Steal This Book! - Events

Micol Reading on Friday, Oct. 20

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 13:28:59 -0700

Please see the following notice from Micol Ostow, whom I met a billion years ago in Hamilton Cain's creative writing class. Sadly, I am going to be at the NY Philharmonic that night, exploiting my new membership for the first time.

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I thought I would take the opportunity to remind you of the upcoming reading I have scheduled at KGB Bar. The details:

Friday, 10/20
KGB (4th btw 2nd and 3rd Ave)
7pm

I will be reading from EMILY GOLDBERG LEARNS TO SALSA, and the lovely Judy Goldschmidt will be reading from one of the three installations of the RAISIN RODRIGUEZ series (if you want to know which one, you will have to ask her). Please join us. And feel free to forward along to any literary-minded friends and/or boozehounds.

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Micol says there will be some giveaways!

FUNDRAISER FOR BOOKS THROUGH BARS

Fri, 03 Jun 2005 13:11:44 -0700

VEGETARIAN DINNER PARTY
FUNDRAISER FOR BOOKS THROUGH BARS
Friday June 17 @ 8pm
at ABC No Rio
156 Rivington St (btw Clinton + Suffolk Sts)
Lower East Side, NYC

Three vegetarian courses
Plenty for vegans
Live folk and classical music
Cost: $5-$20 sliding scale

All proceeds used to send free donated books to people
in prison. more info at abcnorio.org/affiliated/btb.html

RSVPs or more info:
(212) 254-3697 xt 322 or btb@abcnorio.org

Feminist Kung-Fu Movie Night

Wed, 11 May 2005 16:11:04 -0700

Books Through Bars presents yet another beer and movie night:

FEMINIST KUNG-FU MOVIE NIGHT
Friday, May 13th, 8 pm

Featuring:

*Wing Chun (with Michelle Yeoh of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame)

*Come Drink with Me (with a young Cheng Pei-Pei of Crouching Tiger fame)

*The Heroic Trio (Anita Mui! Michelle Yeoh! Maggie Cheung! Need we say more?)

$5 admission ($3 with paperback dictionary)

at ABC No Rio, 156 Rivington Street, Lower East Side
(between Clinton and Suffolk Streets)
212-254-3697, x. 322

J/M/Z trains to Essex or F train to Delancey Street

Proceeds go to Books Through Bars. For more
information on Books Through Bars, visit:
abcnorio.org/affiliated/btb.html

Memorial for Greg Torso

Thu, 14 Apr 2005 14:25:01 -0700

I'd seen Greg around school and at parties and heard his writing at the student readings, but I didn't really meet him until he came to our house for Lyle's going-away party. I was very charmed by his humor and friendliness and had a great time talking to him. I'm sorry I won't be able to attend the memorial service tomorrow, but am passing along the information for anybody who may not have gotten it yet. I'm also resposting the link to his blog that Katy found.

Here's the message from New School:

"With great sadness we report that our dear friend and colleague Greg Torso (class of 2003) passed away last week. As a person he was friendly, shy, self-effacing and kind to others. His fiction, like Greg himself, was deeply engaging and deeply felt. Every sentence he wrote was marked by a rapturous use of language and attention to detail. His stories found their subject in the permeable boundaries between sensitive characters negotiating their human appetites in a
world set against them. Greg contributed notes to an online writing project and, last year, Maisonneuve Magazine published his short piece about surviving the blackout of 2003 in New York, the city he adored.

Please join us at the New School to celebrate his life.
Friday, April 15th at 7 pm in Room 510, 66 West 12th Street."

Write On, Brooklyn!

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 14:56:10 -0700

Kids Creative Writing Workshop
Summer Program
Ages 6 - 10 (or child has completed min. 1st grade/ max. 4th grade)

Tuesdays, July 5 - August 16, 10am - Noon
(+ one additional class meeting for children to give a reading of their work for family & friends)

Kids will be exposed to three genres of creative writing: poetry, fiction and autobiography. In each lesson, they will hear a poem, short story or autobiographical piece. Games, collaborative writing exercises and individual writing prompts will lead your child to produce several pieces of writing in each of these genres. Through their writing, children will explore language, rhythm, images, character and plot. In the latter part of semester, the young writers will focus on editing and revision. Participants will also take photographs to go with their writing. At the end of the program, kids will bind their writing and illustrative photography into a book. Parents and friends will be invited to a reading in which children will read from the books they�ve made.

Location: Freebird Books & Goods, 123 Columbia Street (btw Kane & Degraw), Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn

Cost: $225, includes 16 hours of class time @ 12.50/hour + $25 materials fee to cover disposable cameras, photo processing, book binding, and additional craft projects.

Class Size: Strictly limited to 12 students.

Instructor: Sonya Collins holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Writing from New School University and a Bachelors Degree in Creative Writing from the City University of New York. A writer of fiction, she has been teaching writing for ten years. She teaches at Hunter College and works with youth at camps, after-school programs, public libraries and other extra-curricular programs.

Please contact Sonya @ 917-548-7547 or writeonbrooklyn@att.net for more information.

P-I-N-C-H-O-T!

Wed, 23 Feb 2005 12:21:05 -0800

Don't forget, spelling bee tonight at Freddy's! Yeah!

And check out the Bronson Pinchot fan page! Isn't he the dreamiest?

Ahh, sweet romance

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 15:58:00 -0800

In honor of Valentine's Day....

A list of the chocolate companies that do and don't use child slave labor (Fair Trade is always good)

Top 10 Reasons Not to Buy a Diamond (see #7, child slave labor)

34 million metric tons of mine waste for your gold:

American caviar (preferably sustainably farmed) so you don't kill off the last Caspian sturgeon:

Who gets babies with birth defects from packaging your pesticide-laden roses?

And in keeping with the spirit, Gunnar sends in this Margaret Atwood gem:

"You Fit into Me"

you fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

Spelling Bee!!! & #52, Sibley

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 13:08:01 -0800

Josh Reynolds' next spelling bee will take place on Wednesday, February 23, 2005 at 8:00 p.m. at Freddy's Bar & Backroom in Brooklyn (go to the back room to find bee; directions available at their web site). Entry fee is $1; winner takes all! Josh emcees a really fun bee. I hope all of you reading this in England, Japan, California, and Texas will, like, trek out for it.

Steal This Book!: The Sibley Guide to Birds, by David Allen Sibley. Interested in knowing what birds are hanging out by your window? Check out this beautifully illustrated and delightfully observant book (one dove is described as having a "bemused" expression). With its help, we have identified the following birds in our backyard: common snipe (it was not, after all, an American woodcock), Northern cardinal, blue jay (duh), feral rock doves (a.k.a. winged rats), house sparrows, and mourning dove (an extremely sweet-faced dove, and very friendly), and some kind of parakeet, though this was before we got the book so I can't narrow it down any further. At 544 pages, it is a little heavy for a field guide, but it was portable enough to take down to Coney Island on Sunday afternoon. Identifying gulls, according to Sibley, "represents one of the most challenging and subjective puzzles in birding and should be approached only with patient and methodical study." However, with his help, we fairly confidently identified an Iceland gull, a lesser black-backed gull, several hybrid gulls, plus two pairs of male and female Lesser Scaups. (Very exciting. "Is it a tern? Is it a duck? Is it a goose?" "No, they're not geese." "Maybe they're Northern Gannets." "Look for one with white wings. No, WHITE wings. Are you listening to me?" "Are they boobies?" "Do boobies have white wings? No." Alison was holding the book; she got very excited over all the bird names.) Also, as the D train was passing close by the roofs of several buildings, I identified a strange bird that was either 1. a tiny hawk, or 2. a parrot. It is not Sibley's fault that I didn't get any further; YOU try identifying a bird as you rush past on the D train.

Write On, Brooklyn!

Fri, 21 Jan 2005 16:53:19 -0800

Class announcement from Sonya:

Thanks to all of you who have helped spread the word, in less than 2 weeks, on February 1st, I'll be starting the 3rd semester of my kids creative writing workshop "Write On, Brooklyn!: Kids Creative Writing Workshop."

� Class size is limited to 10-12 students aged 6-10.
� Classes meet on Tuesdays from 3:30-5:00. Feb 1 � May 31.
No classes on public school holidays.
� Reading for an audience will be held on Tuesday 5/31 at 6:30 pm.
� Cost for full semester is $325
Includes 24 hours of class time at just $12.50/hr! + $25 materials fee for cameras, film processing and bookbinding.
(Parents may pay tuition by the month at a slightly increased rate.)
� Instructor is also available to run a customized workshop around your schedule in your home or hers for groups of four children or more.

Sonya Collins holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Writing from New School University and a Bachelors Degree in Creative Writing from the City University of New York. A writer of fiction, she has been teaching writing for ten years. She teaches freshmen at Hunter College and she works with youth at camps, after-school programs, public libraries.

Contact Sonya today!
917-548-7547
Writeonbrooklyn@att.net
Registration open now!
Class size limited to 12!!!

"The Fast and The Furious: A Night of Short Readings"

Mon, 06 Dec 2004 12:02:33 -0800

Please join us for an evening of ultra-short, ultra-rich readings by the excellent students in Intensive Fiction Writing, my Brooklyn writing workshop. Hope to see you there! --Carmen Scheidel

The reading will be held on Thursday, December 9 at 7:00 pm at
Freebird Books & Goods
123 Columbia St.
Brooklyn, NY
718-643-8484
freebirdbooks.com for directions

Featured readers include:
Marie Davis-Williams
Michael Ferch
Stephanie Gannon
Brigitte Maier
Syreeta McFadden
Tracy Pesin
Sarah Petrie
Keely Savoie
Mary Sternbach
Alex Tilney
Dana Thompson
Beth Weinstein

Beer, wine, coffee, and tea will be available for purchase. Please also join us for drinks at nearby Alma after the reading.

Intensive Fiction Writing is a workshop program I started in 2003 that uses weekly exercises to inspire and inform longer works of fiction. For more information, contact me at capisco@verizon.net. The next session begins in January 2005.

Go to the Goldman reading tonight!

Mon, 22 Nov 2004 11:31:17 -0800

I have other plans this evening, but those of you who can, go to this reading and tell me how it went. Goldman is the author of The Ordinary Seaman, that extraordinary novel I reviewed on September 13. From the New School e-mail list:

Fiction Forum: Francisco Goldman
moderated by Helen Schulman
11th Street Cafeteria, the New School
6:30 p.m.

We're very pleased to host novelist Francisco Goldman this Monday at the Writing Program. Mr. Goldman is most recently the author of The Divine Husband, a novel set in the late 19th century which is concerned with love - religious, platonic, and romantic love, vexed with politics. Like his other two novels, this one is situated in both Central America and the United States. Mr. Goldman will read from his work and then discuss his writing with Helen Schulman before taking questions from the audience. Join us, next Monday. This is our only reading of the week and is sure to be standout.
*********

Francisco Goldman was raised in Boston and Guatemala and divides his time between New York City and Mexico. He is the author of three novels, The Long Night of White Chickens (1992), The Ordinary Seaman (1997), and The Divine Husband (2004).

From Booklist: Goldman, a highly artistic writer of conscience, delves more deeply into the injustices and paradoxes of Central American society with each book, creating, in his third novel, a dynamically episodic saga written in a more ebullient, mischievous, and sensual mode than before but without belying complexity or tragedy. Two friends serve as polestars: Francisca "Paquita" Aparicio, lovely and privileged, and Maria de las Nieves Moran, a smart, tough, and multilingual mestiza. They're sequestered in a convent (prompting thorny musings on tyranny and mysticism) to protect Paquita from her much older admirer, a revolutionary called El Anticristo, but once he's in power, Paquita becomes a willing first lady. Maria de las Nieves becomes a translator, which prompts a provocative inquiry into language and conquest, interpretation and dominion, and she falls in love with Jose Marti, the nineteenth-century writer and martyred leader of the Cuban struggle for independence. These volatile circumstances serve as catalysts for a multifaceted, brilliantly satirical tale populated by compelling and diverse characters, and laced with piquant riffs on everything from miscegenation to hot-air balloons. Ultimately, Goldman not only dramatizes the fate of one lush but unlucky Central American country but also conjures the very spirit of humankind in all its perfidy and splendor.
Donna Seaman
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved

A very interesting interview posted at PIF magazine in which Goldman also discusses his journalistic work.

Meg reading at Bowery Poetry Club

Fri, 05 Nov 2004 11:23:09 -0800

From Meg...
I'm reading at the Bowery Poetry Club this Sunday if anyone is free. It starts at 3:30, but I won't be on until sometime around 4:30 or 5. The Bowery Poetry Club is on the Bowery between Bleecker and Houston, across from CBGBs. One can purchase tasty food and beverage there, and while I don't know exactly what the rock and roll dance party finale entails, I trust it won't be strictly enforced.

The Bowery Poetry Club and City Lore, New York present
The First Annual Stephen Crane Festival of the Short Poem
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
who, squatting on the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, �Is it good, friend?�
�It is bitter -- bitter,� he answered;
�But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."
--Stephen Crane

Sunday, November 7, 3:30-6:00 pm
The Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery, NYC
Admission $5
For further information: Steve at 212.529.1955

Join us in celebrating what is distinctive about the short poem �- its brevitas. Loosely defined as �longer than a haiku and shorter than a sonnet,� the best short poems can -- in performance -- be apprehended as a single thought, and -- on the page -- communicate their meaning visually as well as verbally. The way a short poem is lined out on a page, its form, can be understood simultaneously with its meaning in a single moment or epiphany. A beautiful, short poem can almost be held in one�s hand, inspecting it from all sides.

And, as a fleeting two hours slips through your fingers, you�ll hold an armful of poems! Hosted by City Lore�s Steve Zeitlin, the afternoon will feature:

Bob Holman reading Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

Short poem masters: Samuel Menashe, winner of the Neglected Masters Award from the Poetry Foundation, Bob Hershon, Hal Sirowitz, Sparrow, Mike Topp

Alice Quinn, from the Poetry Society of America, reading favorite poems from the T.A.�s �Poetry in Motion.�

Poets Alicia Vasquez, Hope Cullinan, Meg Daniel, Jim Pignetti, Annie Lanzillotto, Ed Smith, Bill Zavatsky

Steve Zeitlin�s traditional rock and roll dance party finale

A chance to read your own short poem at an open mic (sign up at the door)

Carmen's Classes Redux

Wed, 15 Sep 2004 13:13:06 -0700

From Carmen:

"I recently signed on to teach a fall course at the New School called
The Mechanics of Writing. If you or anyone you know is in the market
for a basic grammar and writing course, this is for you.

The Mechanics of Writing (NWRW1011)
13 sessions. Wed., 6:00-7:50, beg. Sept. 22. $510.

The investigation of effective English prose makes the sentence its principal focus. In this course, designed to meet the needs of beginning writers, we examine the sentence, including grammar, the parts of speech, and other components of syntax. Later in the course, we look ahead to considerations of effectiveness and style. Chapters from a grammar and style textbook are assigned. Students workshop short, weekly writing assignments. They look at issues of "correct" vs. "incorrect" and when rules should be broken, how language changes, how context determines choices, and how these choices develop into style. To register, call 212-229-5690.
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Note: I have one remaining spot open in the fall session of Intensive Fiction Writing, my private workshop course. Email me for more information.

Juliet Mitchell talk--sent in by Viv

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 13:57:01 -0700

Thursday, September 23, 6 - 8 pm
SIBLINGS: FRIENDS AND FOES
Juliet Mitchell (Psychoanalysis and Gender Studies, Department of Social and Political Sciences, Cambridge University)

Developing the thesis of her recent book, Siblings: Sex and Violence (Polity Press, 2003), Juliet Mitchell's lecture will expand the search for a distinct paradigm for understanding lateral relationships. Informed by psychoanalytic theory as well as clinical practice, she will examine sibling relations as a crucial moment for the formation of enmity and friendship.

Juliet Mitchell is also author of Psychoanalysis and Feminism (Pantheon Books, 1974) and Mad Men and Medusas (Basic Books, 2000).

NYU Law, Vanderbilt Hall
Greenberg Lounge
40 Washington Square South at MacDougal Street

Free and open to the public.
Call 212-992-9540 or visit the web site of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality for more information. Co-sponsored by NYU Law School, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, the Post Doctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and the Graduate School of Arts and Science

Torie's BPL Reading Group

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 16:49:30 -0700

From Victoria Ludwin: I�m having a reading group at the Brooklyn Public Library and I thought you might be interested in coming, or might know people who are.

On the first Wednesday of every month, we�ll meet at 7PM in the Trustees Room of the Brooklyn Public Library to talk about the following books, all of which involve music (opera, jazz, rock, classical):

Date // Book discussed that night
9/8: The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf by Kathryn Davis
10/6: Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
11/3: Disturbance of the Inner Ear by Joyce Hackett
12/1: The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie

It's a great set of books and I hope you can come. If you�re interested, email me at lyriclives@yahoo.com so I can get a head count. The group is limited to 16 people. So sign up, get reading, and I�ll see you in three weeks!