The Merc and Beatrice.com
present
a reading
with Cathleen Schine and Rivka Galchen
May 14, 2008 at 7pm
Cathleen Schine is the author of the internationally best-selling novels The Love Letter, which was made into a movie starring Kate Capshaw, and Rameau’s Niece, which was also made into a movie (The Misadventures of Margaret), starring Parker Posey. Schine’s other novels are Alice in Bed, To the Bird House, The Evolution of Jane, She is Me, and most recently, The New Yorkers. In addition to novels she has written articles for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review, among other publications. She grew up in Westport, CT.
In two decades and seven novels, Cathleen Schine has made a specialty of creating spirited heroines in search of a brainy conceit to live by, whether it’s bird-watching (To the Birdhouse), French Enlightenment philosophy (Rameau’s Niece),
Darwinian theory (The Evolution of Jane), or Flaubert’s famous dictum about
Madame Bovary (She Is Me). But in Schine’s latest zingy domestic comedy, The New Yorkers, the characters don’t have conceits. They have dogs. Or they don’t—and the novel’s own conceit is that this makes all the difference. On the slightly down-at-heels Upper West Side block where the story unfolds, happiness—or the closest Schine’s brightly downbeat characters can come to it—is next to dogginess.
Rivka Galchen, of New York City, received her M.D. from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, having spent a year in South America working on public health issues. Galchen recently completed her MFA at Columbia University, where she was a Robert Bingham Fellow. Her first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, will be published in June. Her essay on the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics was published in The Believer. She is the recipient of a 2006 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award.
In Atmospheric Disturbances, psychiatrist Dr. Leo Liebenstein sets off to find his wife, Rema, who he believes has been replaced by a simulacrum. Also missing is one of Leo's patients, Harvey, who is convinced he receives coded messages from the Royal Academy of Meteorology to control the weather. Leo turns to actual Royal Academy member Tzvi Gal-Chen's meteorological work to guide him in his search for his wife. Leo's quest takes him through Buenos Aires and Patagonia. As he becomes increasingly delusional and erratic, Galchen adeptly reveals the actual situation to readers, including Rema's anguish and anger at her husband. Leo's devotion to the real Rema is heartbreaking and maddening; he cannot see that the woman he seeks has been with him all along.
To register, call (212) 755-6710 or email info@mercantilelibrary.org
Read Along and Mystery Scavenger Hunt in Grand Central Terminal
May 17
This event for kids will feature The Malted Falcon by award-winning children’s author Bruce Hale. Pint-size reptilian sleuth, Chet Gecko, and his partner Natalie Attired search for the winning ticket in The Malted Falcon contest, which has mysteriously gone missing at Emerson Hickey Elementary. The chance to win the chocolatiest dessert ever imagined has proved too tempting for someone... No. 7 in the Chet Gecko Mystery Series.
Location: Grand Central Terminal - Dining Concourse
100 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017
This event produced in partnership with the Children ’s Book Council.
To register, call (212) 755-6710 or email info@mercantilelibrary.org
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The Mercantile Library Center for Fiction gratefully acknowledges support from the Lila Acheson Wallace Theater Fund of The New York Community Trust, The New York Times Company Foundation, the Florence Gould Foundation, and our members and individual donors. Programs at The Center are also made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. Public programs are also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
previously at the Mercantile LIbrary
A SOUTHERN EVENING
Join us for another evening of Southern Literature, as acclaimed poet Susan Kinsolving reads and talks about the poetry of Tennessee Williams.
Kinsolving’s books of poems include The White Eyelash (Grove Press, 2003), Dailies & Rushes (Grove Press, 1999), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Among Flowers (Random House, 1993). Her poems have appeared in many anthologies and journals, including The New York Times, Poetry, Paris Review, Harvard Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, Grand Street, and The Washington Post. She has taught at the University of Connecticut, California Institute of the Arts, Southampton College, and elsewhere. As a librettist, her work has been performed in New York, California, and Italy. In 2007, she was the poetry fellow at the Camargo Foundation in France.
Southern Evenings at the Merc are supported
through the generosity of members
Reba White Williams and Dave Williams.
Imagined Biographies with Joyce Carol Oates
Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway… some of the most revered writers in the canon are now brought back to life and death by the fertile mind of Joyce Carol Oates. In Wild Nights!,Oates reimagines the final days of these literary legends, weaving each story with its own unique and delicious twist. Poe becomes a solitary lighthouse keeper in the South Pacific, Henry James endures working in the visceral conditions of a London hospital in 1914, and in Emily Dickinson’s case, her tale centers on her rebirth in the New Jersey of the future.
Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most prolific writers of today and has published numerous books which span all genres. She is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She is also the recipient of the 2005 Prix Femina for The Falls. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, and she has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.
A reading with
P
aulina Porizkova and Arthur Phillips
Actress and model Paulina Porizkova initially rose to fame as a cover girl for some of the most popular fashion magazines around before making her move to the silver screen in the early '80s. A brief breather from the spotlight in the early '90s afforded the busy Porizkova enough time to start a family with her husband, former Cars vocalist Ric Ocasek, and in 2007 she proved that she had what it took to light up the dance floor with an appearance on Dancing With the Stars. The following year, Porizkova became a more ubiquitous media presence than ever as she became a judge on the hit CW series America's Next Top Model and saw her first book, the fiction novel A Model Summer (originally published in 2007), released in paperback. 
In her debut novel, A Model Summer, Paulina Porizkova follows Jirina, a gawky 15-year-old Swedish girl who spends the summer in Paris as a model. In the process, Jirina experiences life's highs -- wild parties, feeling beautiful -- and lows -- womanizing photographers and unfriendly fellow models.
Arthur Phillip’s first novel, Prague, a national bestseller, was named a New York TimesNotable Book, and received The Los Angeles Times/Art Seidenbaum Award for best first novel. His second novel, The Egyptologist, was a national and international bestseller, and was on more than a dozen “Best of 2004” lists. Angelica, his third novel, was a national bestseller and made The Washington Post’s best fiction of 2007. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages. He lives in New York with his wife and two sons. 
Angelica opens in London, the 1880’s, and the household is on the brink of collapse. Mother, father, and daughter provoke each other, consciously and unconsciously, and a horrifying crisis is triggered. As the family’s tragedy is told several times from different perspectives, events are recast, and sympathies shift; nothing is as it seems. These differing accounts appear to contradict each other, but each one cast new light-and new shadows-on the others, and on the desires and fears that drive these vivid characters
This reading presented by The Mercantile Library Center for FIction and beatrice.com
FINDING STOLEN ART: A DETECTIVE TAKES ON THE NAZIS
with Jane K. Cleland
Art stolen by the Nazis is returned to its Jewish owners and their heirs—sometimes. Join Jane K. Cleland, author of Deadly Appraisal and other mysteries set in the world of art and auctions, as she talks about how governments and organizations fight to keep pilfered art in their possession and how persistent, dedicated detectives have worked to track it down and get it back to the rightful owners. It's a real David vs. Goliath story sure to inspire!
2008 PEN World Voices Festival
The 2008 PEN World Voices Festival will be held from April 29 to May 4 in venues throughout New York City and will explore the theme "Public Lives/Private Lives." This annual showcase of writers from all over the world consists of several days of public panels, literary conversations, readings, and tributes. By convening international writers to discuss their relationships to their public and private selves, PEN World Voices aims to expand the dialogue on an essential aspect of the human experience that promises to play a crucial role in the interactions of nations, peoples, and individuals for the foreseeable future. For more information, please visit PEN's website, www.pen.org. This year, the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction joins the Festival as a co-sponsor and will host lunch-time programs in the Library. www.pen.org/
In Treatment: A Literary Conversation between Arnon Grunberg and Yael Hedaya
Nobel Prize-winning author, J. M. Coetzee, says that “the wit and sardonic intelligence that shine through Arnon Grunberg’s prose make it a continual pleasure to read.” And The Economist praises his “absurdist humor, grotesque situations and snappy rejoinders reminiscent of Saul Bellow or, rather, Woody Allen. . . . Mr. Grunberg is without question a talent to watch.” The Los Angeles Times Book Review called Yael Hedaya, an “extraordinary” writer of “remarkable emotional power.” She’s also responsible for that smash TV series, In Treatment. Come and discover what the buzz is all about, as these two young writers talk about the writer’s life, being translated, and being funny.
Yalo: A Literary Conversation with Elias Khoury, with Eduardo Lago
Don’t miss this special literary and political discussion with distinguished novelist, playwright and critic, Elias Khoury, and the novelist and Director of the Instituto Cervantes, Eduardo Lago. Together they will talk about Yalo, Elias’s latest novel – a story of love and anguish, of brutal misunderstanding, of the abuse of power, and of growing up an outsiders.
A reading and reception with James Ragan, Peter Selgin, Meredith Brosnan, and Flavia Rocha.
James Ragan is the author of five books of poetry including "The Hunger Wall" and "Lusions," from Grove Press, as well as co-editor of Yevgeny Yevtushenko's "Collected Poems." Former director of the Graduate Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California, he is a former NEA grant recipient and Fulbright Professor of Poetry. He has read his poetry for four heads of state including Mikhail Gorbachev and Vaclav Havel.
Peter Selgin's first book of short stories, "Drowning Lessons" won this year's Flannery O'Connor Award and will be published by the University of Georgia Press in the Fall of 2008. His children's book, "S.S. Gigantic Across the Atlantic" (Simon & Schuster, 1999), was a Scholastic Book Club selection and won the Lemme Award for Best Children's Book, 2000. In addition, he is an award winning fiction writer, play-writer, and illustrator with work appearing in the "New Yorker," "Time-Out New York", "Poets & Writers," "The Wall Street Journal", and many other publications.
Flavia Rocha is a Brazilian poet, journalist and translator living in Brazil. In Sao Paulo, she worked as a staff reporter for magazines "Casa Vogue," "Carta Capital," "Republica," and "Bravo!" She has an M.F.A program in Writing at Columbia University. She co-founded Academia Internacional de Cinema in Brazil. Her first collection of poetry, "The Blue House Around Noon" was released by Travessa dos Editores in 2005.
Meredith Brosnan was born in Dublin, but lives in New York City since 1984. His work has appeared in "The Williamsburgh Bugle," "Sound Collector Audio Review," "the Brooklyn Rail" and "YETI." "Mr. Dynamite," a novel, was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2004.
Presented by the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction and Rattapallax.
Letting Go:
Books Into Film: a panel discussion with Jonathan Santlofer moderating.
A reading with Ed Park and Jane Kotapish
Join beatrice.com and the Merc at a reading with Ed Park and Jane Kotapish.
Ed Park is a founding editor of The Believer and a former editor of The Voice Literary Supplement. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review and many other publications. He lives in Manhattan, where he publishes The New-York Ghost.
Personal Days takes place in an unnamed New York office & the employees are getting restless as everything around them unravels. There’s Pru, the former grad student turned spreadsheet drone; Laars, the hysteric, whose work anxiety stalks him in his tooth-grinding dreams; and Jack II, who distributes unwanted backrubs–aka “jackrubs”–to his co-workers.
Jane F. Kotapish, a native of Virginia, studied at the College of William and Mary and the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. After dancing professionally in New York for 10 years, Kotapish currently lives in Brooklyn, with her husband and daughter.
Salvage explores the unreliability of memory, the subjective nature of any one person’s reality, and, ultimately, the interior work of building a home that can withstand all that haunts us. Salvage captures the subtle and sometimes disastrous ways in which mothers and daughters find and lose one another, time and again. And it introduces Jane F. Kotapish as a bold, electrifying new voice.
NOON
The Mercantile Library Center for Fiction and NOON
present a reading with
Clancy Martin, Dawn Raffel, and Christine Schutt
Christine Schutt is the author of two short-story collections, Nightwork and A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer. Her novel Florida was a National Book Award finalist. Her second novel, All Souls, will be published in April 2008. The recipient of a Pushcart and two O. Henry prizes, her fiction has also been anthologized in The KGB Bar Reader and The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories. She is a senior editor of NOON and lives and teaches in New York.
Dawn Raffel is the author of a story collection, In the Year of Long Division (Knopf) and a novel, Carrying the Body (Scribner). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous magazines and anthologies, including NOON, O, The Oprah Magazine, Conjunctions, The Quarterly, The Mississippi Review, The Iowa Review, The Antioch Review and The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories. A new collection, Further Adventures in the Restless Universe, is forthcoming in 2010.
Clancy Martin, a Canadian, formerly a jeweler, is now a philosophy professor at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. His fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in NOON, McSweeney’s, Philosophy and Literature, Ethics, and elsewhere. His translation of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra was published in 2006 by Barnes and Noble Classics, and he is presently working on a translation of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. His novel How to Sell is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2009), as is an as yet untitled philosophical work examining the nature of truth and deception in love.
Jon Clinch and Scott Snyder
Born and raised in upstate New York, Jon Clinch has been an English teacher, a metalworker, a folksinger, an illustrator, a typeface designer, a housepainter, a copywriter, and an advertising executive. Since publication of Finn, Jon has taught in Syracuse University’s SUPA program. Finn was sortlisted for the 2007 John Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize given by the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction.
Scott Snyder has been published in Zoetrope, One Story, Tin House, Epoch, and other journals. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York.
Slice Magazine
Celebrates the Launch of Their Second Issue
Slice is a new literary magazine created to provide a forum for dynamic conversations between emerging and established authors. Slice is the brainchild of two book editors who have had a firsthand view of how difficult it is for new authors to break into the world of publishing. Their mission is to pave a space for these writers who may not have a platform but show the kind of talent that could be the substance of great works in the future. They are equally dedicated to celebrating established writers, whose work moves beyond the boundaries of writing to not only redefine literature, but to inspire new voices to grow. Their second issue will be available March 2008. www.slicemagazine.org
The Mercantile Library Center for Fiction and Fiction magazine present a reading with
Steven Lee Beeber & Mark Jay Mirsky & Claire Moed
Steven Lee Beeber is the editor of the new anthology Awake! A Reader for the Sleepless available now from Soft Skull Press. His study of the relationship between New York Jewish culture and the beginnings of punk rock, “The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s: A Secret History of Jewish Punk,” recently appeared from A Cappella Books. A freelance writer of fiction and non-fiction, his work has appeared in a variety of outlets, including the Paris Review, Fiction, Bridge, Conduit, New York Times, Spin, Mojo, and Zeek. A regular insomniac, he nonetheless appears to be well rested—or, at least, so he likes to think.
Mark Jay Mirsky is the editor of Fiction and Professor of English at CCNY. He has published a number of novels and collections of stories, among them Thou Worm Jacob, Blue Hill Avenue, Proceedings of the Rablle, The Secret Table, and The Red Adam. He wrote the introduction to the Diaries of Robert Musil, and co-edited the anthology, Rabbinic Fantasies. His critical books include My Search for the Messiah, The Absent Shakespeare, and Dante, Eros and Kabbalah. His play, Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard, was perfomed at The Fringe Festival 2007, in New York City.
Claire Olivia (C.O.) Moed was born on the Lower East Side of New York City when it was still a tough neighborhood. Her short stories and dramatic works have been published in several anthologies and literary reviews, including her favorite, HOW INSOMNIA SAVED MY LIFE UNTIL THE NIGHT IT TRIED TO KILL ME (Awake! A Reader for the Sleepless- Soft Skull Press, 2007). However, still ensconced in obscurity, she videos, writes and works a day job at a drug rehab agency in New York.
The Talk Around Translation
Critical reception is key to creating a broader readership for a book, yet novels in translation are often missing from the review pages. This panel of critics and writers from a wide range of publications will explore ways to extend the critical dialogue for international literature and consider the question of whether a book ought to be reviewed first as a unique literary work or primarily in terms of its place in a national literature.
The panelists are:
Ruth Franklin (The New Republic)
Meehan Crist (The Believer)
Dedi Felman (Words Without Borders)
Liesl Schillinger (The New York Times)
With moderator Idra Novey.
Les Figues Press presents The noulipian Analects
The Merc is pleased to host this book release party with innovative publisher, Les Figues Press, for their new book The noulipian Analects edited by Matias Viegener and Christine Wertheim. This book brings together a wide survey of constrained writing by some of today’s most cutting-edge writers. The noulipian Analects contains both critical and creative pieces which provide both an introduction and in-depth look at constrained writing, that is writing created using a specific set of guidelines.
A reading with Jonathan Hayes
Set after the tragedy of September 11th, Precious Blood follows the story of New York City medical examiner Edward Jenner as he struggles to catch a cunning and gruesome serial killer before he murders again. Forced out of retirement after the discovery of the crucified corpse of a young woman in an East Village apartment, Jenner has to use all of his physical and intellectual resources in the search for the psychopath, while also protecting the woman’s desperate and beautiful roommate.
Written by veteran forensic pathologist, Jonathan Hayes, Precious Blood draws from his real life experience working in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York. Since 1993 he has held a teaching appointment at the New York University School of Medicine and lectures nationally. Hayes is also a contributing editor at Martha Stewart Living and writes regularly for the New York Times, New York, GQ, Gourmet, and Food & Wine. He lives in New York City. Precious Blood is his first novel.
[sic] and the Merc present a reading with
Diane Williams & Garth Risk Hallberg
Diane Williams' new book, It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature is due out from FC2 in the fall. She is the editor of the literary annual Noon.
Garth Risk Hallberg is the author of the novella, A Field Guide to the North American Family (Mark Batty Publisher, 2007). His shorter fiction has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Canteen, Glimmer Train, Evergreen Review, and Best New American Voices 2008, among others.
[sic] is a journal interested in complications, gray areas, and the intersection of the resolved with unknowing. In terms of form, they strive to put together a diverse mix of the at once recognizable and the experimental. They publish fiction, poetry, inter-genre work, memoir and art. [sic] two will be out October 27, 2007. www.sicjournal.com
The Merc and Fiction magazine present a reading with Lara Vapnyar.
Lara Vapnyar came to the U.S. from Russia in 1994. She started publishing stories in English in 2002. She is the author of the story collection, There Are Jews in My House, and the novel, Memoirs of a Muse. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Harpers, Zoetrope, and Vogue.
Fiction magazine prides itself in bringing the unknown to light and making sure that it publishes writers who are at the beginning of their careers or writers that are overlooked.
ANNUAL PROUST SOCIETY LECTURE: EVELYNE BLOCH-DANO
When asked “What would be the worst thing that could happen to you?”
Marcel Proust answered, “To become separated from Mamma.”
But do we really know who “Mamma” was? Based on her new book Madame Proust, the first biography to be written exclusively about Proust’s mother, Evelyne Bloch-Dano will present a lecture on the remarkable and talented woman who became famous through her son’s literary masterpiece. Her presentation will focus on the intense relationship that Jeanne Proust maintained with her son as depicted in their correspondence and in In Search of Lost Time. Bloch-Dano will acquaint the audience with the real woman behind Marcel Proust, from her German-Jewish background and her marriage to a Catholic grocer’s son to her lifelong worries about her son’s sexuality, health problems, and talent.
Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Evelyne Bloch-Dano is a scholar of English and modern literature. In conjunction with her teaching career, she has published numerous books and articles on literature. She is the recipient of many literary prizes including the François Billetdoux Prize in 2001 for Flora Tristan la Femme-Messie, and Madame Proust received the Renaudet Prize for an essay in 2004, as well as the literary prize from the Circle of the Union and the prize bestowed by the Proustian Literary Circle of Cabourg-Balbec. Her most recent book, The Biographer, has been a hit in France since its publication in February, 2007 and Madame Proust will be available on October 1st from the University of Chicago Press.
SPEAKING VOLUMES:
INDIE PRESS EDITORS INTRODUCING EMERGING WRITERS with CLMP
The Mercantile Library and the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses are joining together to introduce you to three great independent presses and the talented writers they are publishing. A brief Q & A will follow the reading.
Dennis Loy Johnson,
Cofounder and Publisher of Melville House
introduces Tao Lin reading from his books
Eeeee Eee Eeee and Bed..
Tao Lin's writing has appeared in the Mississippi Review, the Cincinnati Review, Punk Planet, Bear Parade, Other Voices, Nerve, and Noon. He is the winner of the One Story short story contest and NYU’s undergraduate creative writing prize, and is the author of a poetry chapbook entitled You Are a Little Bit Happier Than I Am, which won the Action Books prize. His blog is called READER OF DEPRESSING BOOKS. He was born in Virginia in 1983, grew up in Florida, and currently lives in New York City.
Erika Goldman, Editorial Director of Bellevue Literary Press
introduces Varley O’Connor reading from her novel The Cure.
Varley O’Connor is the author of The Cure, A Company of Three, and Like China. Currently Assistant Professor in the English Department of Kent State University, she has taught writing at Hofstra University, Brooklyn College, University of California, Irvine, and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She has also been an actress for television, theater, and film.
Amy Scholder, Editor in Chief of Seven Stories Press
introduces
Céline Curiol reading from her novel
Voice Over.
Céline Curiol is a journalist who has worked for various French media, including Liberation, Radio France, and BBC Afrique. Originally from Lyon, France, Curiol lives in New York City, where she is at work on her third novel.
IMAGINED BIOGRAPHIES with
David Leavitt & Edmund White
Join us for this joint reading and discussion on the imagined lives of historical figures. In The Indian Clerk Leavitt tells the story of mathematicians G.H. Hardy and his protégé Srinivasa Ramanujan and their remarkable relationship. Edmund White’s novel Hotel de Dream focuses on the novelist Stephen Crane as he struggles to finish his scandalous last book.
To read the "New York Times" review of The Indian Clerk click here.
To read the "New York Times" review of Hotel de Dream click here.
David Leavitt is the author of several novels, including The Body of Jonah Boyd, While England Sleeps, and Equal Affections. A recipient of fellowships from both the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he teaches at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
Edmund White's novels include Fanny: A Fiction, A Boy's Own Story, The Farewell Symphony, and A
Married Man. He is also the author of a biography of Jean Genet, a study of Marcel Proust, The Flâneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris, and, a memoir, My Lives. White recently published Chaos: A Novella and Stories. His latest book is Hotel de Dream. Having lived in Paris for many years, he is now a New Yorker and teaches at Princeton University.
Civilia
ns Who Write Cops:
HOW THEY DO IT
Civilians Who Write Cops: HOW THEY DO IT
A panel with Reggie Nadelson, Robert Knightly and Reed Farrell Coleman.
A journalist and documentary film maker, Reggie Nadelson is a New Yorker who also makes her home in London. She is the author of six novels featuring the detective Artie Cohen, including Red Hook and Disturbed Earth. Her non-fiction book Comrade Rockstar, the story of the American who became the biggest rock star in the Soviet Union, is to be made into a film starring Tom Hanks. Her most recent book is Fresh Kills.
Robert Knightly retired from the NYPD as a Lieutenant in 1987 after 20 years on patrol. Since then he has been a Criminal Trials Attorney with the Legal Aid Society. In 2002 he sold a pilot script to Aaron Spelling-TV Productions and NBC. In 2004 he published his first short story in Brooklyn Noir, an anthology of original crime stories from Akashic Books. In 2006 he published a story in Manhattan Noir, which was included in McMillan's Best American Mystery Stories 2007. He's editor and contributor to Queens Noir, due in January 2008. He is a former President of the MWA's New York Chapter.
Reed Farrel Coleman was born and raised in Brooklyn. His first piece of long fiction, Life Goes Sleeping, was published in 1991. Before turning to writing, Reed worked as a baby food salesman, an air freight manager, a restaurant trainer, a cab driver and a truck driver. He met his wife in a writing class at the New School in Manhattan. They live with their two children in Suffolk County. His latest book is Soul Patch available from Bleak House.
FANNY HOWE & SALAR ABDOH
The Merc was delighted to join forces and bring a reading series with Fiction magazine.The guiding principle of Fiction is to explore the writing of the imagination and ask that modern fiction set itself serious questions, if often in absurd and comic voices, interrogating the nature of the real and the fantastic. Fiction prides itself in bringing the unknown to light and making sure that it publishes writers who are at the beginning of their careers or writers that are overlooked.
This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. with public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
Fanny Howewrites both fiction and poetry. She has won two NEA awards and the American Book Award for her novel, Nod (Sun & Moon Press, 1998). The recipient of the 2002 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for her Selected Poems, she has also won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Poetry Foundation.
Salar Abdoh was born and raised in Tehran and came to the United States after the revolution. His first novel, The Poet Game, written in 1999, is the tale of Islamic fundamentalists planning an attack on the World Trade Center. His second novel, Opium, was published in 2004. He holds degrees in Near Eastern studies and creative writing, and is an assistant professor of creative writing at CCNY.
STEVE STERN & ERIKA T. WURTH
Steve Stern is the author of the widely acclaimed The Angel of Forgetfulness and is considered one of the “greatest of our unrecognized writers.” He is the author of several short story collections, including The Wedding Jester (winner of the National Jewish Book Award), Isaac and the Undertaker’s Daughter (winner of a Pushcart Writer’s Choice Award and an O. Henry Prize), and Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven (winner of the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish American fiction). He has also written three novels and two books for children. He teaches creative writing at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Dr. Erika T. Wurth is a poet as well as a writer of fiction and both her poetry and stories reflect her Apache/Chickasaw roots. Her work has been published in Fiction Magazine, Raven Chronicles, Studies in American Indian Literatures, and American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Cedar Hill Review, AMCRJ and SAIL. Wurth’s most recent collection of poetry is Indian Trains (West End Press). She teaches Creative Writing at Western Illinois University.
TRANSLATION SERIES:
EDITH GROSSMAN on
CARMEN LAFORET'S NADA
Followed by a conversation with
Harold Augenbraum
Carmen Laforet was only twenty-three when she published her first novel, Nada. It won the Premio Nadal prize, and is credited with helping to reinvigorate twentieth-century Spanish literature. Set in post Spanish civil war Barcelona, Laforet’s coming-of-age classic has inspired a cultlike following worldwide.
Edith Grossman is the widely acclaimed translator of major Spanish-language authors including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Miguel de Cervantes. She is the recipient of two American Literary Translators Association Translation of the Year awards, and the 2006 PEN/Manheim Medal for Translation.
Harold Augenbraum is Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, presenter of the National Book Awards, the most prestigious literary awards in the United States. He is also the previous Director of the Mercantile Library. He has published many translations including the work of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and José Rizal. He is currently editing the Collected Poems of Marcel Proust.
PETER CONSTANTINE ON MACHIAVELLI
with Michael F. Moore
and Actors of the Pearl Theater Company
In celebration of its publication next month, The Mercantile Library Center for Fiction welcomes award winning Peter Constantine and his The Essential Writings of Machiavelli (Modern Library). Michael F. Moore will join Constantine in a dialogue with the audience about the work.
The evening will also feature actors from The Pearl Theater Company performing scenes from Constantine’s translation of La Mandragola and reading other brani from the volume, including some previously untranslated documents.
Peter Constantine was awarded the 1998 PEN Translation Prize for Six Early Stories by Thomas Mann, and the 1999 National Translation Award for The Undiscovered Chekhov. His translation of The Complete Works of Isaac Babel received the Koret Jewish Literature Award and a National Jewish Book Award citation. He has also translated Gogol, Tolstoy, and Voltaire for Modern Library and is a senior editor of Conjunctions.
Michael F. Moore is chair of the PEN Translation Committee. He has translated, from the Italian, works by the novelist Erri De Luca, the poet Alfredo Giuliani, and aphorist Guido Ceronetti. He is currently working on a new translation of Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed.
Since 1984, The Pearl Theatre Company has created a home for audiences and theatre artists to experience great plays. The Pearl, located in the heart of New York’s vibrant East Village, has produced over 105 classical masterpieces and is committed to establishing America’s finest Resident Acting Company capable of the demands of a classical repertory. As a preserver of the legacy of theatre, The Pearl believes that a company of actors who can work and train together over years, who constantly enhance the techniques and knowledge mandated by the classics, and who share a common asthetic, can deliver the substance and style of the great plays of our heritage in a way that no ad hoc cast can.
