Talks and Readings: The Measure, The L Magazine

How to Celebrate National Poetry Month in Brooklyn

Andrea Racine — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:52:00 -0400

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.…

Send Us Your Short Fiction! (Literary Upstart Has Returned)

Jonny Diamond — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 12:29:39 -0500

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).…

"Rereading David Foster Wallace": Thoughts on the Life, Death, and Work of Someone Who Was a Whole Lot Smarter Than Any of Us

Kristin Iversen — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 09:28:00 -0400

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.…

Reminder: The Pussy Riot Reading Is Tonight

Lauren Beck — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 14:14:59 -0400

Just a quick reminder about tonight's Pussy Riot event. On the eve of the final verdict for Maria Alekhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Ekaterina Samucevich—the three 20-something women arrested for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" when staging a brief public protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin at a Moscow church—Riot Grrrl pioneer JD Samson, along with art teacher and historian Robert Lieber, have organized a reading to show support of the band.…

Brooklyn Art Weekend: Distant Futures and Dancing Robots

Paul D'Agostino — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 15:31:37 -0400

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.…

Brooklyn Art Weekend: From Group Showings to Horn Blowings

Paul D'Agostino — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 15:53:27 -0400

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.)

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The Architecture of Exhibits Opening This Week

Paul D'Agostino — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 17:21:13 -0400

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.…

Franklin Park Turns Three

Henry Stewart — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:00:00 -0400

The Franklin Park Reading Series' motto is to be "provocative, poignant and hilarious," curator Penina Roth said at last night's third-anniversary reading. She brought it up after Shalom Auslander read.…

Art Historian Hal Foster at The Kitchen: "We Live in the Age of Trauma"

Benjamin Sutton — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 08:58:00 -0500

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."

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Young Writers Upstaged Old Masters at Franklin Park

Henry Stewart — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:55:00 -0500

Electric Literature curated a line-up at the Franklin Park Reading Series last night that included some literary heavies: Jim Shepard, Colson Whitehead, and Ben Greenman. But they were upstaged by a pair of up-and-comers.…

Colson Whitehead's Zombie Autobiography

Henry Stewart — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:08:00 -0400

Colson Whitehead didn't just read from his new novel at Greenlight last night—he first delivered a long, autobiographical comic monologue that traced, from childhood to present, how he became a writer. He described his younger self as a shut-in.…

David Levithan's Psychologically Unbalanced Teenagers

Henry Stewart — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:13:00 -0400

David Levithan sees little of himself in the main character of his latest novel, Every You, Every Me. "He's really messed up," he said last night at a panel of YA authors hosted by Powerhouse Arena called "Falling Apart, Coming Together."…

An Unforgettable Reading at Franklin Park Last Night

Henry Stewart — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 13:56:00 -0400

Scott McClanahan gave a reading last night at Franklin Park that few who witnessed it will soon forget. Taking the microphone, the West Virginian spoke in a panting monotone, like a terrified child, but it turned out to be part of a masterfully calculated persona; this was a reading, not a recitation.…

Starlee Kine, A.J. Jacobs, Ben Greenman, Others to Bare Their Souls in Public Tomorrow Night

Jonny Diamond — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:19:00 -0400

In the spirit of reflection and atonement—tis the season, after all—a few select writers and performers will recount some of their biggest regrets of the year tomorrow night, live, onstage, for your amusement. The likes of Starlee Kine, Ben Greenman, A.J. Jacobs—and yours truly—have been invited to read at "With Regrets," an evening of confessional storytelling hosted by Jessica Chaffin and Jessi Klein, under the broader auspices of 10Q, Greenman's online high holiday interrogatory machine (just click on that link).…

Arrested Development Cast Reunion Coming to The New Yorker Festival, Conan Also Coming to NYC

Lauren Beck — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:19:00 -0400

The New Yorker Festival announced a late addition to the lineup yesterday, a family reunion to end all family reunions: a panel reuniting the cast of the prematurely canceled cult comedy Arrested Development with series creator Mitchell Hurwitz. Screw the forever-circulating rumors of a movie, this is for real happening; maybe the best surprise in a week full of surprise announcements (apologies to Radiohead and The Shins).…

Foer, Oates, Obreht and More at the Brooklyn Book Festival

Henry Stewart — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:57:00 -0400

More than 260 writer types participated in more than 100 panels at yesterday's sixth annual Brooklyn Book Festival, held in and around Borough Hall in Downtown Brooklyn. I spent the whole day there and I only saw six panels!…

Beat the Heat By Drinking Many, Many $2 Cans of Miller High Life at Literary Upstart Tonight

Mark Asch — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 12:09:00 -0400

Jesus Christ it's hot. (How hot is it?)…

Myth and Magic at Franklin Park

Henry Stewart — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:40:00 -0400

"A lot of times," Helen Phillips said, "magic can serve to make a metaphor literal." She made the remark before reading five stories "full of monsters and stuff" from her new book, And Yet They Were Happy, at the Franklin Park reading series last night.…

Teen Author Week Kicks Off in Chinatown: "Fuck Staten Island"

Henry Stewart — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:55:00 -0400

Teen fiction can be more vulgar and sexual than you might expect: judging from the snippets read by nine young adult novelists at the Chatham Square Branch of the New York Public Library on East Broadway last night, it often leans more CW than ABC Family. (That is, the characters sound more like teenagers than an adult's sanitized fantasy version.)…

Tea Obreht Learned English From Bootleg Disney Videocassettes

Henry Stewart — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 14:02:00 -0400

It was standing room only fifteen minutes before Tea Obreht began to read from her new novel, The Tiger's Wife, at Fort Greene's Greenlight bookstore on Friday. "There's a lot of you," Obreht noted nervously in the middle of her introductory remarks, tracing an L shape with her hand to illustrate the trajectory of the crowd—unscientifically calculated to have a 1:6 ratio of men to women, and only growing thicker.…

Charlie Rose and Jay-Z Will Sit Down for a Chat at Brooklyn Museum

Lauren Beck — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 13:53:00 -0500

Charlie and Jay, together at last. The two will discuss Decoded, the latter's new book recounting his rise from the Marcy Projects to superstar/entrepreneur/Yankees fan as rich as the Yankees, on November 18 at the Brooklyn Museum.…

Dancing About the Drug Wars: A Chat with Kickstartable Choreographer Gabriella Barnstone

Mark Asch — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 10:22:00 -0400

The local choreographer and director Gabriella Barnstone is currently soliciting contributions via Kickstarter to support her dance theater piece Nuevo Laredo, which will debut at Dixon Place next spring. We emailed with her about the piece and the pitch:

In what ways can dance portray current events in general?

I think dance can portray current events in the same way any medium of art can—by bringing something to light and maybe looking at it through a different lens.…

Chuck Klosterman & Rob Sheffield: Together, at Last, Tomorrow at Coco 66

Lauren Beck — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:05:00 -0400

For those of you not going to see Wolf Parade tomorrow (note: Wolf Parade is playing tomorrow!), you should head over to Coco 66 where Chuck Klosterman — native son of Wyndmere, North Dakota, hair-metal aficionado, and the cause for this, this and this Facebook group — will read from his latest book, the last in a long career of pop culture musings, Eating the Dinosaur. To celebrate its paperback release, he’ll be talking to like-minded writer pal Rob Sheffield, perhaps best known for the heart-warming/wrenching memoir Love Is a Mixtape and, in the near future, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, due out in bookstores on Thursday.…

BREAKING NEWS: Dollar PBR and Fine Short Fiction at Literary Upstart Tonight

Mark Asch — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:55:00 -0400

You may think this isn't breaking news, given that tonight's Literary Upstart semifinal reading, at Spike Hill, has been talked up in these parts considerably.

But tonight, more changes are afoot: tonight, at our short fiction competition and live-judged reading series, brought to you by Harper Perennial and the New School, we have a new drink special to go along with the same old terrific short stories, witty literary banter and drunk trivia...…

Literary Upstart: The Final Semifinal, Coming Next Week

Mark Asch — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:48:00 -0400

Every year around this time I try to figure out ways to describe the season's third Literary Upstart reading as something other than "the third and final semifinal," but, you know what, fuck it. We have three semifinals, followed by a final.…