On Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at Congregation Beth Elohim, an all-night event called “Shavuot Across Brooklyn” will take place in honor of the holiday of Shavuot, which commemorates the giving of the Ten Commandments.

Starting at 8PM with a choice between Orthodox, Traditional Egalitarian, Reform, and Meditation Services, the night will transition into a festive party and then to a host of creative classes going through the night culminating in a sunrise service at 5AM.

The night includes opportunities to learn with some of the best teachers, musicians, artists, and cooks in New York Jewish life.

Highlights include:

Jeremiah Lockwood – acclaimed musician and leader of the band Sway Machinery

Ron Lieber – New York Times Columnist who will join with Rabbi Shira Epstein to teach about money and ethics

Rabbi Jeff Salkin – Acclaimed author of Putting God On The Guest List: How To Reclaim The Spiritual Meaning of Your Child’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah, and The Gods Are Broken! The Hidden Legacy of Abraham

Jeff Yoskowitz – founder of the Gefilteria and appearing on the Forward 50 list who will teach a worship on pickling

David Deblinger – the co-founder of internationally renowned Labyrinth Theater Company and the Founder of Ensemble Force Inc.

For a full list of presenters go to:  www.cbebk.org/shavuot.

The night is sponsored by:

Altshul, Brooklyn Jews, Congregation Beth Elohim, Congregation Mount Sinai, Flatbush Jewish Center, Hannah Senesh Community Day School, Israelis in Brooklyn, Jewish Meditation Center of Brooklyn, Kolot Chayeinu, LABA, Locally Grown Shabbat, Mishkan Minyan, Moishe House, Park Slope Jewish Center, Prospect Heights Shul, Shir HaMaalot, and Union Temple

Because I was feeling nostalgic and compulsive I decided to compile a list of the all the Edgy Moms from 2007 through 2013 (That show will be on Thursday, May 9 at 8PM at The Old Stone House).

EDGY MOMS 2007

Susan Gregory Thomas, author of Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Mothers and Harms Children

Louise Crawford, aka Smartmom

Amy Sohn, author of Prospect Park West and Motherland

Sophia Romero author of Always Hiding

Mary Warren, blogger

Jennifer Block, author of Pushed

Judy Lichtblau, writer of short stories

Alison Lowenstein, author of City Baby Brooklyn

Michele Somerville Madigan, author of Wisegal and Black Irish

Tom Rayfiel, author of Parallel Play and Eve in the City

 EDGY MOMS 2008

Christen Clifford, playwright of Babylove

Amy Benfer, editor and staff writer at Salon, Paper and Metro

Michele Madigan Somerville, author of Wisegal and Black Irish

Louise Crawford, Smartmom

Amy Sohn, author of Prospect Park West and Motherland

Sophia Romero, author of Always Hiding, The Shiksa from Manila

Louise Sloan

Lenore Skenazy, author of Free Range Kids

  Continue reading List of Edgy Moms 2007-2013 →

Started in 2006, Edgy Moms is an annual reading of funny, poignant, shocking, and fresh writing about mothers and motherhood at The Old Stone House in Park Slope (presented by Brooklyn Reading Works). This year it’s on May 9 at 8PM. The Edgy Moms Manifesto, which I wrote, is read at the beginning of  each year’s event:

Manifesto:

Seven years ago I created Edgy Mother’s Day. I had sort of a vague sense of what that meant but it’s always been hard to articulate when people ask for, y’know, the quick elevator speech.

So what is an Edgy Mom?

She’s feisty and fun and a little bit zany. She whines to her friends and can be a bit of a martyr. She fantasizes about taking long trips without her children,

And getting a room of her own on Block Island with a computer and a view of the sea.

She lets her kids have dessert before dinner,

Reheated pizza for breakfast.

And NEVER remembers to bring Cheeros in a little Tupperware container to the playground

Except when she does and then she feels VICTORIOUS!

Continue reading The Edgy Moms Manifesto →

How’s this for an interesting way to spend a Friday morning? A NYC photo walk that’s great for tourists and die-hard New Yorkers.

Capture some of New York’s best and most accessible art in its gritty concrete “gallery” as we take to the streets and explore the unique applications and vibrant renderings of the urban artist.

Tom and Tony of Switch to Manual are your guides and the tour starts at the Verb Cafe. They’ll bring you to some of the great spots for street art in Brooklyn.

Given the transient nature of street art, every walk will be different as one masterpiece is replaced by another.

 For more information go here.

Last night Maddie on Things launched at Powerhouse Books in DUMBO and I hear the line was out the door because a whole lot of people wanted to meet the amazing dog, who has already been featured in People Magazine, Entertainment Weekly and elsewhere.

When photographer Theron Humphrey  discovered that the dog he rescued from a shelter had the ability to stand on all kinds of things, he knew he’d stumbled on “a super serious project about dogs and physics.”

Photographer and dog traveled cross country and together collaborated on these incredible photos. Maddie is obviously a sweet-tempered coonhound. She can balance on everything from bicycles to giant watermelons to horses to people. The amazing photographs by Humphrey owe a lot to William Wegman and his iconic Weimaraners, but also have much in the way of their own unique charm, skill and sheer wow-power.

The book is a celebration via skillful Instagram photos of Maddie and her incredible balance.

Photo by Theron Humphrey

Props to Kayla Bernie, the young artist who created this work. She is a junior at Bishop Kearney High School in Brooklyn and she won third place in The Tablet’s “Christ is Risen” art contest. The Tablet is the Brooklyn-Queens Diocese Newsletter.

Don’t miss the Seventh Annual EDGY MOMS, presenting poignant, hilarious, incisive and powerful writing about mothers and motherhood. Curated by Louise Crawford and Sophia Romero, this uproarious and insightful event takes place, as always, at the  The Old Stone House on May 9th at 8PM (once again sponsored by Babeland). Presented by Brooklyn Reading Works produced by Louise Crawford

Meet the 2013 Edgy Moms: 

A veteran of advertising, KAREN RITTER has squandered decades crafting copy for clients as diverse as Dunkin’ Donuts and Weight Watchers. Persuading some people to gain weight and others to lose it created a psychic split, galvanizing Karen to take refuge in fiction. She has completed one novel, Living with Men. A mother of one, Karen is still traumatized by the autobiographical novel her own mother self-published 35 years ago. Now that her mother has left this plane of existence in search of better material, Karen is writing her own autobiographical work, My Mother/Herself.

CHRIS NELSON earned her MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied playwriting with Tony Kushner, John Guare and Arthur Miller. She has a BA in both English and Drama and a Film Certificate from Duke University. Her writing has been recognized with an NEA grant, two Benenson Awards in the Arts, the Reynolds Price Award, and residency grants from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico in Taos, NM, the Jentel Artist Residency Program in Banner, WY, and the Julia and David White Artists’ Colony in Ciudad Colón, Costa Rica. Chris lives with her husband and daughter in Brooklyn.

NICOLE CALLIHAN’S poems, stories, and essays have appeared in Cream City Review, L Magazine, and Painted Bride Quarterly. She teaches at New York University and in schools and hospitals throughout the city.

SOPHIA ROMERO is the author of the novel, Always Hiding. She writes the hilarious blog, The Shiksa from Manila and has two children, Amalia and Eli. Her husband, Dan Silver, is a good egg.

CATHY GIGANTE-BROWN has been a freelance writer of fiction, nonfiction and poetry since the ripe young age of fifteen. Her works have appeared in a variety of publications, including Time Out New York, Essence, Seventeen and The Italian Journal of Wine and Food. Along with Robert “The Harrad Experiment” Rimmer, she co-wrote two fringe biographies for Prometheus Books (Mistress Jacqueline’s Whips & Kisses and Jerry Butler’s Raw Talent). Her short stories appear in several fiction anthologies and her essay, “When I was Young,” was included in Penguin Books’ Vietnam Voices. A number of her screenplays have been produced by small, independent companies. Her essay “Autumn of 9/11” was awarded first prize in The Brooklyn Public Library’s 2004 “My Brooklyn” contest. Her work, Weekender, was included in the Rosendale Theatre Collective’s first annual Short Play Festival. Cathy was born and bred in Brooklyn, where she still lives with her husband and son. Her ebook, The El, is her first published novel

After a 15-year career in museum education, and 10 years of full-time mothering, VICKI ADDESSO  began devoting her time to writing memoir and fiction. Addesso works part-time doing research for the Treeture Environmental Education Program and writes for the organization’s Web site. Her work has been published by Damselfly Press, and she is currently at work on a collection of short stories.

After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, LORI TOPPEL worked as a staff writer and editor for different magazines. She received her MFA in fiction writing at Columbia University, where she received a fellowship. Toppel’s novel, Three Children (Summit Books, 1992), was nominated for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Her stories and personal essays have appeared in such journals as the Antioch Review, Del Sol Review, and The Living Room. Her work has been listed in the top 25 of the Glimmer Train Fiction Open. She is currently at work on a novella set in Puerto Rico.

SUSAN HODARA works as a freelance journalist who frequently covers the arts, with articles appearing in publications including the New York Times, Communication Arts, Harvard Magazine, and others. She has been writing memoir for more than 15 years, with her pieces appearing in the anthologies Motif 3: Work (MotesBooks, 2011), Illness & Grace, Terror & Transformation (Wising Up Press, 2007), The Westchester Review (2007, 2008), I Wanna be Sedated (Seal Press, 2005), My Heart’s First Steps (Adams Media, 2004), Girl Wars (Fireside, 2003), and Surviving Ophelia (Perseus Publishing, 2001). Her memoirs have also been published in numerous literary journals and other publications including salon.com, The Lindenwood Review, Evening Street Review, Airplane Reading, tak′tīl, Venus Envy, Cesium, and Conversely; one was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. With degrees from Harvard and Columbia universities, she has been teaching memoir writing since 2003, and currently conducts memoir workshops at the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center in Sleepy Hollow, NY, and the Pelham Art Center in Pelham, NY.

Photograph borrowed from http://www.mommaroo.com

On May 9 at 7PM, Tony Kushner, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for his play “Angels in America,” and author of the Oscar-nominated screenplay for “Lincoln,” joins Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives’s Rabbi Ellen Lippmann, who was recently named among America’s Most Inspiring Rabbis by The Forward, for an intimate conversation, reception and book signing on May 9, at 7:00 PM at Kolot Chayeinu in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

“Lincoln: The Screenplay” will be available thanks to the Community Bookstore. This special evening launches Kolot Chayeinu’s TALK THE TALK annual lecture series.

The Epoch is a community of musicians, writers, visual artists and filmmakers born and bred in Brooklyn who are now living all over the country.

“We were grown together, and are growing still,” they write on their website. A group of the musical contingent of The Epoch just moved to Chicago and they’ve recorded an album in honor of that move.

Here’s how they describe it:

Walk Away From Me is a three-way split between Bellows, Small Wonder and eskimeaux. The album was recorded between February and April 2013 and is a flagship for the recent move of the three artists from their childhood home of New York City to Chicago. Henry (Small Wonder) came up with the idea of three bands from the same scene covering Lou Reed, David Bowie and Iggy Pop, as a tribute to three bands who each transplanted from their hometowns to live and work in Berlin in the late 1970’s.

Walk Away From Me begins with three covers — Small Wonder introduces the album with The Velvet Underground song “Candy Says”. Bellows covers the David Bowie song “Soul Love”, and eskimeaux covers Iggy Pop’s “Tonight”.

The second half of the split is made up of original songs by each of the three bands, “Well”, written as a reaction to “Tonight” by eskimeaux, “Papa Bear”, a woodsy electro-ballad by Bellows, and “Wood for the Fire”, a song of bodylessness and anxious peace.

The song Candy Says is pretty awesome.

I am working on a short video about the NY Writers Coalition, which is one of the largest community writing organizations in the country.

The NY Writers Coalition offers free creative writing workshops throughout New York City for people from groups that have been historically deprived of voice in our society, including at-risk and disconnected youth, the homeless and formerly homeless, the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, war veterans, people with disabilities, cancer and major illness, immigrants, seniors and others.

It’s really quite amazing. Their operating premise is that everyone has a story, everyone has a voice; we’re all writers and writing can be transformative and therapeutic.

Yesterday we videotaped a writing workshop at CIDNY, the Center for Independence for Disabled Individuals near Union Square, and I was reminded of why I love writing and why writing is so important for expression and self-actualization.

The CIDNY Group, which has been meeting regularly for four years, is led by author Avra Wing, whose novel Angie, I Says, a New York Times notable book, was made into the feature film Angie starring Geena Davis and James Gandolfini.

Avra started the workshop with a writing prompt, something she found on Craig’s List about a purple scarf lost in Williamsburg. This was followed by fifteen minutes of writing.

Everyone in the group has some kind of physical or neurological disability. Some members of the group struggled  to write, some struggled to read. One man in particular read haltingly. But it was worth the wait to hear everyone’s incredible written response to the Craig’s List prompt.

One man read about a friend who died a year ago. A woman wrote about a woman with cancer knitting a purple scarf, as she receives chemotherapy. Another participant wrote about a jazz musician, another wrote a poem vividly describing the purple scarf lying on the grey, dirty sidewalk of Williamsburg.

There was poetry, short story, scenes with dialogue, and journal-like writing that wandered into personal confession. After each person read, Avra asked the group to comment and many in the ten person group contributed comments about what stood out, what moved them, which phrases were most striking.

After the workshop, we interviewed the participants individually and heard just how important the group is to them. Quite a few described the warm, non-judgemental environment that enabled them to feel like writers, not “disabled people.”

This was the first time I ever attended one of NYWC workshops, and I feel privileged to have been able to witness it first hand. I look forward to the other shoots, especially Saturday’s seventh annual adult marathon reading, featuring a myriad of writers from NYWC workshops.

This year’s reading takes place at the Andrew Heiskell Library (40 W 20th Street, Manhattan). Light refreshments will be served. Click here for directions. If you are interested in donating to this wonderful organization or would like to attend their Spring Fever fundraiser on May 10th, Go here for more information. 

On April 16th at 7PM at Word in Greenpoint, two literary Joshs read and discuss their latest fiction: Rolnick’s Pulp and Paper and Henkin’s The World Without You (just released in paperback). They’ll be exploring the tragedies and mini-triumphs of the modern American family.

JOSHUA HENKIN is the author of the novels Swimming Across the Hudson (a Los Angeles Times Notable Book) and Matrimony (a New York Times Notable Book). His stories have been published widely, cited for distinction in Best American Short Stories and broadcast on NPR’s Selected Shorts. He directs the MFA Program in Fiction Writing at Brooklyn College.

JOSH ROLNICK’s short stories have won the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editor’s Choice Prize. They have also been published in Harvard Review, Western Humanities Review, Bellingham Review, and Gulf Coast, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best New American Voices. A reporter, editor, and journal publisher, he grew up in New Jersey, spent summers camping his way through Upstate New York, and has lived in Jerusalem, London, Philadelphia, Iowa City, Washington, D.C., and Menlo Park, California. He currently lives with his wife and three sons in Akron, Ohio.

Pam Katz, a screenwriter who lives in Park Slope, has been nominated for a Lola,  Germany’s version of the Academy Award, for the film Hannah Arendt. 

Katz co-wrote the screenplay with renowned director Margarethe Von Trotta. The film’s star, Barbara Sukowa, who also lives in Brooklyn, was nominated for her incredible turn as the German philosopher. Six nominations in all, the film was cited for Best Film, Best Direction, Best Screenwriting, Best Actress, Best Costume and Best Make-up.

The film, which is a huge hit in Germany, will open at the Film Forum in Manhattan on May   29 ,2013. It explores a turbulent  four-year period in the life of the great philosopher and writer, Hannah Arendt. Beginning in New York at The New School, where Arendt taught after having escaped from a French detention camp, the film moves to Jerusalem, where she covered the trial of Adolf Eichmann for The New Yorker and coined the phrase “the  banality of evil” in her article (and later book) Eichmann in Jerusalem. 

Von Trotta and Katz make thrilling drama of the backlash against Arendt’s writing about the trial and her “banality of evil” theory. Co-starring Janet McTeer as author and Arendt confident Mary McCarthy.

Writing in Der Spiegel, Elke Schmitter writes, 

Can men really be trusted? This classic question is the subject of the opening dialogue in director Margarethe von Trotta’s new film “Hannah Arendt,” which got its official release in Germany this week after screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and revolves around a less classic question: Was Adolf Eichmann, the organizer of the “final solution of the Jewish question,” a monster or an efficient bureaucrat, a pathological creature or the embodiment of the banality of evil? Her theory of the “banality of evil” turned Arendt, a German Jew who became a college professor and distinguished author of philosophical works in the United States, into a controversial international figure in the early 1960s, more ostracized and hated than revered.