Solstice Magazine Benefit & Night Riffs at The Rockwell

You are invited to our annual benefit! Join us for SOCIALIZING & BRIEF READINGS BY NIGHT RIFFS GUEST AUTHORS (introduced by Dzvinia Orlowsky):

  • Oliver de la Paz, 
  • Jabari Asim,
  • Richard Hoffman, and
  • Ewa Chrusciel

There will be LIVE MUSIC by West Street Jazz, a Boston-based jazz trio/quartet focusing on maintaining the jazz tradition and performing music from the greats, such as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Kenny Brunnell, and Grant Green.

Don’t miss out on the GOURMET GRATIS FOOD, CASH BAR, BOOK TABLE & AUTHOR SIGNINGS, AND OUR INFAMOUS SILENT AUCTION.

JOIN US FOR A CHANCE TO ACTIVELY SUPPORT DIVERSITY!  
Donations optional except for $10 cover at door.

Mark Guerin Debut Novel Book Launch- YOU CAN SEE MORE FROM UP HERE at Porter Square Books

“In this novel, author Guerin beautifully captures the powerful contradictions of the relationship between father and son, which combines elements of friendship and antagonism. The author only gradually discloses Walker’s epiphanies about his dad, which not only transform the protagonist’s personal opinion of him, but also the future arc of his own life. The prose is confident and confessional throughout, and Guerin draws the reader into the compelling story by having Walker unflinchingly reveal his sense of disappointment in himself. Like the journalist he is, Walker clamors for the truth, whether it’s consoling or not. A poignantly told story of ruminative remembrance.”– Kirkus Reviews

In 2004, when middle-aged Walker Maguire is called to the deathbed of his estranged father, his thoughts return to 1974. He’d worked that summer at the auto factory where his dad, an unhappily retired Air Force colonel, was employed as plant physician. Witness to a bloody fight falsely blamed on a Mexican immigrant, Walker kept quiet, fearing his white co-workers and tyrannical father. His secret snowballs into lies, betrayals and eventually the disappearance of the Mexican’s family, leading to a life-long rift between father and son that can only be mended by bringing 1974 back to life in 2004 to reveals its long-hidden truths.

Mark Guerin is a 2014 graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program in Boston. He also has an MFA from Brandeis University and is a winner of an Illinois Arts Council Grant, the Mimi Steinberg Award for Playwriting and Sigma Tau Delta’s Eleanor B. North Poetry Award. A contributor to the novelist’s blog, Dead Darlings, he is also a playwright, copywriter and journalist. He currently resides in Harpswell, Maine, with his wife, Carol, and two Brittany Spaniels. YOU CAN SEE MORE FROM UP HERE will be his first published novel.

Cervena Barva Press Reading Series

Cervena Barva Press Reading Series/Fiction & Poetry Night

Friday, May 24th, 7:00PM

Readers: David Blair, Sally Connolly, Mark Scroggins, and Julia Story

Arts at the Armory/Basement B8

191 Highland Avenue, Somerville, MA

Admission $5.00/Refreshment Served

Speculative Boston Reading Series

Speculative Boston is a free quarterly reading series for science fiction, fantasy, and horror of all kinds. Join us at Trident Books & Cafe in Boston, when our guests will be Julian K. Jarboe, Christopher Golden, and Theodora Goss. The night includes short readings, a lively discussion and Q&A, and plenty of time for signing books and hanging out.

Julian K. Jarboe lives in Salem, Massachusetts. They are an Associate Editor at PodCastle magazine, a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop, and most recently a fellow at the Writers’ Room of Boston, where they also sit on the board. Their writing can be found in The Atlantic, Strange Horizons, The Fairy Tale Review, and anthologized in the LAMBDA award-winning Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction series, among others. They also produce and co-host Mothers & Others, “the podcast about maternal figures and mommy issues.”

Christopher Golden is the New York Times #1 bestselling, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Ararat, Snowblind, Dead Ringers, Of Saints and Shadows, and many other novels. With Mike Mignola, he is the co-creator of two fan favorite comic book series, Baltimore and Joe Golem: Occult Detective. As an editor, his anthologies include Hark! The Herald Angels Scream, Seize the Night, and The New Dead, among others. He has also written screenplays, video games, radio plays, an online animated series, and much more. He lives in Massachusetts.

Theodora Goss was born in Hungary and spent her childhood in various European countries before her family moved to the United States. Although she grew up on the classics of English literature, her writing has been influenced by an Eastern European literary tradition in which the boundaries between realism and the fantastic are often ambiguous. Her publications include the collections In the Forest of Forgetting and Songs for Ophelia; The Thorn and the Blossom, a novella in a two-sided accordion format; debut novel The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, and its sequel, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, Locus, Seiun, and Mythopoeic Awards, and on the Tiptree Award Honor List. She has won the World Fantasy and Locus awards.

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.

 

Belle Brett reads from GINA IN THE FLOATING WORLD at Blemont Books

Many novelists begin with their own life experiences or familiar settings, but in the course of revising, greatly transform their stories. Belle Brett will read from, discuss, take questions about, and discuss the evolution of her novel, Gina in the Floating World (She Writes Press), which was inspired by her own experiences as a bar hostess in Tokyo in the 1970s.

Fantastic Fiction Reading with Speculative Boston

Speculative Boston is a free quarterly reading series for science fiction, fantasy, and horror of all kinds. Join us at Trident Books & Cafe in Boston, when our guests will be the YA novelist Lyra Selene, and fantasy writers N.S. Dolkart and Elaine Isaak (writing as E.C. Ambrose). The night includes short readings, a lively discussion and Q&A, and plenty of time for signing books and hanging out.

Lyra Selene was born under a full moon and has never quite managed to wipe the moonlight out of her eyes. When she isn’t dreaming up fantastical cities and brooding landscapes, Lyra enjoys hiking, rainstorms, autumn, and pretending she’s any good at painting. She lives in New England with her husband, in an antique farmhouse that’s probably not haunted. Amber & Dusk is her debut novel.

N.S. Dolkart is the author of the Godserfs trilogy of theological epic fantasy novels, beginning with 2016’s Silent Hall and concluding with this past October’s A Breach In The Heavens. In non-writing life, he has taught dementia care and Israeli folk dancing (but not at the same time), sung as Darth Vader in an opera, and sired two children who will one day enslave all the nations of the earth as foretold by prophecy. His website is nsdolkart.wordpress.com, and you can follow him on Twitter @N_S_Dolkart.

Elaine Isaak is the author of The Singer’s Crown and its sequels. As E. C. Ambrose, she wrote The Dark Apostle historical fantasy series about medieval surgery, which concluded in 2018 with book 5, Elisha Daemon, and as E. Chris Ambrose, the Bone Guard international thrillers. Elaine has written how-to articles for the Writer Magazine, and non-fiction at Clarkesworld, and taught at the Odyssey Speculative Fiction Workshop. An art school drop-out, Elaine continues to create wearable art and sculpture. Elaine also works as part-time adventure guide. Under any name, you still do NOT want to be her hero.

Two Women on a Quest, with Belle Brett and Cheryl Suchors

Novelist Belle Brett (Gina in the Floating World) and memoirist Cheryl Suchors (48 Peaks, Hiking and Healing in the White Mountains) will read from their recently released books from She Writes Press, talk about common themes (e.g. risk-taking, women and their bodies), take questions from the audience, and sign books. Brett’s suspenseful novel, set in 1981 Japan, is about an ambitious young American. who, while serving as a bar hostess to support her daytime banking internship in Tokyo, slides into prostitution. Suchor’s inspiring memoir tells of her determined midlife goal to hike all 48 of the White Mountains’ 4000+ footers through injury, grief, and her own breast cancer.