BOOK STALKER

This Week's Readings

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:55:00 -0400

MONDAY: Book launch for Lisa Hanawalt’s My Dirty Dumb Eyes, a collection of her illustrations from places like the NYT, McSweeney’s and Vanity Fair. [POWERHOUSE]

TUESDAY: Khaled Housseini (The Kite Runner) reads from his newest novel, And the Mountains Echoed. [B&N UNION SQUARE]

WEDNESDAY: Bennett Sims will celebrate his debut novel A Questionable Shape along with Fiona Maazel (Woke Up Lonely) and Benjamin Hale (The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore). [HOUSING WORKS]

THURSDAY: National Book Award finalist Joan Silber (Fools) in convo with Stacey D’Erasmo (The Sky Below). [GREENLIGHT]

FRIDAY: John Strausbaugh will share tales from The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village. [BOOK COURT]

This Week's Readings

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:35:46 -0400

MONDAY: This Franklin Park event features Karen Russell (Vampires in the Lemon Grove), Elissa Schappell (Blueprints for Building Better Girls), Leigh Newman (Still Points North), Roxane Gay (Ayiti), and Michael Heald (Goodbye to the Nervous Apprehension). [FRANKLIN PARK]

TUESDAY: Kevin Powers (The Yellow Birds) in convo with Michael Pietsch (Hachette chief exec). [MCNALLY JACKSON]

WEDNESDAY: Richard Hell (Television) will read from Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp: An Autobiography. [BOOKCOURT]

THURSDAY: Mapping Manhattan: A Love (and sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers with creator Becky Cooper and panelists Matt Green, Liana Finck, and Eugene Drucker. [POWERHOUSE]

FRIDAY: The Moth StorySLAM. Theme: envy. [HOUSING WORKS]

Franklin Park: Ben Greenman, Touré, Amelia Gray, Claire Vaye Watkins, and Sam Lipsyte

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:38:00 -0400

I am bewildered.

How does Penina Roth, founder of the Franklin Park Reading Series, do it? Not only does she bring in multiple amazing authors, but she does it several times a month (there are two FP events in May), and she draws in a huge crowd, every time. I BookStalked Penina a few weeks ago, and this is something I really should have asked.

This past Monday, I traveled to Crown Heights and had the pleasure of seeing the following authors: Ben Greenman, Touré, Amelia Gray, Claire Vaye Watkins, and Sam Lipsyte. (The next event, on May 13, features Karen Russell, Elissa Schappell, Leigh Newman, Roxane Gay, and Michael Heald.)

Some highlights:

Touré (I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon) shared that one time he played basketball with Prince. Here’s how it went down: Touré finished an interview by asking Prince if they could play b-ball together. Prince responded via email with the cryptic phrase: “Anytime, brother…:)” Touré then flew immediately to Minneapolis. Soon they were on the court (and no, Prince did not wear heels). The best moment came when Touré committed a “titanic faux paux,” calling out Prince’s name — during Prince’s symbolic period! Prince just replied in an amused singsong: “You didn’t know what to call me!”

Amelia (a BookStalkee) read a delightfully disturbing story from her collection Museum of the Weird about a middle-aged man still breastfeeding. She prefaced it by saying she felt compelled to “match the sexiness of Prince.”

Claire Vaye Watkins (I reviewed her excellent debut collection, Battleborn) read from one of my favorite stories, “Rodine al Nido,” about a woman relating the worst thing she’s ever done.

Sam Lipsyte read from his short story “The Dungeon Master,” about some high schoolers in a D&D club (but NOT the official afterschool D&D club).

New Yorker editor Ben Greenman read excerpts from his new novel, The Slippage, about a couple on the rocks, and acted as the night’s cheerful MC. All in all, it was a lovely night, and I can’t wait to check out another FP event soon!

This Week's Readings

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:00:35 -0400

MONDAY: Franklin Park Reading Series has a seriously sweet lineup this week: Ben Greenman (The Slippage), Sam Lipsyte (The Ask), Toure (I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon), Claire Vaye Watkins (Battleborn) and Amelia Gray (Threats). [FRANKLIN PARK]

TUESDAY: Book launch for Gavin Edwards’s VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV’s First Wave. [POWERHOUSE]

WEDNESDAY: Sharp: A Discussion of Women and Criticism with Kate Bolick (The Atlantic), Ruth Franklin (The New Republic), Laura Miller (Salon), Miriam Markowitz (The Nation), Michelle Orange (The Rumpus), Parul Sehgal (New York Times Book Review) and moderator Michelle Dean (The Awl). [HOUSING WORKS]

THURSDAY: Celebrate new book of essays What My Mother Gave Me with Mary Morris, Maud Newton, Elissa Schappell, and Emma Straub. [GREENLIGHT]

FRIDAY: Aimee Molloy will read from However Long the Night, which is about Molly Melching, a women’s rights activist in Senegal. [BOOKCOURT]

Also, be sure to check out my writeup of last week’s Cheryl Strayed event — it was a fun one.

Cheryl Strayed, Elissa Schappell, and Sweet Soubrette

Sun, 05 May 2013 18:46:00 -0400

Cheryl Strayed has become a bonafide feminist guru.

Last Thursday I waited in line for fifteen minutes at Public Assembly to get into a sold-out Largehearted Lit event featuring Cheryl, Elissa Schappell and musical act Sweet Soubrette. Inside, it was so packed that I could barely make my way to friends.

Sipping drinks, the mostly female and twenty-somethings in the crowd waited with giddy anticipation. They weren’t just there to see an author—they were there to meet someone they felt they already knew. As I mentioned the last time I saw Cheryl, her memoir Wild made even her (male) New York Times reviewer weep. Cheryl has an uncanny ability to connect through her words (see: her collection of advice columns Tiny Beautiful Things) with a combo of searing honesty and an insistence that people lift themselves up.

And Cheryl is also very funny. Stepping onstage to wild applause while holding two cups, her first words were: “We brought up too much booze!” She and Elissa Schappell (Brooklyn author of Blueprints for Making Better Girls) proceeded to share a fast-paced convo that offered snapshots of important writing moments in Cheryl’s life.

Like the time she knew she wanted to be a writer: As a child, she slept over at a more religious-leaning friend’s house and went to church with the family the next day. In Sunday school, she was given a booklet about the divinity of the natural world. The words about finding god in nature pierced her, and she knew she wanted to be able to make others feel the same way.

She spoke about reading Johnny Got His Gun at fifteen and feeling inspired to take chances in her own writing (per the book: “Fuck the comma!”). She also talked about her more recent writing experiences, specifically the terror in writing about the most painful experiences of her life (see: having an abusive, tyrannical father; her mother’s sudden death; heroin addiction). She spoke cheerfully about her vocal haters (“just google ‘mental cripple’ and ‘slut’”) but shared that the response has been overwhelming positive. She’s also gotten to reconnect with some of those who wrote her advice column and now show up at readings (“I’m Johnny. No, I’m Johnny.”).

As for Cheryl’s feminist leanings, she spoke about posting a video on her Facebook page about being pro-choice and about her own abortion. The video caused many to respond, and Cheryl had to refute one commenter who said it was clear she “regretted” having the abortion. This reminded of an article in the first issue of Ms. magazine from 1972, which a friend showed me last week. The article was called We Had Abortions, and included a list of famous women (Nora Ephron, Gloria Steinem, etc.) who had had one. It struck me then that more than thirty years later, it’s still a pretty controversial move.

Cheryl has also taken on spokesperson role as a member of VIDA (Women in Literary Art), noting “We don’t think that sexist wizards are at the helm. But bias exists, even in some of us.”

After the talk I wondered out loud why Cheryl struck such a chord with young Brooklyn women (at one point during the convo, she said jokingly: “I learned I didn’t have to move to Brooklyn to be valid…But you guys are all valid!”). A friend reminded me that Wild was about Cheryl in her twenties, and that all her advice (like her famous phrase: “Write like a motherfucker”) urges people to go after what they want.

In other words, Cheryl’s now the one giving us permission.

BookStalked: Jessica Soffer

Fri, 03 May 2013 12:07:00 -0400

The Arabic saying “bukra fil mish mish” means “tomorrow, apricots may bloom.” Jessica Soffer’s debut novel Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots focuses on two surprising friends facing uncertain futures. Young Lorca, about to be sent off to boarding school, thinks that if she’s able to make her mother’s favorite Middle Eastern dish, she might be allowed to stay. Victoria, an Iraqi Jewish immigrant and grieving widow in New York, teaches cooking lessons to Lorca. As they uncover secrets from their pasts, they begin to suspect that their connection runs deeper than food. Apricots has been called “a profoundly redemptive story” (O Magazine) and “a work of beauty in words” (New York Journal of Books). Jessica has just started doing readings about town, and she was kind enough to share some of her most memorable event experiences thus far — after the jump!

What’s one of the most memorable readings you’ve given and why?

My most memorable reading was live on the Leonard Lopate show. To begin with, I was totally starstruck. I’m such a L.L. fan. My mother listened to him in the middle of the night every night when I was growing up and when I would go into her room, woken up by a nightmare or the flu or noise, there she was, and there he was too. Always, there he was. I didn’t listen as a child, but I heard him. I know his voice so intimately. The lovely thing is that when I was on the show, reading, I could feel him actually listening, and then responding to my reading in a way that suggested that he was invested in the story, right there with me, which is amazing, given all the incredible people he meets, and the beautiful, brilliant things he hears all the time. He could have just tuned me out, but he didn’t. I heard him. He heard me. What an honor. What a thing.

Any particularly intriguing (or conversely, awkward) audience questions that have stuck with you?

At my book launch, someone asked me to read the “most poetic” section of my book. Um. I got nothing. In absolute real life, I told him that I was sorry but that I had no idea and could I get back to him? Which I didn’t. Earlier in the week, an interviewer had asked me why people should buy my book and my answer was equally ungraceful, perhaps because it struck me as much the same question. The intention, I know, is nothing harmful. It’s meant to be a compliment, or to at least give me the opportunity to shine. But questions like that do the opposite for me. They leave me speechless, embarrassed, wondering why I did, after all, write this book—and if, after all, there is anything poetic in it. That might be very lame. I’m sure that’s very lame. But there it is.

What’s a reading that you’ve attended that you’ll never forget?

I love when Aleksandar Hemon reads. Every. Single. Time. His prose is melodic and beautiful and often funny and his voice is a mix between the plucking of a bass and the thump of a heavy drum. He enjoys himself. And that helps. Recently, he read at Hunter and I realized how much he believes in his writing, understands it, has worked through it and come to terms with it. It seems to make him proud. It’s on his face and in his tone and in the way that he turns the pages: eager even still. That’s something to aspire to, or at least feign for a while. Until.

This Week's Readings

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:34:00 -0400

In light of this nonsense, I’d like to offer a week of events featuring awesome lady writers. (And wouldn’t you know it, there’s SO MANY.)

MONDAY: Meg Wolitzer (The Interestings) in convo with Jami Attenberg (The Middlesteins). [WORD]

TUESDAY: Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologue) on her memoir, In the Body of the World. {B&N UNION SQUARE]

WEDNESDAY: Whoa, get this:

-Rachel Kushner (The Flamethrowers) [STRAND]

-AND Claire Messud (The Woman Upstairs) [CENTER FOR FICTION]

-AND Marilynne Robinson (Housekeeping) [CUNY]

THURSDAY: Cheryl Strayed (Wild). [PUBLIC ASSEMBLY]

FRIDAY: PEN World Voice Festival: Master/Class with Fran Lebowitz and A.M. Homes. [NEW SCHOOL]

This Week's Readings

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:52:00 -0400

MONDAY: Noteworthy: A Conversation with the Women at the Forefront of the NYC Arts Community includes Rachel Chanoff (Celebrate Brooklyn!), Erika Elliott (Summerstage), Yoko Shioya (Japan Society), and Shanta Thake (Joe’s Pub), moderated by Elisabeth Vincentelli (New York Post). [HOUSING WORKS]

TUESDAY: Augusten Burroughs (Running With Scissors) celebrates the paperback launch of This is How. [POWERHOUSE ARENA]

WEDNESDAY: Novelists Christina Baker Kline (Orphan Train) and Caroline Leavitt (Is This Tomorrow) will discuss the importance of place and historical research in their works. [CENTER FOR FICTION]

THURSDAY: Debut novelist Jessica Soffer (Tomorrow there will Apricots) in convo with Collum McCann (Let the Great World Spin). [MCNALLY JACKSON]

FRIDAY: Colson Whitehead, Luis Jaramillo and Catherine Barnett will read alongside student contributors to 12 Street Magazine. [B&N UNION SQUARE]

This Week's Readings

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:35:47 -0400

Earlier this month I saw Renata Adler speak at The Strand. Renata wrote two underground experimental classics in the seventies and eighties: Speedboat and Pitch Dark, which NYRB Classics is now re-releasing. You can read more about Renata here—why she disappeared, fiction-wise, after writing these great works; what she thinks of the publishing industry; and how she became known for her sharp-edged criticism. When I saw Renata, I found her to be less intimidating than I’d have expected—she was funny, self-deprecating, and well aware of her tendency to meander, conversationally. The topics she brought up ranged from Evelyn Waugh, to Newtown, to Henry James, to computers vs. typewriters. She talked about first hating and then loving One Hundred Years of Solitude (“Everyone has the same name and I don’t know what it’s about. But then…I got it.”). She also seemed flummoxed by having to hold her microphone, then made a quick, did-she-say-that? joke about it looking like a vibrator.

Moral of the story? If you can make one of Renata’s events, go.

MONDAY: Graphic novelist Ben Katchor (Hand Drying in America) and Nicholas Dawidoff (The Catcher was a Spy). [GREENLIGHT]

TUESDAY: Renata. [CENTER FOR FICTION]

WEDNESDAY: Mixer Reading Series: Alex Dimitriov, Laurie Weeks, Emily Toder, Natalie Diaz, and Rebecca Pronsky. [B&N 86TH ST]

THURSDAY: Nick Flynn (The Reenactments) and Sam Lipsyte (The Fun Parts). [PETE’S CANDY STORE]

FRIDAY: Book launch for Alfred Ryan Nerz’s Marijunamerica. Props for that title. [POWERHOUSE]

BookStalker Approved: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:37:00 -0400

Jeanette Winterson published her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, in her twenties. The semi-autobiographical book details a lesbian growing up in a Pentecostal Community in England. It won a slew of awards and was adapted by the BBC. Nearly thirty years later, Jeanette’s new memoir further explores her reality of growing up with a fanatical and sometimes cruel adopted mother—and what happens when she decides to track down her birth mother. The book is filled with beautiful and poetic prose, like this passage:

Adopted children are self-invented because we have to be; there is an absence, a void, a question mark at the very beginning of our lives. A crucial part of our story is gone, and violently, like a bomb in the womb.

The baby explodes into an uknown world that is only knowable through some kind of a story—of course that is how we all live, it’s the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after it has started. It’s like reading a book with the first few pages missing. It’s like arriving after curtain up. The feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you—and it can’t, and it shouldn’t, because something is missing.

That isn’t of its nature negative. The missing part, the missing past, can be an opening, not a void. It can be an entry as well as an exit. It is the fossil record, the imprint of another life, and although can never have that life, your fingers trace the space where it might have been, and your fingers learn a kind of Braille.

And lots of wonderful lines like this:

I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things, you must risk it.

This Week's Readings

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 12:21:00 -0400

MONDAY: The Franklin Park Reading series presents Heidi Julavits (The Vanishers), Fiona Maazel (Woke Up Lonely), Teddy Wayne (The Love Song of Jonny Valentine), David Gilbert (& Sons), and Maris Kreizman. [FRANKLIN PARK]

TUESDAY: The Moth StorySLAM. [HOUSING WORKS]

WEDNESDAY: Joshua Henkin (The World Without You). [BOOKCOURT]

THURSDAY: Comedy in Fiction: Fiona Maazel, Sam Lipsyte and Jim Shepard, moderated by Jason Diamond. [CENTER FOR FICTION]

FRIDAY: Junot Diaz (This is How You Lose Her). [THE STRAND]

BookStalked: Penina Roth of the Franklin Park Reading Series

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:47:00 -0400

The Franklin Park Reading Series is one of the most popular reading series in Brooklyn, and I’m constantly amazed by the big names it draws in (seriously, every time). Curator Penina is my social media guru, but I was also impressed to find out that she single-handedly got the series going — after meeting with various Crown Heights inhabitants to find out what they were interested in (literature and bars, natch). After the jump, Penina shares stories about how she started FPRS, some of its most memorable moments, and, of course, the awesome events to look for this spring.

How did you come to be the curator of the Franklin Park Reading Series?

I’d been living in Crown Heights for about 10 years when Franklin Park opened in 2008. At the time, I was working as a community news reporter and was very interested in all the changes happening in the neighborhood – new business openings and an influx of recent college grads from across the country. For research, I interviewed many new residents and discovered that, like me, they loved literature and that some were writers themselves. I also met merchants and longtime residents from the well-established Caribbean-American and Hasidic communities – and it seemed that members of all the groups were converging at the bar. I was also a big fan of readings (at bookstores and KGB) and had a few writer friends I wanted to promote. So I convinced Franklin Park’s owners to let me host a one-off community event for lit enthusiasts and locals seeking a fun night out – something that might appeal to everyone, including barflies.

After seeing the success of our first reading (we drew a crowd and sold a lot of beer), featuring writers David Goodwillie (American Subversive), Liza Monroy (Mexican High) and Matthue Roth (Yom Kippur a Go-Go), the owners asked me to turn it into a monthly event and have been extremely supportive all along.

What’s one of the most memorable readings the series has held and why?

There have been many memorable readings, but one that really stands out was in January 2011, when we hosted Sam Lipsyte for our annual short fiction night. His work is very popular with our audience, and he’s influenced many of our featured authors. He was the fifth reader in a long night, and he announced that he’d be reading an abbreviated version of his New Yorker story “The Climber Room.” We had a very large crowd, and people were sitting on the floor, literally worshipping at his feet. And he gave us a real treat – he read for 45 minutes, and the room was absolutely quiet the whole time, except for bursts of appreciative applause.

Any interesting behind-the-scenes tales?

One anxiety-inducing moment happened in March 2010, at our first anniversary, when we found out a few hours before the event that we’d have to relocate due to a construction issue at the bar. So we scrambled and moved to a sister bar, Soda in nearby Prospect Heights, and emailed as many websites and publications as possible about the change. Time Out was really generous, noting the venue switch on their website. Our authors – including Stephen Elliott and Victor LaValle – were somewhat concerned about poor turnout, but we had a good crowd and a group of LaValle fans who’d shown up at Franklin Park and got misdirected on the way to Soda ran in breathlessly just before he went on.

And one of the most dedicated authors I’ve ever met is Danielle Evans, who teaches at American University and came in just for the reading. She didn’t finish teaching until around 4 and was suffering from a cold, yet she rushed to NYC on Amtrak, came in midway through the reading, then hung out until she had to leave for Penn Station for her return trip at 3AM. Then she taught a 9AM class the next morning!

What Franklin Park events we should keep an eye out for this spring?

We have a really exciting schedule this spring! This Monday, April 8, I’m incredibly honored that novelist and Believer editor Heidi Julavits, will be reading, along with two of our favorite alums, Fiona Maazel and Teddy Wayne, Maris Kreizman, the mastermind of the awesome blog Slaughterhouse 90210 and novelist, David Gilbert, who’ll be giving a preview reading of his upcoming book & Sons.

And we’re doing two events in May: On May 6, we’ll be hosting a launch party for The Slippage, the new novel from FP friend and alum Ben Greenman, and he’ll be joined by super alums Sam Lipsyte and Toure and two authors we’ve been trying to schedule for a long time – Claire Vaye Watkins and Amelia Gray.

Then on May 13, we’ll be hosting two more of our amazing alums, Karen Russell and Elissa Schappell, along with the great fiction writer and essayist Roxane Gay, Oprah.com editor Leigh Newman, whose newly released Still Points North is one of the best memoirs we’ve come across in years, and Portland publisher Michael Heald, who’s written an insightful, poignant memoir about leaving his twenties, Goodbye to the Nervous Apprehension.

And on June 10, we’re looking forward to collaborating with PEN/America on an event showcasing PEN members – readers include acclaimed novelists Matt Bell and Amy Brill.

Photo by Brooklyn Magazine.

This Week's Readings

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 13:00:20 -0400

MONDAY: Taiye Selasi (Ghana Must Go) [CENTER FOR FICTION]

TUESDAY: Maya Angelou (Mom & Me & Mom) [B&N UNION SQUARE]

WEDNESDAY: Celebrating 50 Years of the New York Review of Books with Robert Silvers,Joseph Lelyveld, Ian Buruma, Andrew Delbanco, Alma Guillermoprieto and Zoë Heller [NYPL, STEPHEN A. SCHWARTZMAN BUILDING]

THURSDAY: Ben Marcus (The Flame Alphabet) + Glenn Kurtz (Practicing: A Musician’s Return to Music) [MCNALLY JACKSON]

FRIDAY: Renata Adler (Speedboat, Pitch Dark) and David Shields (Reality Hunger) [THE STRAND]

BookStalker Book Rec: The After Girls

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 12:55:00 -0400

In happy Friday news, I just finished my awesome friend Leah Konen’s debut YA novel, The After Girls. Basically, I want to walk down the street and pass out copies to everyone I see. It’s so beautifully written, heart wrenching, suspenseful, and funny. The story concerns two girls who are left reeling after the suicide of their best friend. One retreats into alcohol and music, while the other becomes obsessed with finding out why—with seemingly supernatural results. I devoured this book in two days—it’s one where you look forward to your subway commute so you can read just a few more pages. I’m so proud of Leah and I can’t wait to read what she writes next. You can find the book here—it’s not “officially” out yet, but if you pre-order it will come right away.

This Week's Readings

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:20:00 -0400

MONDAY: Upstairs at the Square with debut novelist Taiye Selasi (Ghana Must Go) and singer Alice Smith. [B&N UNION SQUARE]

TUESDAY: Largehearted Lit with Michelle Orange (This is Running for Your Life: Essays) and Teddy Wayne (The Love Song of Jonny Valentine). [WORD]

WEDNESDAY: Women of Letters presents “To the Person I Misjudged,” with a group that includes The Hairpin founder Edith Zimmerman and Dahvana Headley (The Year of Yes). [HOUSING WORKS]

THURSDAY: Richard Ford (Canada). [BOOKCOURT]

FRIDAY: Prince dance party with Touré (I Would Die 4 U) and DJ djFRiTZo. [GREENLIGHT]

This Week's Readings

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 13:22:45 -0400

MONDAY: Marc Spitz + Chuck Klosterman [HOUSING WORKS]

TUESDAY: Teddy Wayne + Owen King [COMMUNITY]

WEDNESDAY: Jonathan Lethem + Jessica Hagedorn [GREENLIGHT]

THURSDAY: M.G. Vassanji + Elizabeth Nunez [CENTER FOR FICTION]

FRIDAY: David Levithan [B&N UNION SQUARE]

BookStalked: Julia Fierro of Sackett Street Writers' Workshop

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:25:00 -0400

I heard about the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop shortly after moving to New York. I thought the concept—workshops run out of the homes of lauded authors like Emma Straub, Karen Thompson Walker and Catherine Chung—sounded like an amazing idea. What I didn’t know then (and only just discovered) is that there’s literally one woman behind the operation: founder Julia Fierro. Julia reads all the applications, fills the classes, hires and trains new teachers, teaches her own classes, and consults with students, along with scheduling, curating and hosting the related reading series. Whew! Somehow, in the midst of this (and raising two totally adorable kids), Julia found time to write a book—Cutting Teeth, forthcoming from St. Martins Press in spring 2014.

Without further ado, I want to get to Julia’s remarkable stories about Sackett Street—why and how she founded it, her most memorable experiences, and some exciting upcoming events.

How and when did you come up with the idea of Sackett Street?

I am asked this question often — by writers, by Sackett students and instructors — and I also get emails at least once a month from teachers who want to start a “Sackett Street” in their own town or city. I always start by saying it was an accident, which is only half-true I’ve come to see, now that ten years have passed and I have enough distance for some retrospection.

I graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with a novel and a great agent and moved to Brooklyn with my new husband. After nearly a year of passes from editors on my novel, and a year of working a seriously low-paying adjunct teaching position, my spirits were all but trampled to bits. I stopped going to readings, to anything that was part of the “lit scene”, and even avoided bookstores for awhile! My sister-in-law, the stand-up comic Rachel Feinstein, suggested I run a workshop in my home. I put an ad on craigslist and a motley crew of writers of all different levels climbed the three floors to get to my brownstone apartment kitchen.

They were writers who wrote to write, and they were accountants and lawyers and editorial assistants and copywriters and stay-at-home-parents and industrial engineers and they were GOOD. Really good. As I filled class after class (and some of those first Sackett writers still take classes today), I realized that great writers didn’t just exist at literary salons and MFA programs, they filled Brooklyn.

I was only 26 years old and so I worked very hard teaching those classes and I made the students work very hard, insisting that they write critiques for each other and that they workshop with a hyper-focused writer’s perspective. I see now that it was the hard work I demanded of them, plus the fact that I had gotten my MFA at Iowa, that created the word-of-mouth about a small-sized Salon-like workshop for serious writers who wanted to polish their work, be accepted at top MFA programs, and/or to publish.

After a few years I was teaching every weeknight in my home (we’d had to move to Union Street to escape our senile Sicilian landlady who thought I was running a brothel!), and hired the first official Sackett instructor other than myself — Anna Solomon, author of The Little Bride.

From there we grew and I hired more instructors, many of whom were my own students in the Post-MFA Workshops I taught, open only to writers who had already earned their MFA degrees. They were writers I knew would work very hard and be dedicated to and generous with their students.

Today, over 1700 Sackett Street writers have studied with us, many on their way to top MFA programs, and more and more now being published by both big houses and independent presses. They are literally everywhere — all over the country, at every MFA program in the nation.

With ten years of retrospection I am able to see that maybe it wasn’t an accident after all. Maybe it was partly good luck, partly the power of passionate readers coming together to talk serious craft, partly location (Brooklyn really is the writerly mecca), and partly my own youthful (and occasionally delusional) faith that by reading and writing and workshopping our asses off, together, anyone can write if they work damn hard on developing their ability to read with a writer’s perspective.

What’s one of the most memorable Sackett Street readings that you’ve hosted?

For me, the most memorable readings are always the ones where Sackett alumni are launching or reading from their newly published books. It is just amazing to see such hard work (years of it) culminate in a book that will become part of a reader’s life. In the past year we’ve had Sackett alums like Keija Parssinen, Eric Sasson, Julie Innis, Jessica DuLong, Jessica Penner, Heather Aimee O’Neill, and, coming up, Jessica Soffer, read from their newly published books, released by both big houses and smaller presses. It is an honor to share a small part of their huge accomplishment, and to be able to do it at BookCourt, our neighborhood independent bookstore.

That said, I also love hosting the Sackett Street instructors, many of whom have new books launching. We recently started having one special guest read at each event, and at the March reading it was the wonderful Edgar Award-winning Megan Abbott, author of the recent novel Dare Me, as well as five other novels. She is also one of my literary crushes—I’ve learned so much from her work.

Any interesting tales from your job?

I think the most interesting tale is from the reading I missed at the last minute because I was sick with the flu this winter. I host all the readings, choose the readers, promote the event, and I’m also the sole administrator at Sackett Street, so when I was sick my first thought was we’d have to cancel.

My husband, Justin Feinstein, also a writer who recently wrote a memoir about his first year as a drummer at the Berklee College of Music, and who has always been a hugely important part of Sackett Street (in a behind-the-scenes kind of way) stepped to the front of the stage, so to speak, and hosted the reading at the very last minute. He did a great job and it was a big turnout, close to 100 people in the audience. Sackett Street’s assistant director, Heather Aimee O’Neill, also a great friend and former student of mine, helped out. I felt really lucky to have them there, and I’m sure they had fun that night.

This really captures the community that Sackett Street has become — everyone from the staff at BookCourt to the Sackett students there pitched in and cheered them on, and the readers were fantastic. At the risk of sounding hokey (though I do think a pinch of sentimentality is almost always a good thing), the Sackett Street readings create a sense of family. I’ve had strangers come up to me at the end of readings and talk about how warm and welcoming the atmosphere is, an added bonus to the talented readers, many of whom are Sackett instructors and some of NYC’s hottest up-and-coming young writers.

I am so grateful to be part of that community, and I am also grateful to BookCourt for welcoming us and being our home away from home.

What are some upcoming readings/classes?

We have new classes starting all the time in both Manhattan and Brooklyn, including all levels of Fiction, Nonfiction, Novel-Writing, Poetry, MFA Application Workshops, Manuscript Workshops, Literary Erotica, Writing for Young Adults and more. You can register through our site — http://sackettworkshop.com/ or email julia (at) sackettworkshop (dot) com.

Our next reading in the bi-monthly Sackett Street Writers’ Reading Series is on Monday, May 6th at 7pm at BookCourt in Cobble Hill. The featured readers are all Sackett Street instructors. Both Amy Shearn’s second novel, The Mermaid of Brooklyn (Simon & Schuster), and Julie Sarkissian’s debut novel, Dear Lucy (Simon & Schuster), are out in April. Sackett Street’s instructor of Literary Erotica, Jill DiDonato, recently published her debut novel, Beautiful Garbage (SheWrites Press). Lastly, Nick Dybek will launch the paperback issue of his critically acclaimed debut novel, When Captain Flint Was A Good Man (Riverhead).

It is sure to be a fabulous night of words, wine, and, as always, a book raffle of the readers’ work.

This Week's Readings

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:50:44 -0400

MONDAY: Release party for Sam Pink’s newest novel, Rontel. [HOUSING WORKS]

TUESDAY: The NYer’s Calvin Tomkins will read from Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews. [192 BOOKS]

WEDNESDAY: Book launch for Sexy Feminism, by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong and Heather Wood Rudolph. (My buds! Holla.) [BLUESTOCKINGS]

THURSDAY: The Behind the Book series will feature Jonathan Dee, Aria Beth Sloss, and Ben Schrank. [KGB]

FRIDAY: The Moth StorySLAM! This event’s theme: going sane. [THE TISHERMAN AUDITORIUM]

BookStalked: Rosie Schaap

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 12:32:00 -0500

Rosie Schaap has held down some pretty interesting gigs: fortuneteller, full-time Deadhead, preacher, homeless shelter manager, and, most recently, bartender. Her new memoir, Drinking with Men, shares tales from these various periods through the lens of her life-long search for the perfect bar. Besides her current post at South Brooklyn’s SOUTH, Rosie writes the monthly “Drink” column for The New York Times Magazine and also contributes to This American Life. Due to her witty and warm prose style, I felt like I knew Rosie even before reaching out. I was delighted to find her as friendly as I’d hoped. After the jump, Rosie provides stories of meeting fellow barflies on her book tour, hosting a rowdy series, and attending an unforgettable event .

What’s one of the most memorable readings you’ve given and why?

I returned from my Drinking with Men book tour last week, and had some great experiences on the road. In Chicago, I read at a wonderful independent bookstore and café called The Book Cellar, and had a terrific, engaged crowd. I read briefly from the book, and then opened it up for questions. They weren’t shy at all, and shared their own favorite bar stories: pick up lines, toasts, jokes, comparative assessments of Chicago’s and San Francisco’s bar cultures. It felt like we could’ve happily continued talking and drinking together all night long.

Any particularly intriguing (or conversely, awkward) audience questions that have stuck with you?

I ran a reading series at Good World, a Swedish bar and restaurant on the Lower East Side (sadly, it no longer exists), and while I can’t recall a single especially intriguing or awkward question, I took pride in the series as perhaps the most cheerfully inebriated and least sanctimonious of its kind. There was always tremendous give-and-take between the readers and the crowd. Some of the bar’s regulars (even those who didn’t care much for reading) would stick around for the events, and often reminded me a bit of the groundlings at Shakespeare’s Globe. They’d interject, laugh loudly, occasionally boo, sometimes deliver sotto-voce running commentary. I think it drove a few readers nuts, but most enjoyed it. And it kept them on their toes—a reminder that a reading’s not a just a recitation, but a performance.

What’s a reading that you’ve attended that you’ll never forget?

Many years ago, I went to a remarkable reading at the Half King in Chelsea. The featured authors were former AP reporter Ian Stewart, whose Ambushed: A War Reporter’s Life on the Line had recently come out, and Dutch photojournalist Teun Voeten, whose How de Body? One Man’s Terrifying Journey Through an African War was published around the same time. Both books are powerful documents of the war in Sierra Leone, and it seemed that a substantial portion of New York’s Sierra Leonean community had turned up for the event. The authors read and spoke so cogently and well—but the discussion afterwards is what really made the event memorable. The stakes just felt so much higher than they often do at readings. So many people in the audience were so informed (and had themselves lived through parts of that war), and told their own stories, asked questions, sparked further conversations. I learned a lot that night, from the authors and the audience in equal measures. It was intense.

This Week's Readings

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 12:18:00 -0500

MONDAY: Editor Sari Button and contributors Elissa Bassist, Betty MacDonald and Mira Ptacin will discuss the aptly named Get Out of my Crotch, an anthology of essays that examines the continuing war on women’s reproductive rights. [BLUESTOCKINGS]

TUESDAY: In the reading series Double Take IV, three pairs of authors write original pieces about shared experiences. This time around, the pairs will be: Rick Moody & Tim Davis, John Yau & Eugene Lim, and Charles Bernstein & Elizabeth Willis. [APEXART]

WEDNESDAY: Liars’ League, a live literary journal, features fresh writing performed by actors. This month, the “secrets and lies” theme will feature stories by Maureen Duffy, Marie Sabatino, Ben Black, Tom Hopkins and Katherine Jamieson. [KGB]

THURSDAY: Congrats to The Believer on its 10th anniversary! This party, hosted by Heidi Julavits, will feature Nick Hornby, Sheila Heti, Gabrielle Bell, Amanda Filipacchi, and music by Dawn of Midi. $10/12. [LE POISSON ROUGE]

FRIDAY: Former VP Al Gore will discuss his newest book The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change. $35/45/50 (with signed book). [POWERHOUSE ARENA]