Newtonville Books Community Blog

August 29, 2007

An Evening with 826 Boston

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 10:04 am

826 Boston presents REVENGE OF THE BOOK EATERS

A unique, awe-inspiring synthesis of the literary, comedy and music communities in support of 826 Boston’s innovative programming for kids

Featuring: Kevin Barnes and Bryan Poole (Of Montreal), Mates of State, Dave Eggers, Eugene Mirman, Davy Rothbart, Rodney Rothman and Via Audio.

Berklee Performance Center

Wednesday, September 26, 7 PM. Doors open at 6:30 PM.

1140 Boylston Street (Hynes Green Line stop), Boston

Tickets: $25 – $150 (VIP), reserved seating

Tickets available through Ticketmaster, www.ticketmaster.com

617-931-2000 / Berklee Box Office / 136 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston

All proceeds go toward 826 Boston’s free student programming

Boston, MA August 6, 2007 – 826 Boston is pleased to announce its Revenge of the Book Eaters fundraiser, featuring an eclectic lineup of writers, actors, and comedians including Kevin Barnes and Bryan Poole from the band Of Montreal (performing an acoustic set) and indie rockers Mates of State, as well as Dave Eggers (co-founder of the 826 National program, Pulitzer Prize-nominated author), Eugene Mirman (comedian and actor, Flight of the Conchords), Davy Rothbart (creator of Found magazine) and Rodney Rothman (Emmy nominee and author of Early Bird) and the band Via Audio.

Revenge of the Book Eaters has toured nationally and played to great popular acclaim in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and elsewhere. The bulk of the tour took place in 2006 and earned glowing reviews from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and New York Magazine. Last summer saw the birth of this benefit at 826 NYC, when Revenge of the Book Eaters delivered an extremely entertaining comedic-storytelling-meets-music-hoedown at New York’s Beacon Theatre. The event sold out the 3000-seat house in less than 24 hours; demand for tickets was so high that the venue offered up rarely used standing-room-only spots for sale. It attracted favorable preview and review press coverage in The New Yorker, New York, Pitchfork, The Onion, Time Out NY, Artforum, Billboard, Variety, Spin, Jane, The Village Voice, Newsday, The New York Oberver, Gawker, Gothamist, Brooklyn Vegan, Stereogum and many others. Rolling Stone called the first Revenge of the Book Eaters event in New York, “sweet, perfect,” and wrote that it left “everybody — authors, musicians and audience members — feeling as if they left winning.”

$150 VIP tickets guarantee the best seat in the house and include admission to a pre-event cocktail reception with the performers. Seating is assigned within sections.

About the performers:

Kevin Barnes and Bryan Poole (from Of Montreal ) hail from Athens, Georgia. Of Montreal is currently celebrating their tenth year together, and their latest album Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? has garnered glowing reviews from critics and fans alike.

Mates of State formed in Lawrence, Kansas and have since moved to the West Coast. They have released five 7” records and two full-length albums; their latest album, Bring it Back, is available from Barsuk Records.

Via Audio is a New York-based band, formed while members were students at Berklee College of Music. Their debut album, Say Something Say Something Say Something, will be released on September 25th.

Dave Eggers is a former Salon editor and founder of Might magazine and McSweeney’s publishing house. He co-founded 826 National with educator Nínive Calegari. He is the author of the novels A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (a Pulitzer Prize finalist) and You Shall Know Our Velocity, as well as the short story collection How We Are Hungry and, most recently, What Is The What.

Eugene Mirman is a Brooklyn-based comedian who regularly tours with his multimedia stand up routines. He is a regular on HBO’s Flight of the Conchords, as well as Late Night With Conan O’Brien and Comedy Central’s Premium Blend. His first comedy CD/DVD was voted a Best Album by both Time Out NYC and The Onion, and his latest recording was released by Sub Pop Records.

Davy Rothbart is a writer and filmmaker from Ann Arbor, Michigan who has appeared at past 826 benefits. He is the creator of Found magazine and author of the story collection The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas, and has edited several anthologies of Found artwork. Rothbart regularly contributes to NPR’s This American Life. Recently, Geffen Records released his documentary How We Survive.

Rodney Rothman is an Emmy nominee who has worked for The Late Show with David Letterman, Undeclared, and Committed, Rodney Rothman is a screenwriter and producer whose 2005 memoir, Early Bird, received much critical acclaim. Rothman has written a pilot for HBO, as well as an adaptation of his memoir for NBC.

About 826 Boston:

826 Boston is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Our services are structured around the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success. With this in mind, we provide drop-in tutoring, after-school workshops, in-schools tutoring, help for English language learners, and assistance with student publications. All of our programs are challenging and enjoyable, and ultimately strengthen each student’s power to express ideas effectively, creatively, confidently, and in his or her individual voice.

We began in-schools work this spring with a special series of workshops at The English High School. Talented volunteers came once a week to work with students, who wrote about their lives. Additionally, a number of local authors, including Junot Díaz, Steve Almond and Kelly Link, spoke at the high school library about their experiences as published writers. The workshop series will culminate in the publication of a book of essays written by the students, discussing their experiences as young adults, both inside and outside of their educational lives.  

Upon opening in the fall at our brand new Roxbury headquarters, we plan to reach students at every possible opportunity—in school, after school, in the evenings, or on the weekends through the following free programs:

One-on-One Tutoring

826 Boston will be open five days a week to students who come in for free, one-on-one drop-in tutoring. We will serve students of all skill levels and interests, particularly those who attend school or live in our Roxbury neighborhood. During the summer, our tutoring program will cater exclusively to English language-learners.

Workshops

826 Boston will offer free workshops that provide in-depth writing instruction in a variety of areas that schools often can’t include in their curriculum, such as college entrance essay writing, cartooning, bookmaking, SAT preparation, playwriting, or starting a magazine. All workshops will be project-based and taught by experienced, accomplished professionals. Connecting inner-city students with these creative and generous mentors allows students to dream and achieve on a grand scale. Our goal is to serve at least 300 students in 30 multi-session workshops in our first year of operation

Field Trips

Up to four times a week, 826 Boston will welcome an entire class for a morning of high-energy learning. We will draw on 826 Valencia’s most popular workshop, Storytelling & Bookmaking, in which students write, illustrate, and bind their own books within a two-hour period. 

In-Schools Programs

It is not feasible for all classes to come to us, so we will dispatch teams of volunteers into local schools. At a teacher’s behest, we will send the requested number of tutors into any classroom around the city, to provide one-on-one assistance to students as they tackle various projects — school newspapers, research papers, oral histories, basic writing assignments, and college entrance essays.

Student Publishing

We know that the quality of one’s writing is greatly enhanced when it’s shared with an authentic audience, so we are committed to publishing student work. In addition to dozens of smaller in-house publications, we will produce a professionally published student literary anthology, as well as at least one special-project book, such as The English High School collection mentioned earlier. We believe young voices have great value and so with the support of local graphic artists we will work to ensure that the production quality of our publications meets the high standards set by our students’ work.

http://www.826boston.org

http://www.826national.org

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/news/44956-of-montreal-eggers-mirman-join-boston-book-eaters

http://www.bookeaters.org

August 27, 2007

FOUR STORIES RETURNS!

Filed under: Events — admin @ 4:19 pm

Dear Friends:

Please join us at Opening Night of our Boston Fall ’07 Season!

The evening’s theme: ” Emails from the Edge: 21st Century Tales of Far-Away Places“

Featuring:

  • Ethan Gilsdorf, travel writer and essayist with pieces in The New York Times, the Boston Globe, National Geographic Traveler, and more; and teacher at Boston’s awesome Grub Street
  • Michelle Hoover, a Best New American Voices author and winner of Pen-New England’s Emerging Writer Award
  • Roland Kelts, Lecturer at the University of Tokyo; co-editor of the New York-based literary journal A Public Space; author of JapanAmerica; and writer with work in  Zoetrope, Playboy, Doubletake, Salon, The Village Voice, Newsday, Cosmopolitan, Vogue and The Japan Times
  • Tracy Slater, Four Stories Boston and Four Stories Japan founder; teacher of writing and literature in Boston University’s Prison Education Program; and author of essays and reviews from The Chronicle Review, Post Road, Kansai Time Out, Asahi Weekly, and more

Plus Michael Borum as the hot guest DJ!

Monday, September 10, 2007
The Enormous Room
567 Massachusetts Ave
Central Sq., Cambridge
7-9pm (music starts @ 6)

Admittance free and open to the public

And please stay tuned for the rest of our Boston Fall lineup , with events on:

Monday, October 1
Monday, November 5
Monday, December 3

All at the Enormous Room, our favorite Boston/Cambridge hangout!

Warmest regards,

Tracy Slater
Founder, Four Stories Boston & Four Stories Japan
http://www.fourstories.org

August 26, 2007

A Message from Wesley Stace aka John Wesley Harding

Filed under: Events — admin @ 2:02 pm

I’d love to invite you to these various readings and gigs – George 
himself will be accompanying me to all these.

New Yorkers, please note the first one in just a few days time.

Aug 23: READING – Barnes and Noble, Astor Place, New York NY 7.00pm
Sept 1: READING – Decatur Literary Festival @ Eddie’s Attic, Decatur 
GA 12.30pm
Sept 1: GIG – Eddie’s Attic, Decatur GA
Sept 2: GIG – Bumbershoot, Seattle WA
Sept 3: READING – Bumbershoot, Seattle WA
Sept 20: READING – Newtonville Books, Newtonville MA 7.00pm
Sept 27: READING – National Arts Club, New York NY
Oct 12: READING – Opium’s Literary Death Match @ LITQUAKE, San 
Francisco CA
Nov 2: GIG – First Presbyterian Church, New Haven CT
Nov 4: READING – Texas Book Festival, Austin TX
Nov 9: GIG – Mississippi Studios, Portland OR
Nov 10/11: READING – Wordstock, Portland OR

(And various more to come,  generally posted at myspace.com/
wesleystace.)

There was a flurry of excitement when the first chapter of the book 
was presented, as if a blog by George himself, on the myspace books 
front page, and this led to much traffic on George’s own myspace site:
http://www.myspace.com/bygeorgefisher
(where not only is the music spectacular (James and Bobby Purify’s 
I’m Your Puppet) but there are nice portraits of George.) The blog 
temporarily became an object of great interest, for various reasons 
probably completely extraneous to the novel, particularly amongst 
myspacers who would never otherwise have known anything about it - 
some accused me of “plagerising Davy Copperfield”; many emailed me 
asking whether Harry Potter was dead or not. Why? I don’t know. My 
theory is that some people may associate the word “book” only with 
Harry Potter, so that when they heard George had written a book, they 
made the natural assumption. You can see some of their  comments here:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?
fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=184403404&blogID=292937155

The first chapter of the book is up at various places, including:
http://www.hachettebookgroupusa.com/books/62/0316830321/
chapter_excerpt25279.html
and
http://www.wesleystace.com/bygeorge.html
(where is also a small exhibition of ventriloquial artefacts.)

However, you might prefer to read the entire book, or just that first 
chapter, on paper, in which case you could either buy it at your 
preferred local bookstore, or at AMAZON. You may well know how to 
search for a book on Amazon, but if not:
http://www.amazon.com/George-Novel-Wesley-Stace/dp/0316830321

You can even win a copy of it here:
http://www.oncewritten.com/EnterToWin/Title.php?TID=By-George

So, very best wishes, and hope to see you at a reading or else over a 
drink
wesley stace
and george fisher (of henley)

Acclaimed Writer Grace Paley Dies at 84

Filed under: Literature News — admin @ 2:00 pm

 

By HILLEL ITALIE

The Associated Press
Thursday, August 23, 2007; 11:38 AM

NEW YORK. — Poet and short story writer Grace Paley, a literary eminence and old-fashioned rebel who described herself as a “combative pacifist,” has died. She was 84.

Paley, who had battled breast cancer, died Wednesday at her home in Thetford Hill, Vt., according to her husband, playwright Robert Nichols.

“She was a great writer,” said Jonathan Galassi, president of Farrar Straus & Giroux, which is about to publish a book of new Paley poetry. “Her sense of the vernacular of the particular world she came from was just wonderful. She was able to capture the humor and pathos in a certain New York voice.”

A published writer since the 1950s, Paley released only a handful of books over the next half century, mostly short stories and poems. Among her story collections were “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute,” 1974, and “Later the Same Day,” 1985.

Writing was a passion, but not a compulsion: She never felt the need to put every experience into words. Her fiction, although highly praised, competed for time with work, activism, family and friends.

“None of it happened, and yet every word of it is true,” she once said of her fiction. “It’s truth embedded in the lie.”

Paley, a longtime New Yorker, moved to Vermont in 1988 after having spent summers there. She was named state poet laureate in early 2003. “Artists are known for challenging convention,” Gov. Jim Douglas said at the time. “Great artists like Grace Paley do that and more.”

In many ways, Paley wasn’t a typical American writer. Her characters did not suffer “identity crises.” Instead of living on the road, they stayed home, in Greenwich Village. They discussed politics, dared to take sides and belonged to clubs anxious to have them as members.

“People talk of alienation and so forth,” she said in a 1994 interview with The Associated Press. “I don’t feel that. I feel angry at certain things, but I don’t feel alienated from it. I feel disgusted with it, or mad, but I don’t feel I’m not in it.”

She was a child of immigrants who seemed to embody a more intimate time, the kind of person strangers at readings would call by her first name. Short and heavyset, she had a round, open face, a warm smile and a friendly disarray of hair.

Her voice was small and surprisingly girlish, with every thought seeming to occur to the speaker only at the moment she expressed it.

Born Grace Goodside in New York in 1922, she was one of three children of Russian Jews. Her family spoke English, Russian and Yiddish, but politics proved the universal language. Her parents had opposed the czar in Russia and were supporters of the New Deal. The bitterest neighborhood feuds were not among drug dealers, but between Trotskyites and Stalinists.

“I thought being Jewish meant you were a Socialist,” Paley said. “Everyone on my block was a Socialist or a Communist. … People would have serious, insane arguments, and it was nice. It makes you think the rest of the world is pretty bland.”

She started writing poems early and continued to do so even as she married a movie cameraman, Jess Paley, had two children, worked part time as a typist and became involved in community affairs around Greenwich Village.

Paley began writing prose in the 1950s.

Novels seemed too long _ she never wrote one _ so she turned to short stories. Although many of her pieces were rejected by magazines, an editor at Doubleday learned of her work and her first collection, “The Little Disturbances of Man: Stories of Men and Women at Love,” was published in 1959.

“I felt some of these stories, writing about women and writing about children, I had a reluctance to write for a while because it seemed to me it was not interesting,” said Paley.

The new book, tentatively titled “Fidelity: A Book of Poems,” will be published early next year, Galassi said.

Paley’s fiction set an easy, informal tone, but was developed out of weeks and months of careful refinement, all sentences read aloud before being committed to paper. Many stories were not so much “stories” as conversations overheard, with fitting titles such as “Listening” and “Talking.”

Like longtime neighbors, Paley’s characters become familiar faces, especially the compassionate Faith Darwin. It was typical of Paley that she did not look upon Faith as an alter ego but as someone who might have been a “good, close pal.”

At the same time, Paley was a self-described “combative pacifist” who joined the War Resisters League in the ’60s and visited Hanoi on a peace mission. She was arrested in 1978 during an anti-nuclear protest on the White House lawn and for years could be found every Saturday passing out protest leaflets on a street corner near her New York apartment.

“I happened to like the ’60s a lot. I thought great things were happening then and I was glad my children were part of that generation. As an older person in the peace movement, I learned a lot from it. I mean I learned a LOT,” Paley said.

“So, I don’t know where things went wrong, except, whatever happens in society, the society corrupts, eats up and takes over. … But at the same time there’s always this really small little hill of hope that’s right in the middle of this. You see people from that period doing wonderful things, all the things they meant to do.”

Paley married Nichols in 1972. In the late 1990s, they formed Glad Day Books, which publishes political fiction and nonfiction.

She never let fame or politics obscure her devotion to family, her stepson said.

“A lot of well-known people are hard to access,” Duncan Nichols, of Thetford, told the Valley News of Lebanon, N.H. “She was just the opposite. She was just a very family person. I think it’s absolutely true that she would give someone the shirt off her back. She was just very, very generous that way, a people person rather than a reclusive artist type.”


 

August 21, 2007

Robert Anthony Siegel to read in Beverly

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 7:46 pm

Newtonville fave Robert Anthony Siegel (author of All Will Be Revealed) will be reading in Beverly, MA in September.  He’ll be reading from the novel and also showing vintage slides from the period, and talking about the ways that photography, Spiritualism and Polar exploration were interwoven in the 19th century America.

Thursday, September 27 at 7pm
Beverly Public Library
32 Essex Street
Beverly, MA 01915
978-921-606

Photo of All Will Be Revealed 

robertanthonysiegel.com

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