Bonnie MacAllister

For Immediate Release
Six Women: Six Perspectives Opens at Holy Family University
Running Dates: 10/6/08-10/29/08
Opening: Monday, October 13, 2008 at 6 p.m.- (Columbus Day)

Location:
Holy Family University Gallery
Lower Level
John M. Perzel Education
Technology Center
9801 Frankford Avenue
Philadelphia, PA
215-637-7700

Six Women: Six Perspectives features work by six women: Jane Craven, Kathy Dobash, Bonnie MacAllister, Meredith McDonald, Sonia Sherrod, and Michelle Wilson.

Bonnie MacAllister is an artist, author, and educator. She has most recently exhibited at the Utopian Library in Viareggio, Italy and in la Galería del MEC, Montevideo, Uruguay (along with Michelle Wilson). She is currently exhibiting with the Women’s Caucus for Art DC Chapter in Tacoma Park, MD. Her work for this exhibition explores Catholicism, goat imagery, and identity through a feminist lens.

Local poet Bonnie MacAllister, 31, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She was nominated by Turtle Ink Press (Syracuse, NY) who recently published her poem, "Rosary" in Coevolution 2: Shivering through the Details (the Monday Night Poetry 2007 Anthology). She was nominated by editors Amy Lawson-Cassady and John Beck.

The Pushcart Prize is a prestigious American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited annually to nominate work they've published. Anthologies of the selected works have been published annually since 1976.

Bonnie MacAllister is an artist, arts administrator, and educator. Her work has appeared most recently at the DC Arts Center, the Philip Ratner Museum, AIR Gallery (NYC), Holy Family College, and High Wire Gallery (Philadelphia). A five-time slam champion, she has delivered her deconstructed breath verse at over sixty venues in several countries. Bonnie has also been published by the Feminist Journal, Black Robert Journal, Parlor, Helix, Paper Tiger Media in Brisbane, Australia, UK's nth Position, New York City’s Small Spiral Notebook, Magnaphone, Hinge Online, Venus Zine, Ireland’s Dead Drunk Dublin and Other Imaginal Spaces, Amherst Press, and University of Judaica Press.

Bonnie MacAllister was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and she is a graduate of the Central Bucks school system where she studied under 2005 Bucks County Poet Laureate Patricia Goodrich at Lenape Middle School and 2006 Bucks County Poet Laureate Marie Kane at Central Bucks West. She went on to attend Albright College where she received her BA in English-French-Women’s Studies. She spent her junior year abroad in Paris where she studied under the “Father of Deconstruction,” Jacques Derrida and “one of the mothers of Poststructuralist Feminist Theory,” Helene Cixous. As a graduate student at Temple University, MacAllister received Master of Education, Secondary Education with dual certification in English and French (PA certification.)

MacAllister is the author of several chapbooks: Some Words Are No Longer Words, Poems 2005-Present, and Paid in Goats (all published by Waffle House Productions). Chapbooks are available for purchase through Pay Pal and Etsy by emailing bmacallister@earthlink.net.

MacAllister is currently the Co-President of the Women’s Caucus for Art, Philadelphia Chapter, established in 1972. She serves on the National Exhibition Committee of the National Women’s Caucus for Art and on the Website Committee of the WCA/DC. She recently finished several public art collaborative projects for Penn State Delaware County and for the Rotunda. Her visual work is currently on display as part of two exhibits at the City Government Building in Wilmington, DE in May 2008. The “Women Helping Women: Stitch by Stitch” exhibition continues to travel, originating in Delaware, New Jersey, and Florida with stops in Portland, Oregon and Washington, DC among other stops. The collaborative quilt benefits Afghan women directly through the work of Rubia.