Girls' Club Writer-in-Residence Captures 12 Women Making a Difference With New Video Blog Series

Girls' Club writer-in-residence Vanessa Garcia will present the series "12 Women Out of the Box & Out on a Limb" where she will interview 12 inspiring local professionals and share a glimpse into their unique world perspective. The series will be published on the Girls' Club blog, with a interview published every two weeks between January and June 2014.

The series is inspired by Garcia's opposition to recent feminist set backs she's perceived that counter the progress made by years of feminist and women's rights activists. Garcia comments that some recent publications "tell womento 'lean into' men and the sectors of the world run by them in order to only then, perhaps, maybe, have a chance at change. This seems the wrong way to go about it, and adverse to all the work done by women in the past."

Choosing her subjects carefully, including women from a diverse background and industries, Garcia has put together a group of "women out there in the world that lean out, go their own way, forge new paths for us all" says Garcia.

The first video, to be released on Wednesday, January 8th, interviews Executive Director and Founder ofTigertail Productions Mary Luft. Subsequent videos will be published every other Wednesday at www.girlsclubcollection.org/blog and will include features on Elene Maria Garcia, actor and Education Director or Bluedog School of Acting for Kids; Maureen Seaton, poet and MFA professor at University of Miami; Bobbie Ibarra, Executive Director of The Miami Coalition for the Homeless; and Marilyn Hoder-Salmon, writer and Founding Director of the FIU Women's Studies Center.

As writer-in-residence at Girls' Club, Garcia has embarked on a year-long collaboration with Girls' Club directors and guest curators - TM Sisters - to develop special programming and projects to be presented in tandem with the current exhibition I think it's in my head. In November, Garcia organized an experimental theater performance bringing together local writers, musicians, actors, a choreographer and a director for to present Drifting: A Theatrical Exquisite Corpse.

Other projects in the works include artist and outreach workshops for at-risk youth groups and women's groups focusing on the power of autobiography and self-discovery and an original work of fiction inspired by the artwork on view at Girls' Club to be featured in the upcoming exhibition catalog, to be published in Spring 2014.

About Vanessa Garcia: Vanessa Garcia is an multi-media and cross-genre artist, writer, journalist, and playwright. She's written and reported for various publications including The New York Times; The LA Times; The Miami Herald; HowlRound; The Southern Humanities Review; and The Art Basel Magazine, along with numerous other journals, magazines, newspapers, and online media. She is also a Huffington Post Blogger. In 2010, she was named one of Miami's 20 under 40 by The Miami Herald. That same year she was named one of Miami's 100 Creatives by the Miami New Times. In 2008, she was one of four Literature Finalists, worldwide, in the Rolex Mentor & Protégé Arts Initiative. Through the Rolex initiative, she was able to cross paths with Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, who has, since then, called her work: "a tonic."

She's the Founding Artistic Director of Krane, Inc -- a theatre/arts company also known as The Krane (www.thekrane.com). In addition, she has won fellowships to the NY State Summer Writers Institute; a Vermont Studio Center fellowship; and received the Voices at the River Residency at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre in Little Rock, among other honors, residencies, and awards. She earned her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University (summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa), her MFA in creative writing (fiction) from the University of Miami, as a James Michener Fellow, and an MA in English, as a Schaeffer Fellow, at the University of California Irvine. She will be receiving her PhD in Spring of 2014 also from UCI. She has taught at Johns Hopkins University's CTY program; the University of Miami; Miami Dade College; the University of California Irvine, and numerous other institutions. More information can be found at www.vanessagarcia.org.

About Girls' Club: Founded in 2006 by artist Francie Bishop Good and her husband David Horvitz, Girls' Club is a 501(c)3 foundation and alternative space, the only private collection in the world dedicated to exhibiting contemporary art by women. Cutting edge works in painting, drawing, photography and video are presented in curated, thematic exhibitions which also include works loaned from other collectors, and from galleries and artists. Artists represented in the Good/Horvitz collection are a diverse body of women - and some men - representing many ethnicities and nationalities.

Girls' Club's facility is a dynamic, multi-functional building created by award-winning designer Margi Nothard of Glavovic Studio in Fort Lauderdale.

Girls' Club's mission is to educate the public, nurture the careers of female artists, and to serve as a resource for art students and scholars, curators, and practicing artists. A special commitment is made to expose the work of local artists to a broader national and international audience. Girls' Club's website features a working online artist database with biographical information and relevant web links on artists in the collection, facilitating further study on the works and careers of contemporary women artists. Web projects by artists, interviews and texts by writers and a blog extends the presence of Girls' Club onto the worldwide web.

Girls' Club is also committed to changing the lives of individuals in Broward County, and our programming reflects the special needs of women and girls. Girls' Club offers specialized workshops and activities in a variety of media for artists of all levels and abilities, and for children and families.

More information at www.girlsclubcollection.org.