Talks and Readings
Friday, April 5, 2013
Talks and Readings How to Celebrate National Poetry Month in Brooklyn
Posted by Andrea Racine on Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 3:52 PM
April is National Poetry Month and Brooklyn is celebrating. You should celebrate too because you love Brooklyn and you love poetry and you love Brooklyn poetry. You love all those things, right? Of course you do. But if those aren’t good enough reasons, there is also the fact that the 23rd is Shakespeare’s birthday. So what better time to get down with some mead (and by mead I mean beer) and some poetry? So this month, check out a few of these events and really get into the spirit of April.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Talks and Readings Send Us Your Short Fiction! (Literary Upstart Has Returned)
Posted by Jonny Diamond on Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 12:29 PM
Dear Writer Types, (and those of you who know and/or love writer types)
With an elemental regularity not dissimilar to the annual flooding of the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta, our beloved short fiction contest, Literary Upstart, is happening once again this spring, for the ninth year in a row, in Brooklyn, New York. Specifically, at the most wonderful PowerHouse Arena, in DUMBO (go there now and buy books, you jerks).
In order for the contest to be its usual highbrow/lowbrow fun-time spectacular, we need your submissions of short fiction NOW. If we like yours, you'll end up reading it in front of the fanciest NYC literary people who ever lived, all for a chance at fame and riches. For more details, see below.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Talks and Readings "Rereading David Foster Wallace": Thoughts on the Life, Death, and Work of Someone Who Was a Whole Lot Smarter Than Any of Us
Posted by Kristin Iversen on Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 9:28 AM
I had a creative writing teacher in college who, to be quite honest, I'd never really respected that much because all of the short stories she assigned had clearly been culled from the MFA program she'd just finished a year before, and even though they were very good short stories and worth reading, it wasn't an original list and you really got the feeling —or at least I really got the feeling—that each story was the only thing that she had read by any of the authors. It was like she made us a mix that was comprised of "Space Oddity" and "Two Weeks" and "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Empire State of Mind" and "Kiss" and "Sweet Jane" and "Creep" and, I don't know, "Let It Be" and those are all perfectly good songs and maybe totally representative of all of the artists who sing them but they are not really very interesting choices for someone to make when putting together a mix. Like, at all.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Music / Talks and Readings Reminder: The Pussy Riot Reading Is Tonight
Posted by Lauren Beck on Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 2:14 PM
A slew of writers and activists, including one Chloe Sevigny, will read the touching closing statements of the detained women, as well as some of their prison letters and translated observations from people inside the court room during the trial. The event's free and open to the public (and also set to stream here), making it incredibly easy to show support just like Paul McCartney. At the very least, it'd be good to take a moment to acknowledge the freedoms so many of us here in the States take for granted.
The when and the where:
Liberty Hall at the Ace Hotel (20 W 29th St), doors at 7:30pm, FREE and open the the public. Visit freepussyriot.org and/or follow @freepussyriot on Twitter for more info on the trial happenings.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Art / Special Events / Talks and Readings Brooklyn Art Weekend: Distant Futures and Dancing Robots
Posted by Paul D'Agostino on Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 3:31 PM
Friday, July 20th:
Performance & discussion: Triple Canopy, Amaranth Borsuk and Erica Baum
Billed as The In-Between, this evening with author-artists Borsuk and Baum, in collaboration with LA-based Siglio Press, will challenge various standards of artistic forms and mediation. One look at Borsuk's recently published Between Page and Screen should evidence that these folks are posing proper questions—and that 'in-betweens' are ripe places for probing.
155 Freeman Street, doors at 7pm
Opening: Regina Rex, Practices Remain
In this 12-artist exhibition with organizational roots in Miami, a particular moment in the creative process will adhere the works on display: a moment one might describe as incomplete completion. Spearheaded by artists Alexandra Hopf, Odalis Valdivieso and Marcos Vallela, with critical endorsement by Rene Morales, Associate Curator at the Miami Art Museum.
1717 Troutman St., 7-10pm
(Saturday and Sunday after the jump.)
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Art / Music / Talks and Readings Brooklyn Art Weekend: From Group Showings to Horn Blowings
Posted by Paul D'Agostino on Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 3:53 PM
Friday, July 13th:
Opening: Slag Contemporary, Claudia Chaseling: Infiltration
While recent solo shows at Slag have featured a lot of abstract figures, this show of works by Claudia Chaseling will feature abstracted plants and landscapes. Also, according to the press release, radioactive poisoning factors into this somehow.
56 Bogart St., 6-9pm
Opening: Janet Kurnatowski, Summer Snacks
For this savory group exhibition, curatorial wiz Janet Kurnatowski has gathered works on paper by about 20 artists from her fathomless roster.
205 Norman Ave., 7-9pm
(Saturday and Sunday after the jump.)
Monday, June 25, 2012
Art / Special Events / Talks and Readings The Architecture of Exhibits Opening This Week
Posted by Paul D'Agostino on Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 5:21 PM
We mentioned a thing or two last week about galleries going heavy on group exhibitions come summertime, and about how at times these tendencies can make for some savory exhibitional treats.
Two similarly deep group exhibits opening this week—though not quite the 'gallery roster' genre, given the fonts of their artist lineups and greater conceptual probities—sound very similarly promising. They also dovetail with one another by dint of architectural bases.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Books / Talks and Readings Franklin Park Turns Three
Posted by Henry Stewart on Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 12:00 PM
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Art / Talks and Readings Art Historian Hal Foster at The Kitchen: "We Live in the Age of Trauma"
Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 8:58 AM
Last night Hal Foster, Princeton professor and 20th century art historian, spoke at The Kitchen in Chelsea and read from his two new books, The First Pop Age: Painting and Subjectivity in the Art of Hamilton, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Richter, and Ruscha and The Art-Architecture Complex. The soft-spoken historian, author and editor of innumerable volumes that appear on art history syllabi the world over, began humbly: "It's bad enough to have one book coming out, but it's really embarrassing to have two."
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Books / Talks and Readings Young Writers Upstaged Old Masters at Franklin Park
Posted by Henry Stewart on Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 1:55 PM
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Books / Talks and Readings Colson Whitehead's Zombie Autobiography
Posted by Henry Stewart on Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 1:08 PM
After graduation, he snagged a job at the Voice, which he said has changed since, though one thing has remained constant: "whenever you were there was its heyday; whenever you left, it was downhill." He started out writing about television, branching out with more assignments until he was confident enough to start writing fiction.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Books / Talks and Readings David Levithan's Psychologically Unbalanced Teenagers
Posted by Henry Stewart on Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 3:13 PM
Levithan enlisted Farmer to help him with his idea for a "photographic novel": Farmer would send the photos one by one, around which Levithan would construct the story, never sure where he was going next. He wouldn't let Farmer read any of it so that the narrative wouldn't influence his photographs; it took five years to finish. ("We did many other things in the interim," Levithan said.) The photos are printed in the book, often in rich four-color—28 all together, or roughly one for every person who came out to Powerhouse.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Books / Talks and Readings An Unforgettable Reading at Franklin Park Last Night
Posted by Henry Stewart on Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 1:56 PM
Monday, September 26, 2011
Talks and Readings Starlee Kine, A.J. Jacobs, Ben Greenman, Others to Bare Their Souls in Public Tomorrow Night
Posted by Jonny Diamond on Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 1:19 PM
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
TV / Talks and Readings Arrested Development Cast Reunion Coming to The New Yorker Festival, Conan Also Coming to NYC
Posted by Lauren Beck on Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 4:19 PM
Monday, September 19, 2011
Books / Talks and Readings Foer, Oates, Obreht and More at the Brooklyn Book Festival
Posted by Henry Stewart on Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 8:57 AM
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Talks and Readings Beat the Heat By Drinking Many, Many $2 Cans of Miller High Life at Literary Upstart Tonight
Posted by Mark Asch on Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 12:09 PM
Jesus Christ it's hot. (How hot is it?) So hot that everybody's clothes are soaking through and curling and disintegrating like the labels on so many bottles of Miller High Life.
Which is why tonight, at Literary Upstart's Grand Championship Super Final (TM) (at Galapagos), the Miller High Life will be served in cans. There will be 400 of them, on sale at $2 until they run out, for to quench your thirst. This should get interesting.
There are reports, unconfirmed as this blog post went to, um, press, that L Magazine Editor-in-Chief and Upstart host Jonny Diamond plans to shotgun one on stage.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Books / Talks and Readings Myth and Magic at Franklin Park
Posted by Henry Stewart on Tue, May 10, 2011 at 1:40 PM
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Books / Talks and Readings Teen Author Week Kicks Off in Chinatown: "Fuck Staten Island"
Posted by Henry Stewart on Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 1:55 PM
Monday, March 14, 2011
Books / Special Events / Talks and Readings Tea Obreht Learned English From Bootleg Disney Videocassettes
Posted by Henry Stewart on Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 2:02 PM
Obreht, the youngest of the New Yorker's "20 Under 40" list at 26, published a raved-about short story called "The Tiger's Wife" in that magazine in the spring of 2009; the literary world has been waiting for the subsequent novel ever since. It took her more than three years to write. "I used a lot of outline but stuck to almost none of it," she told the crowd during a post-reading Q&A. (She ended every answer with a chipper "thank you!") Time Out New York has called it the hottest book of the spring.
