7 pm, Sunday, May 18
The latest in Rachel London's monthly weekend readings features Fiona Maazel (Last Last Chance) and Sarah Goodyear (View from a Burning Bridge).
Sarah Goodyear grew up in New York City. She has worked as a writer and editor at several magazines, including Rolling Stone and Time Out New York,where she is currently a contributing editor, and her nonfiction work has appeared in publications including Ms.magazine and the Village Voice. Her debut novel, View from a Burning Bridge,was published in 2007 by Red Hen Press. She is the moderator for a book group on a new NPR radio show, the Bryant Park Project, and teaches at the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute. She lives in Brooklyn.
Fiona Maazel is a writer and freelance editor. Her work has appeared in Bomb, The
Boston Book Review, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Mississippi Review, Pierogi Press, Salon, The Village Voice, and The Yale Review. She is a 2005 Lannan Foundation Fiction Fellow. Last Last Chance is her first novel.
This series features novelists, short story writers, poets, and musicians one weekend every month. Taking time off in April to have a baby, Rachel has scheduled readings Joshua Furst and Jim Shepard (7 pm, Sunday, June 8), Nick Flynn and Nuar Alsadir (7 pm, Sunday, July 6), and Gregory Pardlo and Priscilla Becker (7 pm, Sunday, August 10).
Thursday, May 22, 7:30 pm
Our post-apocalyptic discussion continues with Nobel prize-winner Doris Lessing's 1999 novel Mara and Dann. At the southern end of a large land mass called Ifrik, two children, Mara and Dann, are victims of a palace coup and forced to flee from their home and family in the middle of the night. They are brought up in a poor rural village, surviving the hardships of a life threatened as much by drought and wild animals as by the hostile Rock People, who hate them. They join the great human migration northward, away from the southern lands that are turning to dust.
Then around 8:30 pm we will congregate down at the Sugar Lounge to watch Soylent Green (selected by Kerry Hinton). This dystopian classic with the late great Charlton Heston, chronicles a world facing massive overpopulation. Their solution leads to one of the most memorable lines in film history (see the youtube trailer above).
Thursday, May 29, 7:30 pm
A Russian re-consideration of the James Bond spy franchise.
Curated by Michael Idov and Boris Kachka, the Russia! Magazine Series is a mixed media series featuring Russian and Russian-American writers and artists. Upcoming events include Lara Vapnyar on her new collection of short stories, Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love (June 26).
Russia! Magazine (http://www.readrussia.com/) is a new quarterlyEnglish-language publication with an independent and irreverent U.S.-based take on the people,trends, and ideas of modern Russia. Named a "new favorite magazine" by Conde Nast Portfolio, it has recently made headlines for instituting the Rolling R, an award for "General Excellence in Acting Russian," and bestowing it on Viggo Mortensen for his role in Eastern Promises. Russia! authors include Boris Kachka (New York Magazine), Daria Vaisman (New York Times, Monocle), and Emily Gould (Gawker.com), as well as top Russian journalists and designers.
