Literary

Queen of Folk: A Reading with Samantha Thornhill

Poet and fiction writer Samantha Thornhill shares poetry from her new book ‘Odetta: Queen of Folk,’ (Scholastic, 2010) an illustrated book for both youth and adults that shines light on the indomitable life of one of America’s most influential folk singers.

Literary Panel: Creativity and Authorial Persona

Please join Carmela Ciuraru, Ben Greenman, Barbara Jones, and Darin Strauss for a lively panel on ‘Authenticity and the Creative Life.’ They’ll discuss unreliable narrators (in both fiction and nonfiction), alter egos, authorial doubleness, and stories of authenticity, deception, and fraud. They’ll also explore a timeless question: what’s in a name, anyway? Q&A session, followed by book signing with the authors.

Poetry Meets Prose

Acclaimed novelist and poet Sapphire reads from her new novel ‘The Kid’ (Penguin, 2011), a follow up to her New York Times bestselling novel ‘Push,’ recently adapted for the screen as ‘Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.’ She is joined by Cave Canem fellow and award-winning poet Tracy K. Smith, who reads from ‘Life on Mars’ (Graywolf, 2011), a new collection of poems called ‘vital and incomparable’ by Terrance Hayes. Reception and book signing to follow.

Motion Pictures

In ‘Motion Pictures’ the walls of Melville House gallery come alive with the vibrancy of New York pedestrian life as artist Susan Mastrangelo’s compositions enact the proscenium of the street. Her fiberglass and fabric figures walk, rush, and pivot about the room stepping over and around text provided by poet Albert Mobilio.

Enter Liberature

Central Booking welcomes Katarzyna Bazarnik and Zenon Fajfer on their first U.S. tour introducing Liberature, a new literary genre that integrates text and the material form of the book into a meaningful whole. Bazarnik and Fajfer, writers and theorists of the movement, present a series of videos about liberatic books and the electronic poem ‘Primum Mobile’ from Zenon’s poetry volume ‘Ten Letters.’