Tell-All Boston with Calvin Hennick at Porter Square Books

Tell-All Six, with special guest Calvin Hennick, author of the forthcoming memoir “Once More to the Rodeo,” at our new event location, Porter Square Books in Cambridge.

Tell-All Boston is Real Stories Read Live. We are Boston’s only live-on-stage literary reading series dedicated to the art and craft of memoir. Award-winning writers, best-selling authors, and emerging stars share first-person stories that make meaning from lived experience. Our goal is to foster a community of honesty and discovery, through the power of memoir.

Calvin will be signing copies of his memoir following the program. Additional featured readers to be announced on our website, www.tellallboston.com.

Tell-All Boston is brought to you by GrubStreet and curated by alumni of GrubStreet’s Memoir Incubator and Essay Incubator.

November U35 Reading by Mass Poetry at Trident Booksellers & Cafe

U35 is a bi-monthly reading series for poets under 35, held once each January, March, May, July, September, and November. The series seeks to promote and bolster young Massachusetts poets while giving them a venue to share their work and connect with other poets. If you are a poet under the age of 35, sign up to read via Mass Poetry’s website! This event is free and open to the public.

http://www.masspoetry.org/u35

Our November readers are Sally Burnette, Adrie Rose, and Carolyn Oliver.

Sally Burnette is the author of the chapbooks laughing plastic (Broken Sleep Books) and Special Ultimate: Baby’s Story: a Documentary (Ghost City Press). They are originally from North Carolina but currently live in Boston, where they teach in the First-Year Writing Program at Emerson College and read flash fiction for Split Lip Magazine. Recent work has been published/is forthcoming in Occulum, pidgeonholes, Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere.

Adrie Rose writes, works with herbs, and organizes for Extinction Rebellion in occupied Nipmuck and Pocumtuc territory. Her work has previously appeared in Rebelle Society, Plum, Peregrine, Albatross, The Essential Herbal, Poetry Breakfast, and Ibbetson Street Review. Her poem “In the Liminal” was awarded second place in the Robert P. Colleen Poetry Competition. She studied creative writing at Bennington College and the SC Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities, and is currently a student at Smith College.

Carolyn Oliver (carolynoliver.net) lives in Worcester with her family. Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in FIELD, Indiana Review, Cincinnati Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Sixth Finch, Southern Indiana Review, and Sugar House Review. She is the winner of the Writer’s Block Prize in Poetry and the Frank O’Hara Prize from the Worcester Review.

Transnational Series Presents: Idra Novey in conversation at Brookline Booksmith Used Book Cellar

Idra Novey in conversation with Laura van den Berg

Those Who Knew

Award-winning novelist, poet, and translator Idra Novey’s highly acclaimed Those Who Knew explores the consequences of abuse and the public exposure of abuse in the deep and truthful way only fiction can. “Gripping and astute,” Lauren Collins-Hughes wrote in her rave review for The Boston Globe, “a destabilizing, almost hallucinatory unreality wisps through Those Who Knew…but this is a hopeful novel, too.”

Those Who Knew conjures a modern-day fable that shows how profoundly public politics and private violence can contradict each other. This groundbreaking novel explores the forces—both personal and structural—that conspire in such confounding ways to let abuses of power flourish in our homes, businesses, and governments. It is a novel about our human capability for hypocrisy and monstrous acts, but also for resilience. A New York Times Editors’ Choice, Indie Next Pick and Best Book of the Year with over dozen media outlets, Pulitzer finalist Laila Lalami described it for NPR’s Best Books of 2018 as “a completely riveting…timeless novel about sex and power.”

Idra Novey is the author of the novels Those Who Knew and Ways to Disappear. She received the 2017 Sami Rohr Prize, the 2016 Brooklyn Public Library Prize and was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction. Her work has been translated into twelve languages and she is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writers Magazine, and the PEN Translation Fund. She has translated the work of several prominent Brazilian writers, most recently Clarice Lispector’s novel The Passion According to G.H. She teaches fiction at Princeton University.

Laura van den Berg’s most recent novel, The Third Hotel, was named a best book of 2018 by over a dozen publications and was a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award. She is also the author of one previous novel, Find Me, and two story collections. Her honors include the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Bard Fiction Prize, and an O. Henry Award. Laura lives in Cambridge, MA, with her husband and dog, and is a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard. Her next story collection, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, is forthcoming from FSG in 2020.

Transnational Series presents: John Freeman in conversation at Brookline Booksmith Used Book Cellar

John Freeman in conversation with Krysten Hill

Dictionary of the Undoing

This event is co-sponsored by GrubStreet, one of the nation’s leading non-profit creative writing centers.

For John Freeman—literary critic, essayist, editor, poet, “one of the preeminent book people of our time” (Dave Eggers)—it is the rare moment when words are not enough. But in the wake of the election of 2016, words felt useless, even indulgent. Action was the only reasonable response. He took to the streets in protest, and the sense of community and collective conviction felt right. But the assaults continued—on citizens’ rights and long-held compacts, on the core principles of our culture and civilization, and on our language itself. Words seemed to be losing the meanings they once had and Freeman was compelled to return to their defense. The result is his Dictionary of the Undoing.

From A to Z, “Agitate” to “Zygote,” Freeman assembled the words that felt most essential, most potent, and began to build a case for their renewed power and authority, each word building on the last. The message that emerged was not to retreat behind books, but to emphatically engage in the public sphere, to redefine what it means to be a literary citizen.

With an afterword by Valeria Luiselli, Dictionary of the Undoing is a necessary, resounding cri de coeur in defense of language, meaning, and our ability to imagine, describe, and build a better world.

John Freeman is the editor of Freeman’s, a literary annual of new writing. His books include How to Read a Novelist and The Tyranny of E-mail, as well as Tales of Two Americas, an anthology of new writing about inequality in the U.S. today. Maps, his debut collection of poems, was published in 2017. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, andThe New York Times. The former editor of Granta and one-time president of the National Book Critics Circle, he is currently Artist-in-Residence at New York University.

Krysten Hill received her MFA in poetry from UMass Boston where she currently teaches. Her work can be found in apt, B O D Y, Boiler Magazine, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Word Riot, Muzzle, PANK, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Winter Tangerine Review and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2016 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award. Her chapbook, How Her Spirit Got Out, received the 2017 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize.

Writers Helping Writers Reading & Raffle at Arts at the Armory

The Writers Helping Writers READING & RAFFLE is a free event to support the WHW need-based scholarship fund. Food and drink will be available. Donations are welcome. Supported by writers & friends of the arts community, this scholarship fund helps writers make their dream of pursuing a graduate degree at the Solstice Low-Residency Creative Writing MFA Program of Pine Manor College a reality!

Raffle prizes include: Signed Books, Writing Critiques, and Gift Cards

FEATURING READINGS BY:

Solstice Student: Rebecca Connors

Solstice Alum: Eileen Cleary

Solstice Alum: Jonathan Todd

Solstice Advisory Board Member: Lee Hope

A Night in with Joyful Clemantine Wamariya

Join Read4Refugees (in collaboration with the Girls’ Night In Boston Community) for a night in to raise money for refugees.

Wear your best pajamas, bring a book to swap, and get ready to cozy up with other compassionate booklovers. The event will run from 7 – 9pm and feature a virtual reading and Q&A from the incredible author and human rights activist, Clemantine Wamariya.

Joyful Clemantine Wamariya is an internationally renowned speaker, a New York Times bestselling author, and an accomplished human rights advocate. Her memoir The Girl Who Smiled Beads debuted with Crown Publishing in April 2018 and is published in 7 languages and dozens of countries. Clemantine received her BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University in 2014 and built her career as “a compelling storyteller and fierce advocate” (Amy Poehler). Clemantine has appeared four times as a guest on The Oprah Show and was appointed by President Obama in 2016 to serve on the board of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

All proceeds from this event will support RefugePoint, an award-winning organization that brings critical resources to people on the front lines of the refugee crisis. The Read4Refugees campaign supports highly vulnerable refugees who are often overlooked by traditional forms of humanitarian aid; refugees who have spent almost 20 years in a country of asylum, the chronically ill, LGBTQI individuals, survivors of violence and torture, and women and children.

This event is ticketed, while the suggested donation is $30 we encourage you to pay what you can!

Tell-All Boston, Fifth Edition at Middlesex Lounge

The Fifth Edition of Tell-All Boston takes place Nov. 7 at the Middlesex Lounge in Cambridge. Special guest William Dameron, author of “The Lie: A Memoir of Two Marriages, Catfishing & Coming Out.” Doors open 7pm; show begins 7:30pm. Featured readers to be announced. Tell-All is a literary performance series celebrating creative nonfiction and personal essay brought to you by GrubStreet and the alumni of the Memoir and Essay Incubators. For more information visit www.tellallboston.com.

Cervena Barva Press Reading Series

Saturday, May 18th, 2:00PM

Readers: James B. Nicola, Miriam O’Neil, and Brad Rose

Arts at the Armory/Basement B8

191 Highland Avenue, Somerville, MA

Admission $5.00/Refreshment Served

Carmen Maria Machado

An Evening with Carmen Maria Machado at Suffolk University. 120 Tremont Street, 5th Floor, Blue Sky Lounge, This event is free and open to the public.

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, winner of the Bard Fiction Prize and finalist for the National Book Award. The Chicago Tribune says Her Body and Other Parties is, “Simultaneously hot and chilling, these stories leave the reader enthralled and shaken,” and The New York Times says of the collection, “It’s a wild thing, this book, covered in sequins and scales, blazing with the influence of fabulists from Angela Carter to Kelly Link and Helen Oyeyemi…” She is the Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, and lives in Philadelphia with her wife. Her memoir In the Dream House is forthcoming in 2019 from Graywolf Press.

How do male and female authors differ when writing crime stories?

Moderator, Christine Bagley, author of five short mystery stories, and a finalist for the Al Blanchard Award in Best Short Crime Fiction, will discuss the differences between male and female authors when writing crime stories. Guest authors will be Bruce Robert Coffin, a former detective sergeant, short story writer, and author of the novel, Beyond The Truth, Christine Eskilson, a finalist for both the Al Blanchard Award for Best Short Crime Fiction, and Women’s National Book Association, and Gabriel Valjan, short story writer, and author of the Roma series, and The Company Files: The Good Man. Differences to be discussed include violence, sex, swearing, POV, whether readers prefer female or male crime writers, and who publishes more often. Authors will read from their stories appearing in Level Best Book’s Best New England Crime Stories: Landfall and Snowbound. A Q&A and signing will wrap up the panel discussion.