About Alchemy

Every venue needs a secret list of ingredients to keep the pot bubbling. In our case, we need space, time, host, organizers, readers and featured performers, open mike participators and the audience. Good coffee and beer doesn't hurt.

The Places

The very first Alchemy night was on July 17, 2002 in the magical environment of “The Ruins”. The Ruins are in Havickovy sady (a.k.a. Grobovka) park in Vinohrady and for many years they provided occasional hide out to ex-pat parties.

We do not have any pictures from this night, so you have to imagine the darkened shapes of fake neo-romantic ruins with tens of candles carefully set in niches and between bricks. Our small group sitting around a fire, smelling fresh cut nettles and gazing into stars while someone reads their poetry by the torchlight or plays moody songs on a guitar.

A special thanks for that night goes to Ken Nash who cut all the nettles by himself that afternoon -- auch! -- that’s called “a dedicated organizer” ;-) From then on, Alchemy was pretty much steadily held in cafés, bookstores and other slightly less weather-dependent places:

• Shakespeare & Sons cafe and bookstore. The perfect kick start – cozy environment, well stocked bookstore, good coffee and drinks, efficient service.

• Vyletna - a restaurant in the beautiful Letna park. While it was peaceful enough for our readings in the winter, this place really rocks in the summer, with the opened beer garden and live performances.

• Arena Hostel (now A&O) - some of the best performances took places in the medieaval cellar of this friendly hostel, which has since been renovated.

• Tulip Cafe - our until 2005 when Alchemy took a break.

• The Globe Bookstore and Café our current home venue.

We'd like to thank all of the owners and management for their support!

People Behind Alchemy

The next important ingredient is – volunteer organizers. Namely, we need someone who could find the featured readers and run the show, another person to do the website and updates.

Laura Conway took the difficult job of Alchemy's first host in 2002 and gave it a perfect kick start. Since then, the host's role was ocassionally filled by other volunteers: Patrick Seguin, Kirsten Weights, Jim Freeman, Chris Crawford, Bonita and others. However, there is one man who's co-created Alchemy and runs it ever since - Ken Nash.

In spring 2003 Ken Nash "stepped out of anonymity" and picked up the role of Alchemy's full time host. But well before that, he was the man who kept our e-mail list, distributed the flyers and did a lot of other foot work for Alchemy that was perhaps not so visible, but much appreciated.

Ken is the author of Alchemy's name, logo, the animation on this website and much of Alchemy's concept. He also regularly participates in the open mic as a writer of short stories. By profession, Ken is a web designer, illustrator, animator and cartoonist. Check out www.nashken.com for samples of his work.

The volunteer author of this website is Michaela Freeman, Czech writer, digital artist and web designer - check out Misha's personal/work site www.michaela-freeman.com. She lives with her husband Jim Freeman www.praguewriter.com in the mountains near Liberec, but they don't miss a single Alchemy. Jim now regularly updates this site. Since Octocer 2003, our website found its new home at the servers of Prague.tv - special thanks to Peter Lowe.

This is not the complete list of people behind Alchemy. We depend on our participants, friends and volunteers for support. For this reason, we invented Tycho - the common spirit of the venue. The original Tycho Brahe was the main alchemist at the court of Rudolph II. and today, he lives in cyberspace and maintains our mailing list :-)