Please join CCA for our ongoing Community Reading Series in the Munoz Waxman Gallery. This event features Richard Chess, Emily Hyland, Priyanka Kumar, and Santana Shorty. Readings are curated by former Santa Fe poet laureate Elizabeth Jacobson with support from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry.

The bold Tira works as dancing beauty and lion tamer at a fair. Out of an urgent need of money, she agrees to a risky new number: she'll put her head into the lion's mouth! With this attraction, the circus makes it to New York and Tira can pursue her dearest occupation— flirting with rich men and accepting expensive presents.

Thursdays, 4:30-6:30p Sept 17, 24, Oct 1, 8 Cost: $250 (For all four classes) Location: CCA Conference Room his fall, poet Elizabeth Jacobson is offering a new session of her popular workshop series Intimate Immersion. During this four-week in-person intensive, the focus is on generating new poems, critiquing each participant’s work, revising poems, and looking at elements of craft. Each meeting, participants are invited to bring a new poem (with copies for everyone) for workshop discussion. Since this is the first look, the process creates a deep, concentrated attention different from preparing critique notes ahead of time. Additionally, contemporary poems are provided as a catalyst for the following week’s writing prompt. This is an intimate, focused immersion to reinforce the writing practice and foster the evolution of new poems. No class fees can be refunded after two weeks prior to start date. Elizabeth Jacobson was the fifth Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Her third collection of poems, There Are as Many Songs in the World as Branches of Coral" is just out from Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press. Her previous book, "Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air” won the New Measure Poetry Prize (FVE/Parlor Press, 2019) and the 2019 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for both New Mexico Poetry and Best New Mexico Book. She is the reviews editor for the online literary journal Terrain.org. This program is supported by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry

A Parisian tailor finds himself posing as a baron in order to collect a sizeable bill from an aristocrat, only to fall in love with an aloof young princess.

Marnie Edgar is a habitual liar and a thief who gets jobs as a secretary and after a few months robs the firms in question, usually of several thousand dollars. When she gets a job at Rutland's, she also catches the eye of the handsome owner, Mark Rutland. He prevents her from stealing and running off, as is her usual pattern, but also forces her to marry him. Their honeymoon is a disaster and she cannot stand to have a man touch her, and on their return home, Mark has a private detective look into her past. When he has the details of what happened in her childhood to make her what she is, he arranges a confrontation with her mother realizing that reliving the terrible events that occurred in her childhood and bringing out those repressed memories is the only way to save her.

If poetry had a pop icon, Mary Oliver would be it. Celebrated best-selling poet, Pulitzer Prize-winner, lover of dogs and long walks in the woods, openly queer but intensely private, Oliver was America’s unlikely contemporary mystic, stalking the ponds and forests of Cape Cod for nearly fifty years in order to open herself – and her readers – to the known and unknowable world. From a lonely childhood to literary fame, Oliver’s life was shaped by devotion to nature, paying attention, and the long journey toward learning to love and to be loved. Her poems inspire liberals and conservatives, atheists and believers, naturalists and urbanites, speaking directly to contemporary anxieties about attention, presence, and the human relationship with the natural world – issues that feel especially pressing in an era of climate crisis, digital distraction, and social fragmentation. Featuring interviews with her close friends, including John Waters, never-before-seen personal photos, notebooks, and correspondence from her archive, and recitations of her work by Stephen Colbert, Lucy Dacus, Steve Buscemi, and Oprah Winfrey, Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World considers the poet’s long lifetime of work in context, capturing the uniqueness of her world and the natural beauty that inspired her.

Peter Asher’s extraordinary life has intersected with some of the greatest artists and musical moments of the last six decades. A child actor who became a pop star and then a manager and producer to the likes of James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, he is a Zelig-like figure who remains a vital creative force to this day. Featuring interviews with Paul McCartney, Carole King, and many more.

Sunday, August 30, 2-3:30 pm In-person in the CCA Conference Room How can poems enact and invite this listening and relationship with the living world around us? The practice of ecopoetry becomes a practice of attending, of deep listening, and poetry can become a reciprocal practice that deepens our attention to our own interiority and helps us connect more deeply with the living land. The poet Mary Oliver guides us, “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” Poetry begins with a practice of deep, open listening with all our senses to the living world inside and outside of us. In this workshop, we’ll look at several poetic moves that can help us to evoke a sense of wonder and relationship with different living beings we encounter. We’ll read poems together that exemplify these different strategies and we’ll use these poems as prompts for our own writing and exploration in class. Please bring your writing tools. Anne Haven McDonnell teaches as a full professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her most recent collection Singing Under Snow won the Wheelbarrow Prize with MSU Press (Feb. 2026). Her other books include Breath on a Coal, winner of the Halcyon Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Living with Wolves from Split Rock Press. She is co-creator of the forthcoming Rocky Mountains Literary Field Guide: Art, Ecology, and Poetry (Mountaineers Books, spring 2027). Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, a MacDowell fellowship, and poetry prizes from Narrative Magazine, The Ginkgo Prize for Ecopoetry, and a Terrain.org poetry prize. This program is supported by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry

Saturday, Sept. 26, 2-3:30 pm In-person in the CCA Conference Room Once a poem, at some point in the writing process, begins to come into focus, we devote our time to sharpening the focus that has emerged. But, what might happen if we resisted the urge to “finish” the poem? What if, instead, we paused and considered new directions suggested by a line, a sentence, or a stanza--maybe even a syllable, vowel, or consonant! --that point toward a different focus, a different vision for the poem, a vision perhaps far from our original intentions? What might happen if we were to “dwell in possibility,” as Emily Dickinson suggests? In this workshop, we’ll take Dickinson as our guide. Grounded in a variety of contemplative practices, we’ll read a few poems by others and, informed and inspired by those, we’ll draft our own poems. We’ll identify new directions to explore, suggested by what we’ve already written. As we head in one or more of these new directions, we will gain a sense of how our work can grow in ways we may only discover by “dwelling in possibility”. Please bring your writing tools. Richard Chess is the author of four books of poetry, including Love Nailed to the Doorpost (University of Tampa Press 2017) and The Loneliest Monk (Orison Books, July 2026). His work has been included in Best American Spiritual Writing 2005 and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary American Jewish Poetry. He is a regular contributor to “Close Reading,” the blog hosted by SLANT Books. He was a founding member of the board of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry. He also served on the board of Black Mountain College Museum & Arts Center. He is professor emeritus from the UNC Asheville, where, for 30 years, he directed UNC Asheville’s Center for Jewish Studies. www.richardchess.com This program is supported by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry

With her mother's diary in hand, Marina's search for official documents for university leads her to her biological family on the Atlantic coast. What starts as an administrative quest reveals long-buried family secrets.

Three decades ago, the Rose of Nevada vanished at sea, along with its crew. Now, it has returned. In a remote fishing village, its reappearance is embraced as an auspicious sign, with the local citizens convinced the luck of their economically devastated community may turn, if only the ship sails again. Joining the crew is Nick (George MacKay), desperate to provide for his young family, and Liam (Callum Turner), a mysterious drifter eager to escape his past. After a successful voyage, they return to harbour, only to find that nothing is as they remember it. Shooting on a 16mm Bolex camera and constructing all the sound in post, Mark Jenkin writes, directs, edits and scores a haunting and hallucinatory time-travel mystery that further solidifies him as one of the most distinct, singular artists working in film today. Jenkin conducts a cinematic séance, conjuring a portal into another world that forces us to confront the past and our relationship to it.

Howard Hawks directed Paul Muni as the ruthless Tony Camonte, who shoots his way to the top of the underworld, aided by his sidekick Rinaldo, played by George Raft.

Bruno Antony thinks he has the perfect plot to rid himself of his hated father, and when he meets tennis player Guy Haines on a train he thinks he's found the partner he needs to pull it off. His plan is relatively simple: Two strangers each agree to kill someone the other person wants gone. For example, Guy could kill his father and he could get rid of Guy's wife Miriam, freeing him to marry Anne Morton, the beautiful daughter of a U.S. Senator. Guy dismisses it all out of hand, but Bruno goes ahead with his half of the "bargain" and disposes of Miriam. When Guy balks, Bruno makes it clear that he will plant evidence to implicate Guy in her murder if he doesn't get rid of his father. Guy had also made some unfortunate statements about Miriam after she had refused to divorce him. It all leads the police to believe Guy is responsible for the murder, forcing him to deal with Bruno's mad ravings.

The remarkable love story inspired by the lives of artists Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener. Lili and Gerda's marriage and work evolve as they navigate Lili's groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer.

Christopher Nolan’s next film, The Odyssey, is a mythic action epic shot across the world using brand new IMAX® film technology. The film brings Homer’s foundational saga to IMAX® film screens for the first time. The Odyssey stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson and Lupita Nyong’o, with Zendaya and Charlize Theron. The Odyssey is produced by Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan for their company, Syncopy. The executive producer is Thomas Hayslip.

A wealthy but neurotic Southern belle finds herself trapped in the hideout of a gang of vicious bootleggers. The gang's leader lusts after her, and is determined not to let anything stand in the way of his having her.

There is a dead well-dressed man in a meadow clearing in the hills above a small Vermont town. Captain Albert Wiles, who stumbles across the body and finds by the man's identification that his name is Harry Worp, believes he accidentally shot Harry dead while he was hunting rabbits. Captain Wiles wants to hide the body as he feels it is an easier way to deal with the situation than tell the authorities. While Captain Wiles is in the adjacent forest, he sees other people stumble across Harry, most of whom don't seem to know him or care or notice that he's dead. One person who does see Captain Wiles there is spinster Ivy Gravely, who vows to keep the Captain's secret about Harry. Captain Wiles also Secretly sees a young single mother, Jennifer Rogers, who is the one person who does seem to know Harry and seems happy that he's dead. Later, another person who stumbles across both Harry and Captain Wiles is struggling artist Sam Marlowe, to who Captain Wiles tells the entire story of what ...