Event Announcement: Delicious New Fiction, February 5 at 4PM

January has brought snow and biting cold to New York City. As winter settles in for the long haul, keep yourself warm by indulging your literary appetite. Please join the Sunday Best Reading Series on Sunday, February 5, for a hearty meal of delicious new fiction. Scheduled readers include prose writers Jonathan Baumbach, Janice Eidus, and Douglas Light. As always, the reading will take place at 4PM in The Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, 116 Pinehurst Avenue (at West 183rd Street). Suggested admission is $7 and covers the reading itself, as well as the after-reception, where audience members can enjoy free refreshments and mingle with the writers.  Please read on for more information about the writers who will be reading their work on February 5.

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JONATHAN BAUMBACH

Jonathan Baumbach

“In all of Jonathan Baumbach’s fiction, there is a wonderful balance of ease and authority, subtlety and surprise, wisdom and playfulness…one of my favorite writers.” —Robert Coover

Jonathan Baumbach is the author of fourteen books of fiction, including Dreams of Molly; YOU; On The Way To My Father’s Funeral: New and Selected Stories; B, a novel; D-Tours; Separate Hours; Chez Charlotte and Emily; The Life and Times of Major Fiction; Reruns; Babble and A Man to Conjure With. His stories have appeared in Esquire, American Review, Tri Quarterly, Partisan Review, Zoetrope, Antaeus, Iowa Review, Open City and Boulevard magazines. His fiction has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Byrnes Book of Great Pool Stories, All Our Secrets Are the Same, O.Henry Prize Stories, Full Court: a Literary Anthology of Basketball, The Best of TriQuarterly, and On The Couch: Great American Stories about Therapy. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts, and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. In 1973 (with Peter Spielberg) he invented the Fiction Collective, the first fiction writers cooperative in America, reinvented in 1988 as FC2. He is the author of The Landscape of Nightmare: Studies in Contemporary American Fiction, has been the Film Critic for Partisan Review and is the two time Chairman of the National Society of Film Critics.

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JANICE EIDUS

Janice Eidus

“Nobody writes about Jewish cultural life quite as funnily and piercingly as Janice Eidus”  —Mindy Lewis, editor, Dirt: The Quirks, Habits, and Passions of Keeping House

Novelist, short story writer, and essayist Janice Eidus has twice won the O. Henry Prize for her short stories, as well as a Pushcart Prize, a Redbook Prize, and numerous other awards. Her 2008 novel, The War of the Rosens, won an Independent Publishers Award in Religion and was nominated for the Sophie Brody Medal, an award for the most distinguished contribution to Jewish Literature for Adults. Janice’s other books include the short story collections The Celibacy Club and Vito Loves Geraldine and the novels Urban Bliss and Faithful Rebecca. Her work appears in such magazines as Tikkun and Jewish Currents and such anthologies as Promised Lands: New Jewish American Fiction; On Longing and Belonging; The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories; Neurotica: Jewish Writers on Sex; and Scribblers on the Roof: Contemporary Jewish Fiction. She’s the Fiction Editor at Shaking, the print and online journal, and has been a guest speaker and teacher throughout the U.S., Europe, and Central America.

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DOUGLAS LIGHT

Douglas Light

“Gems of stories, slyly, skillfully interrelated and captivating in their economy, truth, and acid wisdom” —Frederic Tuten, author of Tintin in the New World

Douglas Light‘s new story collection, Girls in Trouble, won the 2010 AWP Grace Paley Prize. His first novel, East Fifth Bliss, won the ‘Popular Fiction’ section of the 2007 Benjamin Franklin Award presented by the Independent Book Publishers Association and was made into a film starring Michael C. Hall, Peter Fonda, and Lucy Liu. Light co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Knowles. Light’s second novel, Where Night Stops, received a 2010 NoMAA Grant. His fiction has won an O. Henry Prize and has appeared in the 2003 Best American Nonrequired Reading anthology and in Narrative, Guernica, Alaska Quarterly Review, Failbetter, and other magazines. He was a finalist for the 2002 James Jones First Novel Fellowship and for the 2010 Indiana Emerging Author Award.

Event Recap: 9/11 Memoir Festival

The Sunday Best Reading Series is gearing up for next month’s event, a program of fiction featuring Jonathan Baumbach, Janice Eidus, and Douglas Light. In the meantime, we offer you this recap (with photographs) of Writing from Life, the program of memoir that Sunday Best hosted on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. For those of you who missed the event, audio of the readings is available on the Sunday Best Reading Series program page on the WHFR (Washington Heights Free Radio) web site.

Risa Ehrlich, memoirist and visual artist.

The program opened with readings by local memoirists Risa Hirsch Ehrlich and Bonnie Walker. Risa Ehrlich, who is a visual artist as well as a memoirist, read a piece about teenaged yearnings for glamor and the hunt for the perfect prom dress.  Bonnie Walker, the official photographer for the Sunday Best Reading Series, read a short excerpt from her memoir-in-progress and a personal essay about a woman who took her own life in a New York City subway station.

Riss Hirsch Ehrlich (left) and Bonnie Walker

Next up was Dean Kostos, author of several books of poetry, including the forthcomiing Rivering (2012), who read an excerpt from his memoir provisionally titled The Boy Who Listened to Paintings. Dean’s reading dealt with his experiences as a teenager committed to a mental institution.

Dean Kostos, poet and memoirist.

Novelist and memoirist Phyllis Raphael closed the afternoon’s program with a series of readings both humorous and poignant. Phyllis started off with a story of a first-date misadventure, an accidental locking of her car keys in her car. Fortunately, her date, a psychoanalyst, turned out to be the kind of guy who always carries a duplicate key set (and she ended up marrying him).  Her other readings touched on Buddhist monks in Scotland and competitive sadism in academia.

Phyllis Raphael, novelist and memoirist.

The event was followed, as usual, by a reception during which audience members mingled with the writers. All present agreed that the event represented the Sunday Best Reading Series at its finest. Special thanks to Veronica Liu, who filled in for Sig and Theo Rosen as sound tech for this event, and to Peter Martin, who fulfilled treasurer and bartending duties.

Veronica Liu, WHFR

Please see the Sunday Best Flickr stream, accessible in the blog sidebar, for additional photographs from this event. Stay tuned for a recap of our event Openings to Light, which was held on December 4, 2011, as we gear up for our next reading set to take place in The Lounge at Hudson View Gardens on February 5. Thanks again to all who attended and all who support the series.

Writers and audeince members mingle at the after-reception.

Other Literary Events: Revolutionary Doctors, Word Up Rent Party, The Local Word at Le Cheile

Due to the rescheduling of “Cake Mix,” the writing and theater workshop for children with Mino Lora of the People’s Theater Project that was originally calendared in January, the next Sunday Best Reading Series will not take place until February 5. But Northern Manhattan is bustling with plenty of great literary events this holiday season.

If you are hankering for some deep literary discussion (with a film!), go hear Steve Brouwer talk about his book on revolutionary doctors in Cuba and Venezuela at Word Up Community Bookstore on Wednesday, December 14.  Speaking of Word Up, if you are as excited and relieved as we are that the bookstore remains open and want to help ensure it continues to survive, please attend Word Up’s 1st Rent Party on December 17.  And if you’re just in the mood to hear some good, old-fashioned great writing by authors who live in Northern Manhattan, stop in at the Irish pub Le Cheile at 181st Street and Cabrini Boulevard on December 13 for Washington Heights’ newest literary reading series, The Local Word. Read below for more details about these events.

Steve Brouwer at Word Up Community Bookstore: Wednesday, December 14^th, 6- 9pm

Steve is the author of Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba are Changing the World’s Conception of Health Care. He will discuss the book and present a 27-minute documentary film about Cuban doctors in Nicaguara by Victor Casaus. Free. 4157 Broadway at West 176th Street. Take the A train to 175 Street.

Word Up Community Bookstore, First Month’s Rent Party: Saturday, December 17^th, 6-9pm

Food, drinks, music. Celebrate the first six months of Word Up in Washington Heights! $10.

http://wordupbooks.wordpress.com/about-us/

The Local Word: A Fortnightly Evening of Live Literature: Tuesday, December 13^th, 8–10pm

The Irish restaurant Le Cheile (839 W. 181^st, corner of Cabrini Boulevard) is hosting a new reading series featuring Northern Manhattan writers called “The Local Word.” Come out to hear and support local literary artists at The Local Word’s inaugural event on December 13, featuring the work of poets David Eye, Stephanie Berger, John Deming, and Lisa Marie Basile, and music by Tamara Jaton and John Deming. 

Holiday cheer to all friends of the Sunday Best Reading Series!

Reading Announcement: Cake Mix Remix

Due to unforeseen circumstances, we have had to reschedule “Cake Mix,” a children’s theatre and writing workshop with Mino Lora, which was originally to take place in January.  This event will now take place on March 4, 2012.  The event will become a double-header (Festival of The Word) with readings by the 2012 NoMAA literary grantees following the “Cake Mix” workshop.

The next event in the reading series is now on February 5, 2012—a program of delicious new fiction by Janice Eidus, Douglas Light, and Jonathan Baumbach.

You will receive the usual e-notices and reminders.  Meanwhile, so you can mark your calendars, here again are those dates:

February 5^th:  New Fiction (Janice Eidus, Douglas Light, Jonathan Baumbach). The Lounge @ HVG, 4:00 pm.  $7 for readings and reception after.

March 4^th: Festival of The Word in Northern Manhattan: a theatre/writing working for children by Mino Lora of the People’s Theatre Project followed by a reading by the 2012 literary grantees of the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance.  The Lounge @HVG,  exact time(s) TBD. Adults $7/children free.

Other Literary Events: TODAY, Sunday, 11/20, at 2pm; UPTOWN NARRATIVES at WORD UP BOOKS

If you are in northern Manhattan today, please consider stopping by Word Up (4157 Broadway, at West 176th Street) at 2PM to hear Uptown Narratives,  a program of memoir and personal essay featuring some current and former Sunday Best Reading Series volunteers.  Among the readers will be Bonnie Walker, Sunday Best Reading Series photographer and blogger; Rita Calderon, Food Committee Member; and Risa Hirsch Ehrlich, front desk staff and all-around volunteer-extraordinaire.  All three have also read at the Sunday Best Reading Series.  The fourth reader on today’s program is Liam Drew, a new resident of Washington Heights whose work recently appeared in The Guardian. Please come welcome Liam to the neighborhood!

Read on for program details.

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UPTOWN NARRATIVES

Readings of Memoir and Personal Narrative

By Writers from Washington Heights and Inwood

Sunday, November 20 at 2PM

Word Up: Community Bookstore

4157 Broadway (at West 176^th Street)

Rita Calderon

Rita L. Calderon is a long-time Washington Heights resident and a psychotherapist. Her non-fiction work has appeared in several newspapers, including The Philadelphia Daily News and The New York Times. She has read her work at Above the Bridge Writers Café and the Sunday Best Reading Series.

Liam Drew

Liam Drew is a neuroscientist. In addition to writing memoir, he writes pieces that demystify science for the layperson. He was recently published in The Guardian.

Risa Hirsch Ehrlich

Risa Hirsch Ehrlich, who is primarily a visual artist, has been writing memoir for the past several years. She finds memoir to be a safe way to visit the past with the present adult conducting the vulnerable younger self backwards.

Bonnie Walker

Bonnie Walker is a writer and photographer, as well as an attorney. She is currently working on a book-length memoir.

Event Announcement: Openings to Light, December 4, 2011 at 4PM

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OPENINGS TO LIGHT

Three Poets, Three Journeys

The Lounge at Hudson View Gardens

Please join the Sunday Best Reading Series for an afternoon of poetry on Sunday, December 4 at 4PM. As always, the reading takes place at The Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, 116 Pinehurst Avenue (at West 183rd Street).  A contribution of $7 covers the event itself, an after-reception to meet the writers, and free drinks and snacks.

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AMY HOLMAN

“Wistful and full of wonder. Part freak show, part searing insight”

―Anne Yale, Voice in the Wilderness: Musings on Writing and Poem-Craft

Poet Amy Holman

Amy Holman writes poetry, fiction, and essays and advises writers on where to publish their work. She is the author of Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window (Somondoco Press, 2010); the prize-winning chapbook Wait For Me, I’m Gone (Dream Horse Press, 2005); and An Insider’s Guide to Creative Writing Programs (Prentice Hall, 2006). She wrote the popular column “Amy Holman’s Tough Love Guide to Publishing” for Poets & Writers Magazine and was a recent guest blogger at The Best American Poetry, which anthologized a poem of hers in 1999. Her essays have appeared in the anthologies The Subway Chronicles, Making the Perfect Pitch, The Practical Writer, and Knitting Through It, and in the online journal Connotation Press. She blogs semi-regularly at We Who Are About To Die and Lending Whale.

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CHRISTOPHER LOCKE

“True-story poems about growing up in America . . . delivered in plain, sure-footed language. Read a few . . . lines and you’ll find yourself helplessly engaged.”

―Billy Collins, poet

Poet Christopher Locke

Christopher Locke has received over two dozen awards for his poetry including grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, New Hampshire Council on the Arts, and Fundacion Valparaiso (Spain). His fifth collection of poetry, End of American Magic, (Salmon Poetry, 2010) was a Top Ten Book of the Year, as chosen by Maine Publishers & Writers Alliance, and was nominated for the Forward Prize (U.K.). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Literary Review, Adbusters, Southwest Review, 32 Poems, Connecticut Review, Alimentum, West Branch, Exquisite Corpse, Atlanta Review The Chattahoochee Review, The Sun, Slipstream, Agenda (U.K.), and twice on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.” His four chapbooks of poetry are The Temple of Many Hands (DeadDrunkDublin Press, 2010); Possessed (Main Street Rag, Editor’s Choice Award, 2005); Slipping Under Diamond Light (Clamp Down Press, 2002); and How To Burn (Adastra Press, 1995).

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SHARON WHITE

“The poems reverberate with the feeling that comes from deep observation and deep caring.…precious in the fullest sense…shining with their own light.”
—Baron Wormser, former Poet Laureate of Maine

Poet Sharon White

Sharon White’s Vanished Gardens: Finding Nature in Philadelphia won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs award in creative nonfiction. She is also the author of a collection of poetry, Bone House. Eve & Her Apple, a new book of poetry, was published in May by Harbor Mountain Press. Her memoir, Field Notes, A Geography of Mourning, received the Julia Ward Howe Prize, Honorable Mention, from the Boston Authors Club. Other awards include a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for Creative Nonfiction, the Leeway Foundation Award for Achievement, a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship, the Calvino Award for her fiction, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her poems, essays, and articles have appeared in Salt Hill Journal, Isotope, House Beautiful, Appalachia, Kalliope and North American Review. She teaches writing at Temple University in Philadelphia, and she blogs at she blogs at Gardens and the City | Thoughts on gardens, urban nature and wilderness.

Event Recap: New Books and Persistent Dreams

The Persistence of Dreams

May 1, 2011

The Sunday Best Reading Series closed its Winter/Spring 2011 season on May 1 with “The Persistence of Dreams,” a celebration of new books and literary dreams.  Readers included Northern Manhattan residents Elisabeth Frost and Carol Wallace, as well as the highly regarded poet Elaine Terranova.  As emcee Patricia Eakins noted, it has become a spring  tradition for the Sunday Best Reading Series to showcase new books and acknowledge “intrepid publishers of literary books.”  All three writers featured in the afternoon’s program read recently published work.  If you missed the reading, you can listen to the entire event on the Sunday Best Reading Series Program page at Washington Heights Free Radio (www.whfr.org).

Elisabeth Frost

Elisabeth Frost kicked off “The Persistence of Dreams,” reading poetry and prose poems from All of Us, her first full-length poetry collection, published by White Pine Press as part of its Marie Alexander series. Frost read poems inspired by the sayings enclosed in fortune cookies, as well as prose poetry that exposed manipulative family dynamics and touched upon themes related illness and caretaking.  Her poetry was moving and thought-provoking but also included splashes of humor in pieces that recalled a discussion of sexual fetishes at an artist’s colony and a dream in which the poet tells Derek Bok, president of Harvard University, exactly what she thinks of him.

Elaine Terranova

Elaine Terranova traveled from Philadelphia to participate in The Persistence of Dreams.  She read work from her newly published chapbook Elegiac: Footnotes to Rilke’s Duino Elegies, issued by Cervena Barva Press.  These poems place Terranova in direct conversation and dialogue with Rilke and have been described by author Kevin Prufer as “beautiful, impressionistic poems distinguished especially for their shifting, subtle intelligence and their emotional force.”

Carol Wallace

In her introductory remarks, Carol Wallace spoke directly to the afternoon’s theme of dreams, declaring: “It is a persistent dream that puts me in front of you today.”  Wallace recalled a childhood surrounded by typewriters with a father who works as a sports writer.  After writing numerous “ephemeral” books, Wallace returned to school in 2003 to earn a Master’s degree in art history.  Her studies and her research at Columbia provided the inspiration and material for Leaving Van Gogh, her first novel which is receiving acclaim from reviewers and readers alike. Told from the point of view of Van Gogh’s doctor, Paul Gachet, Leaving Van Gogh imagines Gachet’s complicated relationship with his troubled but transcendently gifted patient.

Carol Wallace, Elaine Terranova, and Patricia Eakins at the after-reception

Following the readings, the writers and audience members mingled, enjoying wines provided by Vines on Pine along with other refreshments. All involved with the Sunday Best Reading Series looked forward to the summer break, which, like all breaks, was refreshing but brief.

Elisabeth Frost talks with an audience member at the after-reception

The Sunday Best Reading Series thanks everyone who made the Winter/Spring 2011 season a success, including the performers and the audience members.  And a special thank you to those who staff the Sunday Best events and work behind the scenes: the success of each event rests upon the efforts and dedication of these trustworthy volunteers.

Sound technician Sig Rosen and event manager Peter Martin

A special shout-out to volunteer Joan Greenbaum who staffed the front desk and provided support for “The Persistence of Dreams” despite recent surgery which required her to use wheelchair and crutches.  That’s dedication!

Joan Greenbaum with fellow volunteers Gordon Gilbert and Peter Martin

The series returns on Sunday, September 11 with a program of memoir.  We hope you will join us for our first program of the 2011-2012 season.

Event Announcement: Writing From Life, Sunday, September 11, at 4:00 PM

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Writing from Life

A Memoir Festival

Sunday, September 11, at 4PM

The Lounge at Hudson View Gardens, Pinehurst Avenue at West 183rd Street

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The Sunday Best Reading Series opens its 2011-2012 season on Sunday, September 11, with Writing From Life, an afternoon of memoir and remembrance. Dean Kostos and Phyllis Raphael are the featured readers for the program.  In keeping with Sunday Best’s goal of promoting emerging local writers, Northern-Manhattan residents Risa Hirsch Ehrlich and Bonnie Walker will also be reading from their work.

In the capable literary hands of writers such as Kostos and Raphael, memoir has the power to transform personal experience into something revelatory and relevant to readers of diverse backgrounds and perspectives.  As Richard Russo has noted, “the finest literary memoirs” ultimately reveal “the secret recesses where we most truly dwell. How alike we all are, down this deep.”  It is, perhaps, particularly appropriate to acknowledge and celebrate the power of individual life stories to unite and inspire us on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  The afternoon’s program will begin with a short poetic tribute in honor of all lost on that day.

As usual, the reading will begin at 4:00 PM in The Lounge at Hudson View Gardens.  Suggested contribution is $7, which covers admission to the reading as well as free drinks and snacks at the after-reception where attendees will have a chance to mingle and meet the authors.

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Dean Kostos

“An impassioned observer who sees beneath the surface to subterranean rivers, Kostos is attentive to the confluence of dark forces.” ―Rachel Hadas, poet

Dean Kostos

Dean Kostos’s books include: Rivering (forthcoming), Last Supper of the Senses, The Sentence That Ends with a Comma, and Celestial Rust. He co-edited Mama’s Boy: Gay Men Write about Their Mothers and edited Pomegranate Seeds: An Anthology of Greek-American Poetry. His work has appeared in Barrow Street, Boulevard, Chelsea, The Cincinnati Review, The Dos Passos Review, New Madrid Review, Southwest Review, Stand Magazine, Western Humanities Review, on Oprah Winfrey’s Web site Oxygen.com and elsewhere. His literary criticism has appeared on the Harvard UP Web site. He has taught at The City University of New York and The Gallatin School of NYU.

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Phyllis Raphael

“Desperate urban comedy, ground in that fiery furnace, the human heart.” ―Seymour Krim, essayist

Phyllis Raphael

Phyllis Raphael has been writing memoir and personal essays since the 70′s when her fictionalized autobiographical pieces began appearing in The Village Voice.  Since then she has written for Harpers, Creative Non Fiction Magazine, Vogue, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The American Book Review, Oprah Magazine, CNN Living and the Norton anthology Seasons of Women. She is the author of a novel, They Got What They Wanted, and a memoir, Off The Kings Road: Lost and Found in London. She is the winner of  a PEN award for short fiction, has been a Pushcart Prize nominee and has been awarded three Yaddo Fellowships. She has taught memoir writing at NYU, The New School and at Columbia University where she is  member of the undergraduate writing faculty.

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Risa Hirsch Ehrlich is a visual artist as well as a writer.  A retrospective of her ceramics can be seen at the  Berkshire Bank, corner of 187th St and Pinehurst Ave. She has previously read her work under the aegis of Above the Bridge at the Red Room.

Writer Bonnie Walker lives in Inwood. She has an A.B. in English and French from Bryn Mawr College, an M.Phil in English Literature from the CUNY Graduate Center, and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. She is currently working on a memoir and is the photographer and official blogger for the Sunday Best Reading Series.

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Other Literary Events: Sunday Best Curator Patricia Eakins Reads in the Catskills, August 7, 7:30pm

Patricia Eakins, curator of the Sunday Best Reading Series, will be reading from her work alongside novelist Rilla Askew in Liberty, New York on August 7 at 7:30 p.m.  Eakins and Askew will be performing as part of the First Hearings Series held at the Liberty Free Theatre.  Admission is free.  The Liberty Free Theatre is located at 109 South Main Street in Liberty, New York.  For reservations and more information, call 845-292-3788.

 

Patricia Eakins, May 2011.

 

Patricia Eakins is the author of The Hungry Girl and Other Stories and The Marvelous Adventures of Pierre Baptiste (a novel) which won the NYU Press Prize for Fiction and the Capricorn Fiction Award of the Writer’s Voice. Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Parnassus, Conjunctions, Fiction International and The Paris Review, which awarded her the Aga Khan Prize.  Eakins is working on a novel and a collection of stories.

 

Rilla Askew received a 2009 Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  She’s the author of three novels and a book of stories, including an award-winning novel about the Tulsa Race Riot, Fire in Beulah. Her first novel,The Mercy Seat, was a finalist for the Pen-Faulkner Award. Her plays, short fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in a variety of venues, including Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards, World Literature Today, Nimrod International Journal of Poetry and Prose.

Community Happenings: Word Up Opening Postponed to Friday, June 17!

Please help us spread the word.  Due to unfortunate and uncontrollable circumstances, the opening of the community pop-up bookshop Word Up has been postponed from tonight, Tuesday, June 14, to Friday, June 17.   Outside of this change in opening date, shop dates and hours remain as previously announced.  Word Up will open at 4PM on Friday, June 17, with opening night “festivities” beginning at 6PM.  Veronica Liu apologizes for any inconvenience.  If you have questions or concerns about the schedule change or are interested in selling your books or holding an event or workshop at the shop, please contact Veronica at fartoocanadian@gmail.com.