FRANKLIN PARK READING SERIES -- TONIGHT, 8pm

penina

I just wanted to let everyone know about tonight's reading, from 8-10pm. As always, it's free and we'll have cheap booze.

Coinciding with vacation season, the evening's theme is "Travels and Journeys." Info about our writers follows. Hope to see you there!

Featuring:

TEDDY WAYNE (Kapitoil)
DEANNA FEI (A Thread of Sky)
AARON LAKE SMITH (journalist, Time, Vice)
TAI ALLEN (performance poet)

TEDDY WAYNE is the author of the novel Kapitoil (Harper Perennial). He is a graduate of Harvard and Washington University in St. Louis, where he taught fiction and creative nonfiction writing. The recipient of a 2010 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, his work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Time, Esquire, McSweeney's, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. He lives in New York.

It’s October 1, 1999, and young, brilliant, self-taught programmer Karim Issar is transferred from the Doha, Qatar, office of Schrub Equities to Manhattan for three months to help the high-flying firm get past Y2K...this wonderfully assured debut novel, at once poignant, insightful, and funny, details Karim's passage through a new world of corporate sharks, Manhattan clubs, museums, Bob Dylan lyrics, and personal growth. Karim's English, always grammatically correct but stilted with terms from science, mathematics, computing, and business, is a delight. Best of all, however, is simply being inside Karim's head as he ponders Jackson Pollock's paintings, baseball, programming, and the mysteries of love and life in the U.S.
— Booklist

DEANNA FEI is the author of the novel A Thread of Sky (Penguin Press), a New York Times Editors’ Choice and an Indie Next Notable Book. She was born in Flushing, New York, and has lived in Beijing and Shanghai, China. A graduate of Amherst College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has received a Fulbright Grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and a Chinese Cultural Scholarship. A Prospect Heights resident, she teaches in public schools and is at work on a new novel.

Irene persuades her aged mother, her sister (a poet who lives in Hong Kong) and her daughters to join her on a tour of China... With China’s “must sees” as a backdrop, family secrets emerge, and Irene’s privileged daughters grow less sullen as they measure their woes against the cruelties of revolution and war that shaped their mother and grandmother. A fluent storyteller, Fei entwines this family narrative with harrowing passages about the Rape of Nanjing and the oppression of early Chinese immigrants to America...
— The New York Times

AARON LAKE SMITH is from Cary, North Carolina and currently lives in Brooklyn. His reportage has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, Time, Vice, Newsweek, Alternet, and Truthout, among others. His fiction has been featured in The Evergreen Review and 3:AM Magazine. He has received a Nation Institute Investigative Grant to do an investigation this summer into sludge in rural communities for Virginia Quarterly Review. His photocopied fanzine, Big Hands, was featured in the New Museum’s Generational Show, which showcased the work of promising artists under the age of 33.

TAI ALLEN is an artist who fuses poetry, prose, and music into innovative live performances. He is the author of two books of poetry, including a recent chapbook, For Easy Readin’, which comes with its own soundtrack. Allen began his creative career at an early age – in high school he was a battle MC and haiku poet, and he wrote his first poetry book to help his girlfriend navigate her boring nights in Ohio. He has performed at venues as diverse as the Hague, the Nuyorican Poets Café, Columbia University, and UCLA. A Brooklyn resident, he is now working on a collage series based on quotes.

l keys

Subject: Franklin Park's free readings

Thank you for the reminder about the free reading tonight! I"m definitely interested in attending a few of these....is there any way you can email me reminders for this event? Is it every Monday night or does it vary?