HOW TO READ A NOVELIST and GOODBYE TO ALL THAT at Powerhouse

Two terrific events coming up at Powerhouse arena focusing on writing, living, and interacting as a writer in New York and the world….

1234026_10151732895449342_673610519_n

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT edited by Sari Botton
Tuesday Oct 08, 2013

In Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York, edited by Sari Botton, 28 women writers take up Didion’s literary legacy by sharing their own stories about New York. With stellar contributions from some of today’s most beloved female authors of memoir and literary fiction—Cheryl Strayed, Dani Shapiro, Emma Straub, Emily Gould, Emily St. John Mandel, Hope Edelman, and more—Goodbye to All That tells the stories of their own love/hate relationships with New York, as well as the city’s gravitational pull on them—even at the worst of times.

HOW TO READ A NOVELIST by John Freeman
Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Between 2000 and 2013 John Freeman put interviews to tape with just about every major writer who published a book: he spoke with such departed legends as Norman Mailer and David Foster Wallace; the Nobel laureates Doris Lessing, Mo Yan, and Günter Grass; bestsellers such as Amy Tan and John Irving; American greats from Toni Morrison to Philip Roth; and a younger generation of novelists that includes Dave Eggers, David Mitchell, Kiran Desai, and Jonathan Safran Foer. How to Read a Novelist rounds up 55 of Freeman’s very best profiles and interviews, but it is not simply a collection of discrete dialogues between interviewer and interviewee; these authors are also in conversation with one another, with Freeman serving as a deft moderator connecting the dots of a global literary culture. And in the poignant introduction about Freeman’s experiences interviewing John Updike, he gets to the heart of his enterprise: what it means to love a writer, to attempt to live up to his or her achievements—and then to come face to face with him or her in less-than-ideal circumstances.

The WEEK: Dec 12-16.

MONDAY:

THE WHITE SWALLOW READING SERIES
The White Swallow, a queerish reading series in Manhattan’s West Village, features emerging and established poets and fiction writers. The White Swallow Reading Series featuring Saeed Jones, Michael Montlack, and Patricia Smith A 2011 Pushcart Prize Nominee, Saeed Jones received his MFA in Creative Writing at Rutgers University, Newark.

Continue reading

THE WEEK: Nov 28-Dec 2.

MONDAY:

TALK SERIES: Poetry After the White House Jam: A Panel Discussion on the nature and Role of the Avant-Garde
This talk will focus on poets Alison Knowles (founding member of Fluxus) and Kenneth Goldsmith (Conceptual Writing figurehead) and their inclusion in the 2011 White House Poetry Jam. Specifically, thinking about Knowles and Goldsmith as “avant-garde” figures: whether there can be an avant-garde that is current and representative, and how that impulse affects/is affected by an institutional context such as the White House. Panelists include: Rod Smith,Sandra Simonds, and Steven Zultanski.