Nancy Stark Smith was a beloved teacher, mentor, friend, and inspiration to multitudes in dozens of countries, and co-founder and co-editor, with Lisa Nelson, of Contact Quarterly dance and improvisation journal.

This is an invitation to share writings by Nancy by reading them out loud to one another, or just listening.

For some people, a "reading jam" is listening to each other read. For others, it is moving while listening to others read.
(For some, it is moving in and out of parenting or other necessary care-giving tasks while taking in whatever one can.)

If you don't have Nancy's writings, her website has PDFs of a dozen of her Contact Quarterly Editor Notes - https://nancystarksmith.com/writings-images/
and two Editor Notes are here:
https://contactquarterly.com/cq/article-gallery/

Some readers will have a certain passage they have pre-selected before the moment. We picture pre-selections working especially well - we recommend locating excerpts ahead of time that are most meaningful to you, for example from Nancy's CQ Editor Notes. We can have space for some spontaneous readings as well, if people are flipping through her writings during our time together and find a gem.

You can come and just listen, or you can read. Most passages are requested to be less than 5 minutes, please, but a few can go over that by a bit. Most of her one-page editorials at the beginning of each Contact Quarterly tend to be able to be read out loud in around five minutes or less. Many people are surprised that "a few paragraphs on a page" take longer to read out loud than one might expect, so if you are considering a passage, we recommend reading it out loud ahead of time to see how long it is. We will build in some brief quiet times after a handful of readers, and then keep cycling through again.

SCHEDULE (in Pacific Time):
10:00a.m. - 10:15 Gathering, Arriving
10:15a.m. - 11:30 Readings of Nancy's Writings
11:30a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Remembrances

Nancy Stark Smith wrote, in her last Editor Note for Contact Quarterly: “With love and profound thanks for your sustained trust and creative engagement with Contact Quarterly now, in years past, and in the unknowable and thus infinitely possible future, where our dancing bodies and minds will continue to meet."

Pre-registration by June 5th is required, and those who register will get the Zoom link.