05/23/2026
NEWS! Positive Space Tulsa hosts “In the Folk Tradition: Music + Poetry with Anna La Mare and Quinn Carver Johnson,” Friday, June 5. For both artists, folk music is more than an aesthetic or a sound, but rather a guiding philosophy, a framework for building community and sharing stories through art, and people likening to Woody Guthrie's axiom that “a folk song is what’s broke and how to fix it,” and write about belonging in a society that decides who it welcomes and who it excludes.
Quinn's poetry draws from the labor-driven American folk tradition of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, and political poets like Carl Sandburg, Diane di Prima, and Etheridge Knight. Their poetry is rooted in the Kansas plains, the Oklahoma hills, and the Arkansas mountains. Their debut book, The Perfect Bastard, tackles issues of gender, sexuality, and class against the grit and colorful backdrops of professional wrestling and Middle America.
Anna La Mare arrived at folk music from a different direction but with the same conviction. A Third Culture Kid who grew up between Paris, London, Rome, New Orleans, and North Carolina, she approaches her music just like her influences: lyrics first, with everything else in service of the feeling those words demand. Anna's debut single, “Jonna (Find Yourself a Man),” released May 12, 2026, is a Southern Gothic story told from the point of view of an exiled gay woman, the judgmental world’s verdict echoing underneath her story like a bad choir.
"In the Folk Tradition: Music + Poetry with Anna La Mare and Quinn Carver Johnson"
5-7pm, Friday, June 5, 2026
Tickets: $10 at the door or in advance: https://tinyurl.com/3bwy488r"
Limited seating
Contact: Nicole Finley, Founder/Director/Curator - Positive Space Tulsa, [email protected]
