winter Showcases and Diez Minutos. Two of Marilyn’s full-length plays have been produced locally and in Canada. She often acts in her works and that of other playwrights. As an artist she has had solo shows at Galería Izamal, the Canadian Consulate, Instituto Allende, and the Paper Mill gallery in Toronto. Marilyn will present a 10-minute excerpt from her 30-minute play: V&V. Marilyn will portray Vanessa Bell and Catherine Bryne will portray Virginia Woolf. Synopsis: The year is 1937 and Woolf has just returned from a glorious holiday in France. She receives a note from her sister, the artist Vanessa Bell, summoning her to sit for a portrait. Puzzled, she hurries over. Fast forward to 1979 and a tale of tragedy and intrigue emerges from tea shop gossip. 

Note: The Bloomsbury group was a circle of artists, writers, and intellectuals in the first half of the 20th century, originating in the Bloomsbury home of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell.

Admission is free, though we rely on donations to underwrite the costs of graphic design,

promotional efforts, venue and sound rentals. We are an all-volunteer organization. We present local and visiting writers, established and emerging. Our reading series typically meets on the second Thursdays, October through March. Books written by presenters will be available for purchase at our no-commission Café Bookshop. 

Please arrive a few minutes early, seating is limited.