Kate Zambreno Reading Tour
Kate Zambreno will be doing a reading tour to support her new book, Green Girl (Emergency Press). In a recent review of Green Girl Lightsey Darst of Bookslut wrote, “reading this book is like eating Oreos, if Oreos could be filled with spiders and simultaneously retain their addictive power.” Many of the dates will be with authors from the anthology Men Undressed: Women Writers on the Male Sexual Experience (OV Books). Also note, there is a reading with Laurie Weeks in NY on Oct 18–Laurie’s new book Zipper Mouth (Feminist Press) is explosive. Don’t even think about missing it.
October 6 – Seattle, Vermillion, 1508 11th Avenue between Pike and Pine, 7pm-10pm, with Litsa Dremousis and Kristen Thiel (of Men Undressed)
October 7 – Portland, Powell’s City of Books on Burnside, 1005 Burnside, 7:30pm, with Lidia Yuknavitch and Kristen Thiel (of Men Undressed)
October 14 – San Diego, &Now Festival of New Writing: Tomorrowland Forever
Two panels: “What’s that Mess? It’s Excess!” on Friday at 10am-11:15am with Amaranth Borsuk, Kate Durbin, Bhanu Kapil and Johannes Goransson (reading from forthcomingHeroines) and “Seeing Stars,” with Tisa Bryant, Roxanne Carter, Masha Tupitsyn and Ronaldo Wilson (I will read from Green Girl) on Friday from 6-7:15pm.
October 15 – San Francisco, LitCrawl, Sub/Mission Art Space, 2183 Mission Street, 7:15-8:15, with Aimee Parkison, Christine Zilka, Vicki Hendricks, and Vanessa Carlisle of Men Undressed
October 16 – Santa Cruz, New Cadence Poetry Series, Felix Kulpa Gallery, 107 Elm Street, 7:30pm, with Aimee Parkison and Vanessa Carlisle of Men Undressed
October 18 -New York, Dixon Place, 161a Chrystie Street on LES, 7-9pm with Laurie Weeks
October 28 – Chicago, Women and Children First, 5233 N. Clark Street, at 7pm, with Gina Frangello, Cris Mazza, and Susan Solomon of Men Undressed
October 30 – Chicago, The Nervous Breakdown Sunday Salon, Katerina’s, 1920 W. Irving Park, 8pm, with Joshua Mohr, Susan Solomon, and Richard Thomas
November 3 – Valencia, CA Visiting Writer at CalArts (reading from Green Girl and Heroines)
November 5 – Los Angeles, Skylight Books, with Kate Durbin
November 18 – Philadelphia, Moles not Molar reading series
November 20 – New York, Sunday Salon, with Men Undressed
Adam Robinson—
The Literature Party site is up for the 2012 AWP blowout. Check it out to see who’s reading and sponsoring and whatever and where.
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HTMLGIANT Meetup: “Two-Lane Blacktop” (Chicago)
Warren Oates, Dennis Wilson, Laurie Bird, and James Taylor in "Two-Lane Blacktop."
This coming weekend (October 8th & 9th), Chicago’s Music Box Theatre is screening Monte Hellman and Rudy Wurlitzer‘s 1971 masterpiece Two-Lane Blacktop. Long overlooked, Two-Lane has for the past five years or so been enjoying a critical renaissance, and is increasingly regarded as one of the greatest films of the ’70s. (Click here to read some of my own thoughts on it.) And right now is an especially opportune time to see it, what with its grandchild Drive currently killing things in theaters.
There are two screenings, one Saturday, one Sunday, each at 11:30 AM. I’ll be attending the Saturday 11:30 AM show. Anyone care to join me? The movie is 102 minutes long and I was thinking we could grab a coffee afterward, before peeling off onto our nation’s highways.
(Yes, Two-Lane Blacktop really does star James Taylor and Dennis Wilson—in their only film roles! No, they don’t sing, nor is any of their music used in the movie. Yes, they’re both incredible—though it’s Oates who really steals the show.)
Your Brooklyn Book Festival Dance Card
Every year I feel overwhelmed about what to see and hear at the Brooklyn Book Festival; When I finally do shuffle over to Borough Hall I realize that the three most interesting things (upon first glance at the distractingly large itinerary) are happening at the same time, so I just turn around and shuffle home, vowing to do a better job next year. This year ‘next year’ finally happened and I curated this list with you all in mind. You’re welcome. See you Sunday.
10 AM: A panel about using time travel and non-linear narrative featuring Seth Fried, Samantha Hunt and others. Or, if you’re feeling able to handle deep, dark stuff this early in the morning, Granta is having a panel about writing after trauma, focusing on 9/11.
11 AM: The Good, The Bad and The Family, a panel moderated by Rob Spillman of Tin House. Or, Radical Fictions a panel and readings by David Goodwillie, Jennifer Gilmore, and Justin Taylor.
Noon: Something called Epic Confusion which features Nadia Kalman, Chuck Klosterman, Sam Lipsyte, and Tiphanie Yanique who will read and talk about this confusion.
1 PM: Apocalypse Now, and Then What? featuring Tananarive Due, Patrick Somerville and Colson Whitehead. Moderated by Paul Morris, Bomb Magazine.
2 PM: Politics & Poetry: Timothy Donnelly, Nick Flynn, Thomas Sayers Ellis and Evie Shockley.
3 PM: Lifestyles of the Rich and Richer. Chris Lehmann (Rich People Things) and David Graeber (Debt: The First 5,000 Years) discuss the current state of our economy and where we’re headed.
4 PM: Where are we? A bunch of critics talk about where we are any why we’re anxious. Or go have a drink somewhere.
5 PM: And because life is not fair, you’ll be forced to chose between three awesome-sounding events all happening at the same time in the same building.
-Amelia Gray & others reading for Short and Sweet (and Sour)
-A panel titled The Sacred and the Profane: A Modern Pilgrim’s Progress. Featuring Darcey Steinke and others.
-Unholy Paths to Redemption: Jennifer Egan, James Hannaham and John Burnham Schwartz look at the alternative routes their characters take to lose themselves—jeopardizing work, family, and love—to find themselves again.
(Or, if you walk outside this building, David Shrigley will be drawing on audience members)
Locations & full details after the jump…
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Magic The Gathering as Literature, part 3: The Vocabulary
Players react as Josh Utter-Leyton defeats Sam Black in the semifinals.
It’s day three of Pro Tour Philadelphia, and the final (“Top 8”) competition is underway. This part of the tournament is webcast (you can watch it live here), and is also being transcribed. (Since this is such high level play, players will want to read descriptions of what, precisely, happened on each turn; this is what Bill Stark was doing in the photo at the top of Part 2.)
These match transcriptions often read like a foreign language to non-players. For example, here’s an excerpt from a write-up of a match played yesterday between Jeremy Neeman and Luis Scott-Vargas:
Magic The Gathering as Literature, part 2: The Articles
Bill Stark (seated far right) documents a feature match between David Williams (seated left) and Brian Kibler (seated right).
Greetings once again from Pro Tour Philadelphia! The second day of the tournament is well underway. As you’ll recall from Part 1, I’m curious to what extent this event—and all Magic culture—is a literary phenomenon. The most obvious place to start seems to be the wealth of Magic articles produced every day by the game’s players, designers and developers, judges, and casual bystanders, some of which I think will interest the upstanding gormandizers at HTMLGIANT. Let’s take a closer look, shall we?
Magic The Gathering as Literature, part 1 (introduction)
Jon Finkel (seated left) plays Patrick Chapin (seated right) in a feature match at Pro Tour Philadelphia 2011.
Hello! I’m new here.
I am in Philadelphia, attending a professional Magic: The Gathering tournament (Pro Tour Philadelphia 2011). The event runs through Sunday, and throughout the weekend, I’ll be posting updates “from the floor,” so to speak. I’m currently sitting in the pressroom (I have a press pass!) alongside a few other reporters; they’re busy Tweeting and posting about the current tournament standings, what the format looks like, which cards and decks are proving the best. It’s high stakes stuff—one of four invitational tournaments held annually around the world (the last two were in Paris and Nagoya; the next will be in December in San Francisco), with a top prize of $40,000.
All of which, I think, should interest even those who know nothing about the game. Here’s why:
Stephanie Barber works at a museum
Photo by Cara Ober
Poet and artist Stephanie Barber has installed herself in the Baltimore Museum of Art. She’s been there since June 25, and she’ll be there until August 7. And she brought along her studio.
This isn’t an endurance piece, like what Marina Abramović did so beautifully at MoMA. Stephanie, who is doing the performance/installation/video work in conjunction with the Sondheim Prize, is making videos as she normally would, but at a faster clip. She’s producing one a day. Her setup in the gallery is a sight to behold for the way it deconstructs the museum. When is the last time you’ve seen pictures from a magazine haphazardly tacked to a museum’s wall? Or the last time you watched a video with a soundtrack performed by museum patrons as they pass through? READ MORE >
