Brooklyn Reading Works presents: Young, Gifted and Black (Men) curated by Martha Southgate with Clifford Thompson, Victor LaValle and James Hannham. 

Where: The Old Stone House on Fifth Avenue and 3rd Street in Park Slope

When: October 1, 2009 at 8 p.m.

James Hannaham's stories have appeared in The Literary Review, Open City and Nerve, and one is about to show up in One Story.
He has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The Blue
Mountain Center, Chateau de Lavigny, and Fundacion Valparaiso. He
teaches creative writing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and lives
near there. His first novel, God Says No, came out through McSweeney's Books in late May of 2009. An excerpt from the book appears in McSweeney's 31, which looks a lot like a yearbook, binding-wise.

Victor LaValle is the author of slapboxing with jesus, a collection of stories, and two novels, The Ecstatic and Big Machine.
He has received numerous awards including a Whiting Writers' Award, a
United States Artist's Ford Fellowship, and the key to Southeast
Queens. His website is victorlavalle.com

Clifford Thompson grew up in Washington, D.C., and attended
Oberlin College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing. His
essays on literature, film, jazz, and other subjects have appeared in
publications including The Threepenny Review, Commonweal, Cineaste, Film Quarterly, The Iowa
Review, Black Issues Book Review, and The Best American Movie
Writing. He is the editor of the H.W. Wilson publication Current
Biography. Thompson lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and two
children. Signifying Nothing is his
first novel.

Martha Southgate is the author of three novels,
most recently Third Girl from the Left
which was published in paperback by Houghton Mifflin in September 2006.
It won the Best Novel of the year award from the Black Caucus of the
American Library Association. She received a 2002 New York Foundation
for the Arts grant and has received fellowships from the MacDowell
Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Bread Loaf
Writers Conference.  Her July 2007 essay from the New York Times Book
Review, “Writers Like Me” appears in the recent anthology Best
African-American Essays 2008.  Previous non-fiction articles have
appeared in The New York Times Magazine, O, Premiere, and Essence. She
also has essays in the recent anthologies Behind the Bedroom Door and
Heavy Rotation: Writers on the Albums That Changed Their Lives. She is
working on her next novel, to be published by Algonquin Books. You can
visit her website at www.marthasouthgate.co

And here's the fab schedule for the 5th anniversary season of Brooklyn Reading Works:

October 15:  POETRY PUNCH curated by Michele Madigan Somerville
November 19 at 7 p.m.  YOUNG WRITERS curated by Jill Eisenstadt (note: earlier start time)
December 10:  FEAST: WRITERS ON FOOD curated by Michele Madigan Somerville. A benefit for a local soup kitchen.
January: 21:  TIN HOUSE READING curated by Rob Sillman
February 11:  MEMOIRATHON curated by Branka Ruzak
March 18:  BLARNEYPALOOZA curated by Michele Madigan Somerville
April 15:  TRUTH AND MONEY Curated by John Guidry
May 13:  4TH ANNUAL EDGY MOTHER'S DAY
June 13: FICTION IN A BLENDER Curated by Martha Southgate

The Old Stone House is located on Fifth Avenue at Third Street in Park Slope, 718-768-3195. Directions here.