previous events

• 

  On Celestial Music:

  And Other Adventures in Listening

  by Rick Moody

  $15.99 List Price

  For more info visit:
  Amazon • IndieBound • Barnes & Noble

  Wednesday, March 21

  7:00pm

  Rick Moody: On Celestial Music

  Rick Moody presents his collection of music writing with author Wesley Stace (John Wesley Harding) for this evening of live music and discussion. RSVP required. About On Celestial Music: Rick Moody is one of our most celebrated contemporary writers. Some may also know him as a devoted music lover,…

  MORE ABOUT THIS EVENT

  Rick Moody presents his collection of music writing with author Wesley Stace (John Wesley Harding) for this evening of live music and discussion.
  
  RSVP required.
  
  About On Celestial Music:
  
  Rick Moody is one of our most celebrated contemporary writers. Some may also know him as a devoted music lover, and member of the band, The Wingdale Community Singers, who also released his first solo album in 2010. Moody now turns his hand to praising the music he loves.
  
  Rick Moody has been writing about music just as long as he has been writing, and in On Celestial Music, he dazzles us with his creative genius and immerses himself in music old and new. Throughout, Moody notes his own development on his musical journey. In the first chapter, Moody gives us the anatomy of the word cool, reminding us that, in the postwar 40s, it was infused with the feeling of jazz music but is now merely a synonym for neat. His essay, "On Celestial Music" which was included in Best American Essays, 2008, begins with a lament for the loss in recent music of the vulnerability expressed in Otis Redding's masterpiece, "Try a Little Tenderness"; moves on to Moody's infatuation with the ecstatic music of the Velvet Underground; and ends with an appreciation of Arvo Part and Purcell, close as they are to nature—the music of heaven.
  
  Moody also covers plenty of contemporary groups. He includes a beautiful discussion of the band Mangnetic Fields' love songs, discusses Jeff Tweedy and his band Wilco's evolution, takes on Danielson Famile, an evangelic rock band, as well as Shane McGowan of The Pogues, in a discussion of his problems with addiction. He also writes about The Lounge Lizards and reflects on John Lurie's brilliance, and discusses Meredith Monk, who once recorded a song inspired by Moody's own story "Boys."
  
  Always both incisive and personable, these pieces inspire us to dive as deeply into the music that enhances our lives as Moody has done—and introduces us to wonderful sounds we may not know.

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• 

  Monday, February 27

  7:00pm

  American Creative Writers on Class

  Editor Shelly Reed presents a collection of writing on economic status, featuring readings by contributors Michele Carlo, Caitlin Foyle, Monica A. Hand, Sonya Huber, Emmy Hunter, Leslie Jamison, and Rebecca Keith. A portion the book's proceeds benefit the Robin Hood Foundation. About American Creative…

  MORE ABOUT THIS EVENT

  Editor Shelly Reed presents a collection of writing on economic status, featuring readings by contributors Michele Carlo, Caitlin Foyle, Monica A. Hand, Sonya Huber, Emmy Hunter, Leslie Jamison, and Rebecca Keith. A portion the book's proceeds benefit the Robin Hood Foundation.
  
  About American Creative Writers on Class:
  
  At a time when economic inequality is on all of our minds, this collection focuses on intimate moments, personal relationships, and common daily experiences at the intersection of people of different economic status. Edited by long-time, anti-poverty advocate Shelly Reed, American Creative Writers on Class gives us some peaceful thoughts to help calm the ideological war in our minds.
  
  Nonfiction and poetry contributors include: Oliver de la Paz, Rebecca Keith, Matthea Harvey, Colleen McKee, Carolyne Wright, Emmy Hunter, Dorianne Laux, Monica A. Hand, Michele Carlo, Leslie Jamison, Caitlin Doyle, Christina Olson, Laura McCullough, Theresa Rodopoulos, and Sonya Huber.
  
  About the readers:
  
  Michele Carlo is a writer/performer who has lived in four of the five boroughs of NYC and remembers when a slice of pizza cost fifty cents. She has been published in Mr. Beller's Neighborhood's Lost & Found: Stories From New York, Chicken Soup For The Latino Soul, and SMITH magazine, and has told her stories everywhere a person can tell stories in NYC—including the MOTH's GrandSlams and Mainstage, among many others. Her memoir Fish Out Of Agua: My Life on Neither Side of the (Subway) Tracks was published by Citadel Press in August 2010. www.michelecarlo.com.
  
  Monica A. Hand is a poet and book artist who is investigating a nomadic lifestyle as a strategy for economic, political, spiritual and artistic survival. Her manuscript, "me and Nina," received a 2010 Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books, and her poems have appeared in numerous publications including Naugatuck River Review, The Sow's Ear, Drunken Boat, and Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade. She holds an MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, and is a founding member of Poets for Ayiti.
  
  Sonya Huber is the author of Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir and Opa Nobody, a hybrid work about her German socialist grandfather and her own labor activism. She has also written The Backwards Research Guide for Writers: Using Your Life for Reflection, Connection, and Inspiration, and is working on a big, unwieldy project about social class. She teaches creative writing at Fairfield University and in the Low-Residency MFA program at Ashland.
  
  Emmy Hunter's poetry has been published in many literary journals, including Fence, American Poetry Review, Witness, and languageandculture.net. A chapbook of her poetry and prose titled No View of the Boat was published by Linear Arts Press. She has been a semi-finalist for the Walt Whitman Award and the Center for Book Arts Chapbook Prize, and has had residencies at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. She teaches creative writing at Hunter College.
  
  Leslie Jamison is the author of the novel, The Gin Closet, as well as stories and essays that have appeared in places like A Public Space, The Believer, The L Magazine, Bellevue Review, Salt Hill, and Tin House. She's worked as a baker, an innkeeper, a juice barista, and a medical actor. She's currently a PhD candidate in American Literature at Yale University. You can find her at www.lesliejamison.com.
  
  Rebecca Keith's poems and other writing have appeared in Best New Poets (2009), The Laurel Review, The Rumpus, The Awl, BOMBlog, Dossier, Storyscape, The Millions, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, was a semi-finalist for the 2010 "Discovery"/Boston Review poetry contest, and has received honors from the Atlantic Monthly and BOMB Magazine. A native of downtown New York, Rebecca is a founder, curator, and host of Mixer Reading and Music series. She also sings and plays guitar and keyboards in the Roulettes and Butchers & Bakers.

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• 

  Thursday, February 16

  6:00pm

  Milton Glaser

  Graphic design legend Milton Glaser comes to The powerHouse Arena for an exclusive discussion and signing of his new book In Search of the Miraculous. About In Search of the Miraculous: Milton Glaser is perhaps the most celebrated graphic designer in the world. As a young man, he read a phrase that…

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  Graphic design legend Milton Glaser comes to The powerHouse Arena for an exclusive discussion and signing of his new book In Search of the Miraculous.
  
  About In Search of the Miraculous:
  
  Milton Glaser is perhaps the most celebrated graphic designer in the world. As a young man, he read a phrase that stayed with him through his life: "In Search of the Miraculous." One could say that all human experience is a miracle—memory, color, taste, Vermeer, stars, watermelon, etc. For those like Glaser, the act of making things that move the mind is perhaps the deepest aspiration towards the miraculous. In this volume, he has chosen work, largely created by him over the last five years, to demonstrate how one concept leads to another. Through fascinating juxtapositions, readers will gain insights into Glaser's oeuvre, journeying with him as he discovers that seemingly new designs frequently come out of provocative ideas taken from the distant past.
  
  About Milton Glaser:
  
  Milton Glaser has had one-man shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Georges Pompidou Center. In 2004, he was selected for the lifetime achievement award of the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. In 2010, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts by Barack Obama. His books include Graphic Design, Art is Work, and Drawing is Thinking, all published by Overlook.

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  Saturday, February 11

  6:00pm

  Reinventing the Past

  Chris Adrian, Catalin Dorian Florescu, Inka Parei and Linda Stift in conversation with Daniel Kehlmann Literature is often a delving into the past, made all but involuntary because the past has returned to haunt the present. Whether the history in question is familial, political or ancient, traces…

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  Chris Adrian, Catalin Dorian Florescu, Inka Parei and Linda Stift in conversation with Daniel Kehlmann
  
  Literature is often a delving into the past, made all but involuntary because the past has returned to haunt the present. Whether the history in question is familial, political or ancient, traces of old trauma can cast the present in a new light. This panel explores the different ways in which the past can be put to work in the name of storytelling.

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