Beatrice.com

The popular reading series is back for a new fall season, launching with a celebration of three exciting debut novelists. Come hear the readings, and stay for the wine and conversation with these talented new writers.

Katie Kitamura has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times and The Guardian. He...r first novel The Longshot chronicles the three days leading up to the fight of a boxer’s life.

Rachel DeWoskin is the author of a memoir, Foreign Babes in Beijing and a novel, Repeat After Me, about a young American ESL teacher, a troubled Chinese radical, and their unexpected New York romance.

Nancy Mauro is a writer and has worked as a creative director at a Manhattan advertising agency. She has lived and worked in Toronto and in Vancouver where she was a fellow and graduate of the University of British Columbia's MFA program in creative writing. Nancy is the recipient of several Ontario Art Council grants as well as Canadian Council grants for emerging writers. Her work has been nominated for the prestigious McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, received gold at the Western Magazine Awards, and placed in the international Toronto Star Fiction Contest. Her first book is New World Monkeys.Read More

Last year, the Modern Library published Julie Rose's unabridged translation of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. The book has just come out in paperback, and as it happens Julie is making her first trip to the United States and New York City, and I thought it would be fun to have a small informal reception for her.

In fact,... it's less a reception than a few hours when we'll all be hanging out at the same bar, and because I've been called out of town I'll no longer be able to attend, but Judy Sternlight and Noreen Tomassi have graciously offered to take my place in introducing you to Julie. So drop by on your way home from work or out to dinner, and I hope you have a wonderful time!Read More

I was sorting through my bookcases recently and I realized why THE SONG IS YOU, the title of Arthur Phillips's new novel, seemed so familiar -- another one of my favorite authors, Megan Abbott, had used the same title for her second novel, published in 2007. Now, the two stories are wildly different -- Megan's is based... on a real-life missing persons case in 1940s Los Angeles, while Arthur's is set in contemporary Brooklyn -- but I was struck enough by the coincidence of the titles to email them and ask if they would be interested in doing a reading together.

We agreed that it would be a great idea to do the reading as a benefit for a music-education program, and, as it happened, Megan volunteers with Union Settlement, an organization offering a variety of community services in East Harlem including music education for young children.

(UPDATE: There's a piano on the premises, so Rob Holub is going to come by to perform the Kern/Hammerstein tune, "The Song Is You," and [fingers crossed] we've got a special guest star to tell us a bit about the song's history.)

Admission is $10, with all proceeds going directly to Union Settlement. We will also have a limited supply of copies of both Megan and Arthur's THE SONG IS YOU for the first two dozen guests willing to give an additional $10 (for a total donation of $20).Read More

Next Wednesday, June 10, I’m going back to the Slipper Room with four writers—Judy Blundell, Matthew Aaron Goodman, Theresa Rebeck, and Sung J. Woo—and five musicians—Franz Nicolay, Susan Hwang, Dibson Hoffweiler, Tom Curtin, and Phoebe Kreutz—and we’re going to put on another no cover/cash bar extravaganza, with books... for sale from Mobile Libris.

The theme of the evening is “literary novels with adolescent protagonists,” and while the authors read from their own work, the Bushwick Book Club will be paying tribute to other classics of the genre; think The Catcher in the Rye or The Member of the Wedding. (Or maybe not: I don’t actually know what books they’ve picked!) The Slipper Room is a great venue for this sort of event, and I hope you’ll come check us out!

National Book Award winner Judy Blundell (What I Saw and How I Lied) has written books for middle grade, young adult, and adult readers under several pseudonyms. Under the pen name Jude Watson, she is the author of several New York Times bestselling and award winning series and media tie-in novels. Her novel, Premonitions, was an ALA Reluctant Readers Best Picks and was chosen by the New York Public Library as a 2004 Best Books for the Teen Age.

Matthew Aaron Goodman (Hold Love Strong) earned a BA from Brandeis University and an MFA from Emerson College. Working hand and hand with formerly incarcerated men and women, he helped to create The Leadership Alliance, a community empowerment project with The Doe Fund that unites recently freed people and volunteer partners. Matthew now lives with Nadia, his wife, in Brooklyn, New York. Currently, he leads a literacy program for exalt, a nonprofit organization that assists youth on the spectrum of criminal justice involvement.

Theresa Rebeck is a multi-dimensional talent whose written works include all mediums from television, to film, theater and books. As a Pulitzer Prize nominated author for co-writing the play Omnium Gatherum, she continues to shine as a widely produced and respected literary talent in the United States and abroad—her most recent play, Our House, just opened at Playwrites Horizons. Her debut novel, Three Girls and Their Brother, was received rave reviews from everyone from People to Entertainment Weekly and received a 2009 Alex Award as one of the year’s “10 best books that appeal to teen audiences.” Booklist also named it as one of the top ten first novels of the year.

Sung J. Woo’s short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, and KoreAm Journal. His debut novel, Everything Asian, has received praises from Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and School Library Journal. A graduate of Cornell University with an MFA from New York University, he lives in Washington, New Jersey.Read More

Come meet Sarah Rainone (Love Will Tear Us Apart) and Rakesh Satyal (Blue Boy) as they read from their debut novels--from which members of the Bushwick Book Club have taken inspiration to write original songs, which they'll be performing between the readings.

Cash bar opens at 6 p.m., with the entertainment starting at... 7 p.m.

(This is the final event of the spring cycle for Beatrice.com's reading series with the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction--help us close out the season in style!)Read More

Debut novelists Greg Ames (Buffalo Lockjaw) and Emily St. John Mandel (Last Night in Montreal) are the stars at the next-to-last reading of the Beatrice at the Merc reading series' spring 2009 season.

Greg Ames's stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, anthologies and websites, including The Best American N...onrequired Reading 2007, Open City, McSweeney's, and The Sun. A frequent reader at the KGB Bar in Manhattan, Ames also received honorable mention in the 2003 Pushcart Prize Awards and in the 2004 Best American Nonrequired Reading. He lives in Brooklyn and has taught fiction at Brooklyn College and at Binghamton University.

Emily St. John Mandel was born on the coast of British Columbia, Canada, in 1979. She studied dance at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre and lived briefly in Montreal before relocating to New York. She lives in Brooklyn.Read More