Mangkhut: Stories in the Air

DATES: 7/5, 7/19, 8/2, 8/16
TIME: 5-7pm
COST: Free (suggested donation to support ACC)
AGES: all ages

ACC welcomes world renowned voice teacher, writer and longtime Athens resident Richard Armstrong, to give four readings from his forthcoming new book, Mangkhut: Stories in the Air. Following each reading, we will open the floor for an intimate Q&A conversation with the writer.

Mangkhut: Stories in the Air is conceived as an art book, with over 75 illustrations, and includes original artwork and photographs from the author’s personal archives. It is a hybrid: part memoir, part travelogue, part voice book. It is edited by Christine Graves with cover design by artist Mary Frank.

“A five-week writing journey in early 2019 took me to the island of Cheung Chau in Hong Kong, to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand and to Southwest England. The title of this book arose on that journey. It is the name given to a deadly, category 10 typhoon that hit the Philippines and Cheung Chau in 2018. It is also the name of a delicious Thai fruit.

The book takes the reader on a many-layered journey. Information gathered through my work with the human voice over five decades is interspersed with notes from the 2019 trip. These events and stories have one underlying theme: that the voice and the psyche are interlinked and therefore reveal each other. This principle is fundamental to my work. It leads to reflections on racism and gender, mythology and biology, repression and liberation, birth and death. 

At age 80 and with over fifty years of experience in the world of human sound, I have stories to tell. My intention through recounting them is to prompt the reader to ask fundamental questions about self and identity”.

For more information:   https://www.richardarmstrong.info