Brooklyn Reading Works is pleased to present mom-bloggers, Autism’s Edges and Autism Land on April 19th at 8 p.m. at The Old Stone House at Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets.

KRISTINA CHEW, a classics professor and mom writes a blog called AUTISMLAND. "Finding out your child has autism is like the end of a love affair and
the start of a new, lifelong, really beautiful relationship." MOTHERS VOX, the nom-de-net of a mother, teacher, scholar and activist living in New York City, will read from her blog, AUTISM’S EDGES.

Novelist Regina McBride, author of The Nature of Water and Air, The Land of Women, and The Marriage Bed, will offer a special one-day workshop in Park Slope on April 21 from 10:30 until 5 p.m.

Register now to reserve a place in this workshop that is designed for writers of all levels. The cost is $125.

NOTE FRM OTBKB: I have studied with Regina McBride since 1998 and I recommend her classes to all writers wherever you are in your process. Using relaxation and sense memory, her technique is wonderful whether you are just beginning to write, embarking on a novel or memoir, or very experienced and in the midst of a novel or short story.

For inspiration, character development and incredible writing exercises, Regina’s course has been vital to my development as a writer as it always propels me to my  best writing. Especially great when your work needs a little jump start.

If you are interested, please email nightsea21@nyc.rr.com

Inner Lives: Developing Characters

An Intensive Workshop with the Focus on the Fictional Character

With Regina McBride

Using relaxation, sense memory, and emotional memory (Stanislavski
acting techniques transformed for the writer) a variety of exercises
will be offered to enable the student to find a deeper, richer
connection to the character he or she is creating.

Exercises will be followed by writing periods, and opportunities for
people to read and share their work. The atmosphere will be safe, with
the focus on exploration. The class is designed to help the student
break into new territory with the character, and with the story itself.

In April, May, and June there’s a whole lot going on at Brooklyn Reading Works at The Old Stone House that you should know about. All events at 8 p.m. at The Old Stone House on Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets.

April 19th: Autism’s Edges and Autismland, two blogger-moms, who write about life with an autistic child. This should be an incredible evening of honest and powerful writing about a difficult topic. $5 gets you in. Refreshments and books available.

May 10th: SECOND ANNUAL BROOKLYN BLOGFEST featuring Gowanus Lounge, Brooklyn Record, Brownstoner, A Brooklyn Life, Andy Bachman, No Land Grab, AYR Report, Seeing Green, Creative Times, Streetsblog, Shiksa From Manila, Mrs. Cleavage’s Diary, and many more.

May 24: EDGY MOTHER’S DAY EVENT. This is shaping up to be an event you won’t want to miss. Amy Sohn, novelist and columnist for New York Magazine, Tom Rafiel, author of Parallel Play, a smart, funny novel about a reluctant Park Slope mom, Susan Gregory Thomas, author of Buy Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds, Alison Lowenstein, author of City Baby Brooklyn, Judy Lichtblau, and Louise Crawford (AKA Smartmom). $5 gets you in. Refreshments and books available. 

June 16th: SOUTH SIDE STORIES: A Benefit for the Old Stone House with Capathia Jenkins and Louis Rosen.  $30 gets you in — and supports the Old Stone House. Refreshments and CDs available. This event is on a Saturday night. Meet-the-Performers champagne reception afterward.

June 21: Michael Ruby and Nancy Graham. Park Slope poet, Michael Ruby and Nancy Graham present a collaborative work based on the writing of Samuel Beckett. They are both practitioners of sleep writing.  $5 gets you in. Refreshments and books available.

For information: louisecrawford@gmail.com, brooklynreadingworks.com, 718-288-4290.

Brooklyn Reading Works this Thursday at 8 p.m. Three Writers, Three Interesting Stories. The Old Stone House Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets.

CARLA THOMPSON,  an award-winning freelance writer and filmmaker, invites readers to travel the clay and paved roads of Montgomery, Alabama in her first book, a memoir, Bearing Witness: Not So Crazy in Alabama.

In Bearing Witness: Not So Crazy in Alabama, the Harlem native meets an itty bitty beauty queen, a redemptive ex-con, and a wheelchair-bound quiz kid among others and discovers that the American South is a complex intersection of race and class filled with people who go about the business of living the best way they can.

BRANKA RUZAK was born and raised in the steel and rubber belt of northeastern Ohio, the youngest daughter of Croatian and Slovenian immigrants. Her passion for words and music was sparked as a child, where she spent many hours listening to her father’s stories and playing Croatian folk music in his tamburitza orchestra. Her current studies in Hindusthani classical music, as well as her enthusiasm for Indian novels, textiles and a good cup of chai have taken Branka further afield to India. Always an avid traveler, her essays and poems are journeys to different times and different places. Her essays “Hungry Heart” and “Mothballs: A Chemical Memory” is from a growing collection of writings about family, culture and travel..

MRS. CLEAVAGE,  author of the blog MRS CLEAVAGE’S DIARIES, is a single mother who lives in  a cluttered apartment in East New York. She is saucy, opinionated, creative, and a smarty-pants – not necessarily in that order. Her blog is her story, live and unedited from Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Reading Works this Thursday at 8 p.m. Three Writers, Three Interesting Stories. The Old Stone House Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets.

CARLA THOMPSON,  an
award-winning freelance writer and filmmaker, invites readers to travel
the clay and paved roads of Montgomery, Alabama in her first book, a
memoir, Bearing Witness: Not So Crazy in Alabama.

In Bearing Witness: Not So Crazy in Alabama, the Harlem native meets
an itty bitty beauty queen, a redemptive ex-con, and a wheelchair-bound
quiz kid among others and discovers that the American South is a
complex intersection of race and class filled with people who go about
the business of living the best way they can.

BRANKA RUZAK was born and raised in the steel and rubber belt
of northeastern Ohio, the youngest daughter of Croatian and Slovenian
immigrants. Her passion for words and music was sparked as a child,
where she spent many hours listening to her father’s stories and
playing Croatian folk music in his tamburitza orchestra. Her current
studies in Hindusthani classical music, as well as her enthusiasm for
Indian novels, textiles and a good cup of chai have taken Branka
further afield to India. Always an avid traveler, her essays and poems
are journeys to different times and different places. Her essays
“Hungry Heart” and “Mothballs: A Chemical Memory” is from a growing
collection of writings about family, culture and travel..

MRS. CLEAVAGE,  author
of the blog MRS CLEAVAGE’S DIARIES, is a single mother who lives in  a
cluttered apartment in East New York. She is saucy, opinionated,
creative, and a smarty-pants – not necessarily in that order. Her blog
is her story, live and unedited from Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Reading Works this Thursday at 8 p.m. Three Writers, Three Interesting Stories. The Old Stone House Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets.

CARLA THOMPSON,  an award-winning freelance writer and filmmaker, invites readers to travel the clay and paved roads of Montgomery, Alabama in her first book, a memoir, Bearing Witness: Not So Crazy in Alabama.

In Bearing Witness: Not So Crazy in Alabama, the Harlem native meets an itty bitty beauty queen, a redemptive ex-con, and a wheelchair-bound quiz kid among others and discovers that the American South is a complex intersection of race and class filled with people who go about the business of living the best way they can.

BRANKA RUZAK was born and raised in the steel and rubber belt of northeastern Ohio, the youngest daughter of Croatian and Slovenian immigrants. Her passion for words and music was sparked as a child, where she spent many hours listening to her father’s stories and playing Croatian folk music in his tamburitza orchestra. Her current studies in Hindusthani classical music, as well as her enthusiasm for Indian novels, textiles and a good cup of chai have taken Branka further afield to India. Always an avid traveler, her essays and poems are journeys to different times and different places. Her essays “Hungry Heart” and “Mothballs: A Chemical Memory” is from a growing collection of writings about family, culture and travel..

MRS. CLEAVAGE,  author of the blog MRS CLEAVAGE’S DIARIES, is a single mother who lives in  a cluttered apartment in East New York. She is saucy, opinionated, creative, and a smarty-pants – not necessarily in that order. Her blog is her story, live and unedited from Brooklyn.

You won’t believe what happened last night at Brooklyn Reading Works? The writer, Adarro Minton, didn’t show up. Can you believe it?

At 7:45, after I set up the reading on the first level of the Old Stone House because Adarro is wheel-chair bound, I got concerned. Usually the writers show up early.

Then I got worried. I called my friend Red Eft who knows Adarro. She’d heard from him on Wednesday that he was going down to Brooklyn for the reading. She gave me his phone number and at 8:10 or so called him at home. Imagine my surprise when he answered the phone.

I almost fell over. Well, as you know Adarro isn’t in the best of health. He said he was sick yesterday and on a respirator. So he forgot. It slipped his mind.

But why didn’t he call. What time exactly did he remember? Questions. Questions. Here’s what he said happened: he  asked his friend to check his email (at what time exactly?) and his friend told him there were two emails, one from Brooklyn Reading Works and one from Red Eft.

OH NO. OOPS. OMIGOD. He must have thought or said (at least I hope so). Still why didn’t he call or email? That’s the part I don’t understand.

Lord knows, we’ve all forgotten to do things: remembered something in the morning but forgotten about it in the afternoon. Then you get a call from the friend you’re supposed to have coffee with. The people at the meeting you scheduled. The doctor’s office you were supposed to be in.

Who hasn’t done that? You look at your calendar that evening and…Omigod. I can’t believe I forgot. Truth is, it happens very rarely for me I am glad to report. But it has happened.

And I always call when I realize my mistake.

Suffice it to say, Adarro is a really nice person and very charming and he was sincerely apologetic. "This is so not like me," he said. "I never do things like this." He was sick yesterday. On a respirator. I completely understood that part of it.

But you coulda called.

Still, I am pissed and hurt. Initially, I felt diminished and unimportant. It played into all my insecurities. Why am I  doing BRW if it’s not even important enough for the author to show up?

That’s what I was thinking when I went to bed. It’s hard enough doing the publicity and getting people to show up. Boo hoo. I felt tired and worn down. My spirit was flagging.

I want to thank Brooklyn Record, Until Monday, Gowanus Lounge and others for blogging the event. That meant a lot to me.

NOW I’m just annoyed. I’ve done about twenty BRW readings and I usually have two, three or more  readers. And in all the readings (and that’s 40 to 50 writers) I have NEVER had anyone forget. Thankfully, that just doesn’t happen.

So here’s my BRW resolution: communicate with all writers the day of the event and always have more than one person per reading.

Adarro Minton didn’t get to read from his collection of short stories, Gay, Black, Crippled, Fat.  If you want to buy the book, go to  Amazon. If this blurb is any indication, it might have been an interesting evening.

"I survived mescaline, blotter acid, cocaine, freebase
cocaine, crack, danger sex in subway bathrooms, hunger, homelessness,
and three serious suicide attempts. In 1999, I lost the use of my arms
and legs to a mysterious, and still undiagnosed form of myositis.
Thanks to 12 steps, and the love of K.D. Haynes, I got up (so to speak)
off of my clinically depressed ass, and in the year 2000, I began to
forage through a lifetime of stories circling my soul. This collection
represents the first set of them."

This Thursday at Brooklyn Reading Works I am pleased to present Adarro Minton, author of Gay, Fat, Crippled, Black. Old Stone House. Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets. 8 p.m.

Here’s the blurb from Amazon, which will give you some idea of what to expect at this reading you won’t want to miss.

Like
Hubert Selby’s joyously tragic characters, Adarro Minton has created a
faction of players that seem to exist on an Earth 2. The author has
created powerful, challenging and at the end, beautiful stories about
the most important and universal things in life and about humanity. We
are vaguely familiar these people, we have put them in radical
pigeonholes and expect The Department of Homeland Security to keep them
in their place. This book contains stories of people living in the
metropolitan back ends of New York City, some rich, some poor, all
streetwise, misguided and desperate. a fat girl, a faggot, a lawyer and
several others. We follow as their lives are systematically broken down
and destroyed. This is a harsh, raw, and daring piece of writing. Be
warned: not for the faint hearted.

About the Author by Adarro Minton:

I have been expelled from
St Peter Claver, St Catherine of Siena, and The Union Springs Academy,
a Seventh Day Adventist boarding school, after refusing to submit to a
weekly shower game that five lusty upper-classmen came up with.
I survived the disco era in New York City, in imagined opulent splendor
at Studio 54, Better Days, The Nickel Bar, 220 Club, The Saint, The
Mineshaft, and The Paradise Garage.
I survived mescaline, blotter
acid, cocaine, freebase cocaine, crack, danger sex in subway bathrooms,
hunger, homelessness, and three serious suicide attempts.
    

In 1999, I lost the use of my arms and legs to a mysterious, and still undiagnosed form of myositis. 

Thanks to 12 steps, and the love of K.D. Haynes, I got up (so to speak)
off of my clinically depressed ass, and in the year 2000, I began to
forage through a lifetime of stories circling my soul. This collection
represents the first set of them.
   
 
 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
 
   
 

THREE GREAT WRITERS at the Old Stone House. Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets. November 16, 2006. 8 p.m. SPECIAL BOOK AND POSTER RAFFLE

Elissa Schappell is the author of USE ME, which was a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway award. She is co-editor with Jenny Offill of THE FRIEND WHO GOT AWAY and the forthcoming MONEY CHANGES EVERTYTHING. The  co-founder of TIN HOUSE with Rob Spillman and Win McCormick, Elissa also writes the HOT
TYPE column in Vanity Fair.

Ilene Starger, is a poet whose work has appeared in
Bayou, Oyez Review, Georgetown Review, and numerous other magazines.
She was a finalist for the 2005 Ann Stanford Prize.

Darcey Steinke is the auuthor of SUICIDE BLONDE (chosen as a New York Times notable book of the year), UP FROM THE WATER and JESUS SAVES.

Come one, come all. You won’t want to miss this one.

November 15, 2006 in BROOKLYN READING WORKS  |

THREE GREAT WRITERS at the Old Stone House. Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets. November 16, 2006. 8 p.m. SPECIAL BOOK AND POSTER RAFFLE

Elissa Schappell is the author of USE ME, which was a finalist for a Pen/Hemingway award. She is co-editor with Jenny Offill of THE FRIEND WHO GOT AWAY and the forthcoming MONEY CHANGES EVERTYTHING. The  co-founder of TIN HOUSE with Rob Spillman and Win McCormick, Elissa also writes the HOT
TYPE column in Vanity Fair.

Ilene Starger, is a poet whose work has appeared in
Bayou, Oyez Review, Georgetown Review, and numerous other magazines.
She was a finalist for the 2005 Ann Stanford Prize.

Darcey Steinke is the author of SUICIDE BLONDE (chosen as a New York Times notable book of the year), UP FROM THE WATER and JESUS SAVES.

Come one, come all. You won’t want to miss this one.

THREE GREAT WRITERS at the Old Stone House. Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets. 8 p.m.

Elissa Schappell is the author of USE ME, which was a finalist for a Pen/Hemingway award. She is co-editor with Jenny Offill of THE FRIEND WHO GOT AWAY and the forthcoming MONEY CHANGES EVERTYTHING. The  co-founder of TIN HOUSE with Rob Spillman and Win McCormick, Elissa also writes the HOT
TYPE column in Vanity Fair.

Ilene Starger, is a poet whose work has appeared in
Bayou, Oyez Review, Georgetown Review, and numerous other magazines.
She was a finalist for the 2005 Ann Stanford Prize.

Darcey Steinke is the author of SUICIDE BLONDE (chosen as a New York Times notable book of the year), UP FROM THE WATER and JESUS SAVES.

Come one, come all. You won’t want to miss this one.

DARCEY STEINKE WILL BE READING AT BROOKLYN READING WORKS ON THURSDAY NOV. 16TH AT 8 P.M.

At the Old Stone House. Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets. 8 p.m.

Excerpt from Jesus Saves by Darcey Steinke:

Oh she was high as they flew nowhere in particular in Ted’s white Ford with the harelip fender. Her dirty blonde hair whipped around her face. A single strand caught on her tongue as she sucked the sweet pot smoke. Her lungs tightened and she coughed a little, ran one finger down her cheekbone and set the taut hair free, then pressed the joint into the ashtray. Tears swamped her vision and the car swelled gently around her. The light changed from red to a textured leaflike green, as if life itself gestated behind the curve of glass. It was a sign for her to levitate off the seat, slip out the window and fly up, like a piece of paper caught in a whirlwind, high over this place until the houses looked like strings of Christmas lights and the mall a Middle Eastern mecca.

ELISSA SCHAPPELL will read on Thursday November 16th at Brooklyn Reading works at 8 p.m. The Old Stone House. Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets. Five dollars.

Excerpt from her novel, USE ME:

Pouilly-Fume, Chardonnay, Pouilly-Fuisse, Sancerre." I chant my mantra in the backseat of our white rental car, Josephine, as we speed through the Loire Valley countryside, past chateaus and vineyards and endless rows of grapevines.

It’s not fair that all my friends get to be normal and go to the beach, and I have to go to France and be a total Albino. I barely ever see the sun because my parents are constantly dragging me and Dee through every museum, church, and restaurant in France. We spent two whole days in the Louvre!

ILENE STARGER WILL READ AT BRW ON NOV. 16th AT 8 p.m.
The Old Stone House. Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets.

Ferris Wheel, 1966 by Ilene Starger

Asleep by day, a steel colossus;
   
    at night, high-powered neon, glorious.
   
    I begged you to take me to it,
   
    centerpiece of the country fair;
   
    August sign of summer’s passing.
    Much unsaid beneath bright surfaces.
   
    I begged you to lead me to it,
   
    paradise, found: the Wheel,
   
    pleasure palace, rentable
   
  for one dollar.
 

Coupled behind the safety bar,
    we sat in our private car, an awkward
    father-daughter pair.
    Urged on by electricity and shouts,
    the Wheel, ringed planet,
    began its rotation. We rose
    above our lives; gravity was gone.
    Your sweater hugged my shoulders.
    Suspended, we seemed close
    to stars; we dipped into their silence.

You would leave us soon.
 

I saw it in the distance, asterisked,
   
    the price of flood-lit beauty. 
 

The Wheel’s gears, jittery, groaned;
    descent, toward slow ground.
   
    We grew dizzy with the ending:
   
  our dollar’s worth, one ride.

Another century; starred
 
words, suspended, in cool dark.

The beautiful new poster and logo for Brooklyn Reading Works was designed by Goodform Design, a small and vibrant graphic design studio in the heart of Park Slope. They also designed my new business card. Check out the web site and see their teriffic work! They are a pleasure to work with!

As you can see, the next BRW is on November 16th with Elissa Schappell, Ilene Starger and Darcey Steinke.

The painting on the BRW poster is by Elizabeth Reagh. It is titled; Key Food.

Goodform Design is a collaboration of graphic designers, fine artists, and software engineers, working together to create print and web design that command attentions and delights the senses. Owner/Designer Elizabeth Reagh sees every project as a chance to bring her parallel backgrounds in fine art and graphic art to produce beautiful and effective communication.

Thanks Gowanus Lounge for mentioning BRW on your blog. This should be a red hot  reading. Incredible writers! – OTBKB

Blogger and Smart Mom Louise Crawford emails to remind us (and posts about it over at Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn) that the next Brooklyn Reading Works is taking place on November 16. The featured authors are Elissa Schappell, Ilene Starger and Darcey Steinke.
Elissa Schappell wrote Use Me, which was nominated for a Pen/Hemingway
award. She is co-editor with Jenny Offill of The Friend Who Got Away
and the forthcoming Money Changes Everything. She also writes the Hot
Type column in Vanity Fair.

Ilene Starger is a poet whose work
has appeared in Bayou, Oyez Review, Georgetown Review, and other mags.
She was a finalist for the 2005 Ann Stanford Prize.

Darcey Steinke is the author of Suicide Blond (a New York Times notable book of the year), Up from the Water and Jesus Saves.

Brooklyn Reading Works–which is curated by Louise–takes place at the Old Stone House
in JJ Byrne Park on Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Street. The event
starts at 8 PM. Admission is $5.00 includes some refreshments. Check it
out.

The fun of Brooklyn Reading Works is that I never know how it’s going to go, or who’s going to show. It’s always a bit of an adventure.

Last night’s reading was serendipitious fun. The authors were great. We had a small, extremely friendly crowd. We even auctioned off a signed copy of one of the books. Judd Lear Silverman, playwright and author was in attendance. He has his own blog and he wrote up a nice piece about last evening, which I include here. JUDD LEAR SILVERMAN’S BLOG IS being added to my BROOKLYN BLOGS TO KNOW ABOUT list  on the right side of this blog. I want to personally thank Judd for such such a great post – OTBKB

Okay, so it was the seventh game of the playoffs and it was do or die for the Mets, Whatever. If you didn’t come to last night’s BROOKLYN READING WORKS: IT WAS YOUR LOSS. Leora Skolkin Smith wowed the audience with her lyrical, sensorial writing about pre-1963 Jerusalem from her book, EDGES: O JERUSALEM, O PALESTINE And Richard Grayson read a great story called, THE LOST MOVIE THEATERS OF SOUTHEASTERN BROOKLYN & ROCKAWAY BEACH.

But on November 19, you can make it up to yourself. Come hear:

Elissa Schappell, author of USE ME, a finalist for the Pen/Hemingwa award, and  co-editor with Jenny Offill of THE FRIEND WHO GOT AWAY and the forthcoming MONEY CHANGES EVERTYTHING. The  co-founder of TIN HOUSE with Rob Spillman and Win McCormick, Elissa also writes the HOT TYPE column in Vanity Fair.

Ilene Starger, is a poet whose work has appeared in Bayou, Oyex Review, Georgetown Review. She was a finalist for the 2005 Ann Stanford Prize. 

Darcy Steinke, author of SUICIDE BLONDE (chosen as a New York Times notable book of the year), UP FROM THE WATER and JESUS SAVES will read from her new book. 

Still, you missed a great reading. So here’s an excerpt from Grayson’s piece, which is from his collection of stories AND TO THINK HE KISSED HIM ON LORIMAR STREET (available at Lulu).

The Rugby

On Utica Avenue near Church Avenue, just blocks from our first apartment, the Rugby was the theater of my early childhood. When I was three, my mother took me to see my first film here. That weekday matinee of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers left me with one memory: a row of giant men so happy that they couldn’t stop dancing. 

My brother and I would spend Saturday mornings lining up under the Rugby’s  marquee with its unique saw-toothed top. During the scene in West Side Story where Rita Moreno slowly put on her stockings, Marc turned to me and said, “That’s sexy.” He was about seven.

By the time I was in college, the Rugby was showing porn films – a sure sign of impending death for one of “the nabes,” what my family called neighborhood theaters. One Saturday night, when neither of us had a date and we had nothing better to do, Elise and I decided to see a triple-X feature at the Rugby. It had been her first movie theater too, the one where she’d watched Elvis movies like Blue Hawaii.

Continue reading YOU MISSED A GREAT READING →

Should be a great show: Richard Grayson, author of, AND TO THINK HE KISSED HIM ON LORMER STREET and Leora Skolkin-Smith, author of EDGES: O ISRAEL, O PALESTINE will read.

8 p.m. at the Old Stone House. Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets in Park Slope. For info and directions: www.theoldstonehouse.org or www.brooklynreadingworks.com

$5.00. Refreshments and books to buy.

review from Kirkus Discoveries, April 13, 2006:

REVIEW OF GRAYSON’S short story collection by Kirkus Discoveries:

The dynamic Brooklyn cityscape serves as the backdrop in this beguiling collection of short stories.

Grayson’s tenth volume of fiction introduces a multicultural multitude
of characters, including a teen lesbian from Uzbekistan who works as a
Brooklyn Cyclones hot-dog mascot and a gay black student whose
Pakistani roommate’s pet monkey helps him find acceptance on a mildly
homophobic campus. Most, though, are slight variations on the
quasi-autobiographical persona of a middle-aged white man reminiscing
about the friends, families, lovers and locales that have populated his
life. Grayson often constructs his loose, episodic narratives with a
pop-culture scaffolding, as in “Seven Sitcoms,” in which the narrator
meditates on his relationship with his family’s black housekeeper
through a commentary on the racial and class stereotypes of early TV
sitcoms; and “1001 Ways to Defeat Green Arrow,” a reconstruction of a
love affair between a man and his much younger stepbrother, paired with
a hilarious exegesis of a comic-book hero in decline. In other stories,
like “Branch Libraries of Southeastern Brooklyn” and “The Lost Movie
Theaters of Southeastern Brooklyn and Rockaway Beach,” the author maps
out memories against the geography of his beloved Brooklyn, with
excursions to Los Angeles and South Florida. Grayson’s low-key,
conversational prose is injected with flashes of wry wit (“I live in a
neighborhood where neighbors notice my lack of body art”), but some of
the slighter pieces are no more than droll shaggy-dog stories. The more
substantial ones, however, like “Conselyea Street,” about a gay man
with a younger Japanese lover reflecting on his Williamsburg
neighborhood’s demographic transitions—from Italian to Hispanic to
hipster to yuppie—fuse vivid characters with a keen sense of place and
cultural specificity.

A funny, odd, somehow familiar and fully convincing fictional world.

She was born on June 1, 1926 at Los Angeles General Hospital to Gladys Pearl Baker, nee Monroe. The name on the birth certificate is Norma Jeane. Her father remains unknown.

Today would have been her 80th birthday. So tonight,   Brooklyn Reading Works presents THE MARILYN MONROE 80th BIRTHDAY BASH. 

Yona Zeldis McDonough, Albert Mobilio,  Melissa Pierson and Lisa Shea read their essays from ALL THE AVAILABLE
LIGHT: A Marilyn Monroe Reader.

Charlotte Maier performs excerpts from MARILYN: IN HER OWN WORDS and Poet Michele
Madigan Somerville will read poems.

SPECIAL ATTRACTION:  birthday cake. The Old Stone House on Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets in Park Slope.

COLLAGE BY ART JUNK GIRL

NANCYKAY SHAPIRO READS THIS THURSDAY NIGHT AT BROOKLYN READING WORKS WITH STEFANIA AMPITHEATROF (TWO WRITERS I LOVE)!!!!!!

THE OLD STONE HOUSE IN JJ BYRNE PARK FIFTH AVENUE BETWEEN 4th and 5th STREETS. REFRESHMENTS. BOOKS. SIGNING.

LOOK WHAT PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY IS SAYING ABOUT NANCYKAY’S FIRST NOVEL: WHAT LOVE MEANS TO YOU PEOPLE
$23.95 (384p) ISBN 0-312-34789-8

With painstakingly detailed, passionate sex scenes balanced by plenty of
insight into its characters’ anguished inner lives, Shapiro’s debut novel
dramatically captures love’s roulette of emotions: the electricity of
possibility, the pull of youth, the weight of loss. Shapiro depicts the
fraught relationship between two New York City men: 42-year-old ad exec Jim
Glaser and 23-year-old pretty-boy and aspiring artist Seth McKenna. Pulled
together by empathy and animal attraction, Jim and Seth must also navigate
undercurrents of pain: Jim still mourns the death of his long-term partner,
Zak, and Seth conceals a troubled smalltown Nebraska background that
includes a fundamentalist Christian mother, an abusive stepfather and a
horrifying teenage experience that has left him emotionally crippled. Afraid
of Jim’s pity, Seth paints a much cheerier picture of his upbringing, and
when his younger sister, Cassie, suddenly shows up in New York, Seth is
terrified she will reveal their history. Bitter that Seth escaped Nebraska
and she didn’t until now, Cassie also struggles with but quickly accepts his
homosexuality. Fate temporarily calls Seth back to Nebraska, and he and Jim
hit a painful low before Shapiro delivers a reassuring if improbable happy
ending. (Mar.)

TONIGHT: An interesting and thought-provoking evening at Brooklyn Reading Works at the Old Stone House tonight (2/16) at 8 p.m.

The Old Stone House is in JJ Byrne Park on Fifth Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets. Free. Refreshments. Books to buy and get signed. Two Park Slope non-fiction writers will read and discuss their work.

David Berreby reads from his non-fiction book, US AND THEM: UNDERSTANDING YOUR TRIBAL MIND.

"Berreby’s quest is to understand what he sees as a fundamental human urge to classify and identify with "human kinds." We project this urge onto what we see. Are races and human kinds real? The fact that they change all the time, and we can switch from one to another so easily, suggests not. Instead, Berreby says, our ideas of the "human-kind code" are based "on facts about how we relate to [other] people at the moment we categorize them–what we want, or expect, or fear from them." Henry Gee, Scientific American

Paul LaRosa, author of TACOMA CONFIDENTIAL: Gig Harbor, Washington, a quiet Tacoma suburb, knew little of tragedy and scandal-until April 26, 2003. On that day, David Brame, distraught over his impending divorce, shot his wife to death in a busy public parking lot. Then, with the couple’s two children only feet away, he turned the gun on himself. It was a horrific event, but Tacoma residents had special reason to be shocked. Brame was, after all, the chief of police.But as the investigation unfolded, a bizarre and depraved side of Brame and his marriage came to light. Here, in chilling detail, is the full story of one of Gig Harbor’s most violent and disturbing crimes.