PHILIP SMUCKER on “Riding with George” about his ancestor, George Washington

Porter Square Books hosts author PHILIP G. SMUCKER, a fifth-great grandnephew of George Washington, with his nonfiction book Riding with George.

SMUCKER uses his background as a war correspondent, sports reporter, and amateur equestrian to weave an insightful tale based upon his own travels in the footsteps of Washington as a surveyor, sportsman, and field commander. Riding with George is “boots-in-stirrups” storytelling that unspools Washington’s rise to fame in a never-before-told tale.  It shows how a young Virginian’s athleticism and Old World chivalry propelled him to become a model of right action and good manners for a fledgling nation.

This event is not ticketed.

 

Writer/Performer RANDY ROSS: God Bless Cambodia

Porter Square Books welcomes RANDY ROSS— a Boston-area writer, performer, and web consultant. His one-man show, “The Chronic Single’s Handbook,” has been featured at fringe theater festivals in the United States, Canada, and Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2007, he took a trip around the world and learned to say in three languages: “Speak English?” “Got Pepto-Bismol?” and “Where is the evacuation helicopter?” God Bless Cambodia is his first novel.

Randall Burns is forty-eight, out of a job, and tired of wasting his time pounding away on Match.com as if it were a game of Whac-A-Mole.  He is no traveler: He hates public toilets, loud noises, weird smells, and people who sweat. Eventually, the call of the thrush, his fears of dying alone, and a snarky e-mail from ex-girlfriend Ricki, compel him to take the trip.

This event is not ticketed.

 

Silver Linings Playbook MATTHEW QUICK at Porter Square Books

Porter Square Books welcomes MATTHEW QUICK as he discusses his newest novel The Reason You’re Alive.  The New York Times-bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook offers a timely novel featuring his most fascinating character yet: a Vietnam vet embarking on a quixotic crusade to track down his nemesis from the war.

This event is not ticketed.

The Reason You’re Alive is currently being sold at Porter Square Books.

If you cannot make it to the event but want your copy signed, order the book online and leave a comment in the checkout section if you want it signed and/or personalized.  This must be done 24 hours prior to the event.

Poet EZRA DAN FELDMAN presents Habitat of Stones

Porter Square Books welcomes poet EZRA DAN FELDMAN as he reads from his poetry collection Habitat of Stones.

FELDMAN’s poetry collection is tied together by a certain “arrogant man.”  This recurrent theme throughout the collection also bumps up against notions of the body: its finitude, its mortality and the struggles and regret of intimate relationships.

“Exposing patriarchal and capitalistic practices that often cripple society, Ezra Dan Feldman’s Habitat of Stones reveals the symptoms of living in a post-industrial and illusional, high-tech world: ‘He’s taken the world for a machine, a baby for a doll, a gun for a candy bar, which he offered to everyone…” –Mark Irwin

This event is not ticketed.

 

LGBTQ Novelists JONATHAN STRONG and KELLY FORD

Porter Square Books hosts novelists JONATHAN STRONG and GrubStreet’s KELLY FORD for a discussion of their work.

JONATHAN STRONG’s Quit the Race is “…the story of a loving long-term couple weighing the best interests of their relationship against the desire of each to live the life he wants…Strong uses this drama to explore the nature of love and compromise, the longing to connect, and the need for independent identity and control.” –Stephen McCauley

KELLY  FORD’s Cottonmouths is the story of Emily Skinner.  College was supposed to be an escape for her. But after failing out of school, she’s left with no choice but to return to her small hometown in the Ozarks, a place run on gossip and good Christian values.  She’s not alone. Emily’s former best friend— and childhood crush— Jody Monroe is back with a baby. Emily can’t resist the opportunity to reconnect, despite the uncomfortable way things ended between them and her mom’s disapproval of their friendship. When Emily stumbles upon a meth lab on Jody’s property, she realizes just how far they’ve both fallen.

This event is not ticketed.

Quit the Race and Cottonmouths are currently being sold at Porter Square Books.

If you cannot attend the event, you can still get a signed copy by purchasing the book online and mentioning in the comments section at checkout that you want it signed (or personalized).  This must be completed at least 24 hours prior to the event.

Novelist LINDSAY HATTON Reads “Monterey Bay”

Porter Square Books welcomes LINDSAY HATTON with her first novel, Monterey Bay.

In 1940, fifteen year-old Margot Fiske arrives on the shores of Monterey Bay with her eccentric entrepreneur father. Margot has been her father’s apprentice all over the world, until an accident in Monterey’s tide pools drives them apart and plunges her head-first into the mayhem of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row.

Alternating between past and present, Monterey Bay explores histories both imagined and actual to create an unforgettable portrait of an exceptional woman, a world-famous aquarium, and the beloved town her father and she both call home.

This event is not ticketed.

Monterey Bay is currently being sold at Porter Square Books.

If you cannot attend the event, you can still get a signed copy by purchasing the book online and mentioning in the comments section at checkout that you want it signed (or personalized).  This must be completed at least 24 hours prior to the event.

Actress and Memoirist MARIANNE LEONE Reads from her Latest, Ma Speaks Up

Porter Square Books welcomes local memoirist MARIANNE LEONE with her latest acclaimed work, Ma Speaks Up: And a First-Generation Daughter Talks Back.

Ma Speaks Up is a record of growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, with the wrong family, in the wrong religion. Though Marianne’s girlhood is flooded with shame, it’s equally packed with adventure, love, great cooking, and, above all, humor. The extremely premature birth of Marianne’s beloved son, Jesse, bonds mother and daughter in ways she couldn’t have imagined. The stories she tells will speak to anyone who has struggled with outsider status in any form and, of course, to mothers and their blemished, cherished girls.

This event is not ticketed.

 

Novelists JULIA GLASS and EDWARD MOORE

Porter Square Books welcomes authors JULIA GLASS and EDWARD KELSEY MOORE with their novels A House Among the Trees and The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues.  They will discuss how the past can catch up to the present, no matter how hard you try to leave it behind.

In GLASS’s fifth book since her acclaimed novel Three Junes won the National Book Award, she gives us the story of an unusual bond between a world-famous children’s book author Mort Lear and his assistant Tomasina “Tommy” Daulair—a richly plotted novel of friendship and love, artistic ambition, the perils of celebrity, and the power of an unexpected legacy after Lear’s untimely death.  In A House Among the Trees, Lear’s past reveals itself to Tommy, which shakes how she sees her deceased boss.

From MOORE, the author of the bestselling The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, brings an exuberant and poignant new novel of passions, family, and forgiveness.  When a late life love affair blooms between Mr. Forrest Payne, the owner of the Pink Slipper Gentleman’s Club, and Miss Beatrice Jordan, famous for stationing herself at the edge of the club’s parking lot and yelling warnings of eternal damnation at the departing patrons, their wedding summons a legend to town.  Mr. El Walker, the great guitar blues-man, comes home to give a command performance in Plainview, Indiana, a place he’d sworn for good reason he’d never set foot in again.

This event is not ticketed.

A House Among the Trees and The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues are currently being sold at Porter Square Books.

If you cannot attend the event, you can still get a signed copy by purchasing the book online and mentioning in the comments section at checkout that you want it signed (or personalized).  This must be completed at least 24 prior to the event.

Poets and Pints with Porter Square Books at Aeronaut Brewery

Porter Square Books invites you to Aeronaut brewery for a celebration of local poetry with readings from three local poets,  Julian Miller, published poet Laurie Rosenblatt, and Geraldine Zetzel.

The event will feature a social hour from 6 until 7PM in which you can grab a beer and converse with the poets, hosts, and other poetry fans. The formal reading will run from 7 until 8PM.

Kill the Ámpaya! The Best Latin American Baseball Fiction with DICK CLUSTER

Porter Square Books hosts DICK CLUSTER for a discussion of his collection of Latin American baseball fiction, Kill the Ámpaya!  This collection features work from authors Leonardo Padura, Sergio Ramirez, Alexis Rosa Gomez and many more from countries such as Cuba, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela.

A rich variety of baseball fiction exists south of the Florida Straits and the Rio Grande, but almost none available in English. This collection translates for the first time stories ranging from the highly literary to the vernacular. These inventive and entertaining stories reveal the place of baseball in Latin America.

This event is not ticketed.