BOOK: The Year Before The Flood (tonight @ B&N)

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Musician, musicologist and longtime New York resident, Sublette revisits his Southern roots and recounts a 2004–2005 pre-Katrina research sojourn in New Orleans in this blunt, eloquently humane and musically astute memoir—a worthy companion to his acclaimed The World That Made New Orleans, a music-laden cultural history of the city to 1819. Sublette delves into some quintessential dynamics of modern American popular culture—including racism and poverty as well as restive imagination and invention—through the prism of his childhood in virulently segregated, early rock 'n' rolling Natchitoches, La., and the fraught but idiosyncratic culture he finds in pre-flood New Orleans. If discussions of Elvis, early rock 'n' roll and hip-hop millionaires straight out of New Orleans's projects inevitably rehearse familiar narratives, Sublette carefully marks them out as part of a larger personal and social landscape. Sublette's sensitivity to the precariousness of a system that collapsed completely after he returned to New York is more than mere hindsight; his worldview dovetails movingly with his turbulent and alluring subject and its dogged rebirth.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

See Sublette live tonight Wednesday September 02, 2009 7:00 PM at Barnes & Noble -

2289 Broadway (@ 82nd St), New York, NY 10024, 212-362-8835

BOOK: AD: New Orleans After The Deluge

TONIGHT: A book party for "the book Dave Eggers hails as 'one of the best-ever examples of comics reportage, and one of the clearest portraits of post-Katrina New Orleans yet published,' and Cornel West calls 'intimate and yet seismic in its scope.'" (source)

7PM @ Idlewild Books, co-sponsored by SMITH and Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Featuring live music by Mary McBride, refreshments, and an art auction to benefit Common Ground Relief. 12 West 19th St., New York City, 7pm

BOOK: Reasons For And Advantages of Breathing

Nashvillian (via Virginia, via Boston) Lydia Peelle reads tomorrow (7/29) afternoon (12:30PM - 1:45PM) at Bryant Park Reading Room.

"Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing conveys an almost Faulknerian ache for the pre-modern South, for a landscape and a way of life lost to the ravages of money and technology.....'Mule Killers' evokes the end of an era and of a grandfather's dreams when he decides to replace animal power on his farm with tractors. Two restless young girls in 'Sweethearts of the Rodeo' live out their last summer of innocence, riding ponies recklessly and spying on their boss and the wealthy women who visit him. In 'Phantom Pain,' the Tennessee woods are a sliver of what they once were, men now hunt with GPS and cell phones, and the rumor of a dangerous panther on the loose stirs up a small town." (source)

BONUS: The Bryant Park Reading Room has a really cool history: "The original Reading Room began in August of 1935 as a public response to the Depression Era job losses in New York. Many people did not have anywhere to go during the day, and no prospects for jobs. The New York Public Library opened the “Open Air Library” to give these out-of-work businessmen and intellectuals a place to go where they did not need money, a valid address, a library card, or any identification to enjoy the reading materials."

You Are Invited to Concord , Virginia

Concord, Virginia - Performance and Book Release Party tonight (7/7) @ 7PM at Dixon Place (161 Chrystie Street, NYC).

Having begun the saga of Concord, Virginia: A Southern Town in Eleven Stories at HOT! 2006, Peter Neofotis celebrates St. Martin Press’s release of his award-winning book - based on his Dixon Place show series - by performing The Botanist, a gay trial tale; and The Builders, a Prometheus Bound story. (source)

St. Martin's says:“In the places set between folds in the Earth, voices echo against mountains…”

So begins the story of Concord, Virginia, one of those places set between folds in the Earth. It’s a place like almost any other Southern town, filled with self-righteous preachers, descendants of slaves, upstanding town leaders, and the ladies of the local bridge club. But Concord has something else: a dark heart. A church has been abandoned. Vultures have been roosting in the trees at George MacJenkins’s house. Poisonous snakes follow Rachel Stetson into the river for a swim. And the ghost of Thomas Jefferson has recently spoken through a man chained to fate. Deftly spinning a web of stories from the voices of the town, Peter Neofotis creates a captivating portrait---comic, dramatic, bombastic, and tragic---of a place trapped in time and possessed by the valley landscape that surrounds it. In the tradition of great Southern gothic writing, Peter Neofotis brings to life the town of Concord, Virginia, allowing even the ancient voices there to swirl through the glazed brick streets like the Fork River. It’s a pulse-raising debut by a writer who’s created a place the reader will never forget.

SCENE: Alabama Poet Jeanie Thompson in NYC 6/10 & 13

Highly esteemed Alabama poet Jeanie Thompson will be in NYC to share work from her new book The Seasons Bear Us this week.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10 @ 7:30Pm at
The Southern Writers Reading Series
at the Happy Ending Lounge in lower Manhattan

SATURDAY, JUNE 13 @ 7PM at
KGB Bar's "Trumpet Fiction" night
in the East Village

Jeanie Thompson, MFA (poetry). Jeanie Thompson has published four collections of poetry, The Seasons Bear Us (River City Publishing, 2009), White for Harvest: New and Selected Poems (River City Publishing, 2001), Witness (Black Belt Press, 1995), and How to Enter the River (Holy Cow! Press, 1985), three chapbooks and has co-edited The Remembered Gate: Memoirs by Alabama Writers, (University of Alabama Press, 2002) with Jay Lamar. Witness won a Benjamin Franklin Award from the Publishers Marketing Association in 1996. Her poems, interviews with writers, and critical articles have appeared in Antaeus, Crazyhorse, Ironwood, North American Review, New England Review, and Southern Review. Jeanie holds the MFA from the University of Alabama, where she was founding editor of the literary journal Black Warrior Review. She has taught at the University of New Orleans and the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, as well as in the poetry-in-the schools program in New Orleans and in Alabama. Jeanie has received Individual Artist fellowships from the Louisiana State Arts Council and the Alabama State Council on the Arts and was a Walter Dakin Fellow at the Sewanee Writers Conference 2000. Jeanie is founding director of the award-winning Alabama Writers' Forum, a statewide literary arts organization in Montgomery.

READING: Warren St. John @ McNally Jackson tonight

In Outcasts United New York Times reporter (and Alabama native) Warren St. John tells the story of a group of refugee boys from all over the world (Sudan, Congo, Kosovo, Liberia, Iraq, Afghanistan….) who all play on the same soccer team, The Fugees, in Clarkston, Georgia. The story of the boys, their Jordanian coach, and the reluctant refugee haven of Clarkston itself form an unforgettable picture of community and identity.

St. John reads tonight at 7PM @ McNally Jackson Booksellers in Soho.

SCENE: Alabama Book Festival - Montgomery AL 4/18

On Saturday, April 18, more than fifty fiction and nonfiction writers, poets, artists, illustrators, playwrights, and children's writers will converge on the grounds of Old Alabama Town for the fourth annual Alabama Book Festival (ABF). The state-wide literary event will kick off readings and activities at 10 a.m. and go until 5 p.m. The event is free and open to all.

This year's festival will include readings and signings by Harper Lee Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg, Alabama's beloved Kathryn Tucker Windham, acclaimed photographer Beth Maynor Young, and chef Frank Stitt. A dedicated children's area will feature Magic Tree House author Mary Pope Osborne, among others.

Again this year, the Alabama Writers' Forum will sponsor the Poetry South/West Tent on the grounds of its Haigler House headquarters.

A special concluding event from 4 to 5 p.m. will feature the national debut of Warren St. John's new book, Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, An American Town.

April is National Poetry Month. Celebrate at events such as the Alabama Book Festival, the Montevallo Literary Festival, the Limestone Dust Poetry Festival, and the Alabama Writers Symposium.

SCENE/WORDS: Southern Writers Reading Series @ Happy Ending tonight (2/11) at 8PM

Photo Credit: Bruce Newman/NY Times

Virginia native Ekoko Omadeke runs the monthly Southern Writers Reading Series at Happy Ending in NYC. I ask the one question that matters most:

WHY a Southern Writers series in NYC?
I decided to a Southern Writer's Reading Series for several reasons. The main reason I decided to do the SWRS is because I feel the south is often misunderstood and misrepresented to those who are not from the region. To many people, the south is simply the McCain voting bible belt, states of the former Confederacy and the root of racism in America. However, the south is just as diverse, culturally, ethnically, politically, and artistically as New York. A reading series is a great way to demonstrate excellent people, writers and artists can come from the south.

Another reason I decided to the series is in response to the numerous barbecue and jazz joints throughout the city. I've been living in NY since August and learned early on, people in NY seem enchanted with the South However, many of the owners of "southern" restaurants and establishments are not from the south. One restaurant in particular served catfish with a mustard aioli. I feel as someone born and raised in Virginia, I am in a better position to accurately represent the region socially, culturally, and artistically.

Omadeke works with graduate students in the area to cull the best of the best for the monthly series.

February 11th's readers are:

Dave Grumblatt, a Kentucky native and fiction MFA candidate at NYU and

Ebony Golden, a Texas native and creative director of Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative.

The two featured Southern authors are followed by an open mike (sign up begins at 7:30PM). “Bring poetry or fiction to share and a mind ready to experience the mythic South without ever leaving Manhattan.”

After Feb 11, upcoming dates include March 11, April 8, June 10 and July 8.

Happy Ending Lounge @ 8PM - FREE

302 Broome Street (Forsyth/Eldridge)

Subway: B/D to Grand Street, or J/M/Z to Bowery

BOOK/SCENE: Yankee Go Home!

In the spirit of the harrowing Appalshop film, Stranger With a Camera, Edra Ziesk's new novel, Trespasser, "captures the struggle of one small community in Kentucky when it is visited by a photographer from New York."

Ziesk is joined by North Carolina author Kate Blackwell at McNally Jackson Booksellers in Soho tonight (1/27) @ 7PM. The reading is part of McNally Jackson's Indie Press Series which honors the work of small independent publishers. Ziesk and Blackwell are published by Southern Methodist University Press. Founded in 1937 in Dallas, it's the oldest UP in TX.

BOOK/SCENE: Jimmy Carter reads in NYC tonight

See Georgia native Jimmy Carter live and direct tonight (1/26) as he reads from his new book, We Can Have Peace In The Holy Land, at Barnes & Noble (5th Ave & 46th St) at 7:30PM.

Amazon says: In this urgent, balanced, and passionate book, Nobel Peace Laureate and former President Jimmy Carter argues that the present moment is a unique time for achieving peace in the Middle East -- and he offers a bold and comprehensive plan to do just that.

President Carter has been a student of the biblical Holy Land all his life. For the last three decades, as president of the United States and as founder of The Carter Center, he has studied the complex and interrelated issues of the region's conflicts and has been actively involved in reconciling them. He knows the leaders of all factions in the region who will need to play key roles, and he sees encouraging signs among them.

Carter describes the history of previous peace efforts and why they fell short. He argues persuasively that the road to a peace agreement is now open and that it has broad international and regional support. Most of all, since there will be no progress without courageous and sustained U.S. leadership, he says the time for progress is now. President Barack Obama is committed to a personal effort to exert that leadership, starting early in his administration.
This is President Carter's call for action, and he lays out a practical and doable path to peace.

About the Author: Jimmy Carter was born in Plains, Georgia, and served as thirty-ninth President of the United States. He and his wife, Rosalynn, founded The Carter Center, a nonprofit organization that prevents and resolves conflicts, enhances freedom and democracy, and improves health around the world. He is the author of numerous books, including Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, An Hour Before Daylight and Our Endangered Values. He received a "Best Spoken Word" Grammy Award for his recording of Our Endangered Values. All of President Carter's proceeds from this series will go to the Maranatha Baptist Church of Plains, Georgia.