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{ON TAP TO READ}

NYC | June 16, 2013

If the arrival of summer isn’t enough reason to celebrate, we’ll add one more and it’s something special: Sunday Salon is turning 11! Yup. So we’re throwing a big party in a House upon the Dirt at Still Points North AND guess who’s coming? John Wayne and Bridget Davis and some Viking Kings and You are One of Them! (Confused? Please keep reading.) In other words, we’re gonna toast to another exciting year of literary love and community with four extraordinary writers and a truly talented musical guest. Come and raise a glass with us, dear reader/ Salon supporter! At Jimmys no. 43. 7pm.

Matt Bell‘s first collection of stories, How They Were Found, was published in 2010,MattBell NYC | June 16, 2013 including the story “Dredge,” selected for Best American Mystery Stories 2010, and the story “His Last Great Gift,” shortlisted for Best American Short Stories 2010 and the Pushcart Prize anthology. In 2012, Bell published Cataclysm Baby, a novella. Bell’s epic, mythical debut novel, In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods, was published by Soho Press in Spring 2013. Bell’s fiction has been published in Conjunctions, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Gulf Coast, and many other literary magazines, and has been anthologized in 30 Under 30: An Anthology of Innovative Fiction by Younger Writers and Best American Fantasy 2. He has worked as the Senior Editor at Dzanc BScottGarson NYC | June 16, 2013ooks, and is the editor of The Collagist. He lives in Marquette, Michigan, with his wife Jessica, where he teaches creative writing at Northern Michigan University.

Scott Garson was born in Nebraska and grew up in Iowa. A graduate of Carleton College and George Mason University, he has received awards for his fiction from Playboy, the Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation and Dzanc Books. He lives in central Missouri with his wife and two children.

Elliott Holt’s short fiction has been awarded a ElliotHolt NYC | June 16, 2013Pushcart Prize, and she was the runner-up of the 2011 PEN Emerging Writers Award. A graduate of the MFA program at Brooklyn College , she has received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop, and Yaddo. Holt is a former copywriter who has worked at advertising agencies in Moscow, London, and New York. She currently resides in her hometown of Washington, D.C. Find her on Twitter @ElliottHolt.

Leigh Newman’s memoir Still Points North: One Alaskan Childhood, One LeighNewman NYC | June 16, 2013Grown-up World, One Long Journey Home came out from Dial Press in 2013. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in One Story, Tin House, The New York Times Modern Love section, Fiction, New York Tyrant, Vogue, Real Simple, O The Oprah Magazine, and Bookforum. She is the deputy editor of Oprah.com where she writes about books and happiness, and an editor-at-large for the indie press Black Balloon Publishing.

 

MUSICAL GUEST:

Bridget Davis NYC | June 16, 2013Since 2011 Bridget Davis and her band the Viking Kings have brought their potent blend of jazz, folk, and pop to music venues through Manhattan and Brooklyn. Featuring fellow University of Miami graduates Sam Petitti on guitar and Dag Vikings NYC | June 16, 2013Markhus on drums, as well as the jazz- and classically-trained Kells Nollenberger on upright bass, the Viking Kings expertly supply each song with its own unique cinematic atmosphere–romance, western, period drama, film noir. Following the 2012 release of their debut EP Trouble Comes in Threes, produced and engineered by Luke Moellman and mastered by Latin Grammy-winning Carlos Alvarez, Bridget Davis and the Viking Kings have been played on Miami’s 90.5 WVUM and featured as a “Must See Show of the Week” by Grass Clippings. But listen to them once, and every show will be a must see show.



 

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{SALON NYC BLOG}

Sunday Salon NYC is turning 11!

Come celebrate Sunday Salon NYC’s 11th year of literary love and community at the June 16, 2013 reading!

Introducing A Tale of Four Cities

A Tale of Four Cities is an online literary magazine featuring fiction and creative nonfiction set in real locations in four cities — New York, London, Mumbai, and our first featured city, Dubai. This magazine seeks to highlight the similarities and differences between our cities, creating a cultural mosaic of writers and locations in a world that has grown increasingly small.

Check out it out here: www.talefourcities.com

A Reading in New York

By Alhaji Abdul-Rahman Harruna Attah, Managing Editor of The Accra Daily Mail, Ghana

This article first appeared in The Accra Daily Mail

The arts, it is said, enhance what science makes possible. Those societies that have found the right mix between science and the arts also somehow manage to get the development equation right. It certainly sounds like a cliché but any society that is made up of only science breeds automatons and when only the arts dominate, romantics take over… It’s almost like Kwegir Aggrey’s axiom of the black and white keys of the piano: Both are needed to create harmony.

Two editions ago of The Accra Mail I reported on Vice President John Mahama’s literary pursuits and his book-in-progress, “My first Coup d’etat”. For me it was most propitious, for if a Ghanaian politician at that level would find the time to write, then perhaps we are beginning to witness the birth of the “philosopher kings” which not only Ghana but other African nations need to break out of the cycle of poverty, ignorance, disease and underdevelopment.

There are other Ghanaians of course engaged in similar pursuits – a new corps of young people, who are making serious writing their business and encouragingly some of the most promising ones are young women. There is Farida Bedwei with her “Definition Of A Miracle”, Alba Kunadu Sumprim with “The Imported Ghanaian”, Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond with “Powder Necklace”, Ayesha Harruna Attah with her “Harmattan Rain”.

These are young women with the abilities and capabilities to pursue other disciplines but chose to take the literary path. Farida’s case is particularly poignant. Disabled by a neurological ailment since childhood, she pursued a course in computer programming and has become a competent expert in the field. Defying all odds of her disability she’s been able to take up writing in addition to her “normal” day’s job.

Nana Ekua is a cum laude graduate of Vassar College in the US who has written for Bluefly, AOL, Parenting Magazine, the Village Voice, Metro and Trace Magazine. Powder Necklace is her debut novel and is loosely autobiographical. Other writings include “Bush Girl”, “The Whinings of a Seven Sister Cum Laude Graduate Working Board as as Assistant”.

Ayesha majored in Biochemistry at Mount Holyoke College, also in the US. She spurned the medical field in favour of a journalism programme at Columbia where she earned her MSc. It was after this that she worked on Harmattan Rain which was short-listed last year for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Best First Book, African Region. She has just graduated with a second Masters Degree from New York University.

In New York last Sunday, Ekua and Ayesha joined Jess Row, a young American writer once named as a “Best Young American Novelist” and Cynthia Morrison Phoel another American writer to read extracts from their works: Two Ghanaian young writers rubbing shoulders with their US contemporaries in this very crowded and difficult field. It was not their first public reading and certainly not the last. It is one of the platforms they use to showcase their works and make sales – when possible. Both Ekua and Ayesha have spoken of the immense difficulties faced – from idea conception to distribution and sales – but with determination, not resignation. They held their own against their American colleagues exhibiting the kind of confidence needed to persevere to take over from the Achebes, Ayikwei Armahs, Ngugis and the other African literary giants who are now in the twilight of their years.

Even though over the years different Ghanaian governments have published cultural policies to advance the country’s arts, none has been able to go beyond the politics of it and give it meaning. For the likes of Farida, Alba, Ekua and Ayesha to contribute in enhancing life, they need the support at home to fully actualize their creative potentials…

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{SALON NYC RECENT WRITERS}

Roger Reeves

Roger Reeves’ poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Tin House, Gulf Coast, and the Indiana Review, among others. Kim Addonizio selected “Kletic of Walt Whitman” for the Best New Poets 2009 anthology. He was awarded a Ruth Lilly Fellowship by the Poetry Foundation in 2008, two Bread Loaf Scholarships, an Alberta H. Walker Scholarship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and two Cave Canem Fellowships. Recently, he earned his MFA from the James A. Michener Center for Creative Writing at the University of Texas. Currently, he is a Ph.D. student in the English Department at the University of Texas and an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His first book, King Me, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2013.

John Murillo

John Murillo’s first poetry collection, Up Jump the Boogie (Cypher 2010), was a finalist for both the 2011 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the PEN Open Book Award. A graduate of New York University’s MFA program in creative writing, his other honors include a 2011 Pushcart Prize, two Larry Neal Writers Awards, and fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the New York Times, the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. His work has appeared in such publications as Callaloo, Court Green, Ninth Letter, and Ploughshares, and is forthcoming in Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of African-American Poetry. His choreo-play, Trigger, was commissioned by Edgeworks Dance Theater and premiered in spring 2011. A founding member of the poetry collective, The Symphony, he has taught at Cornell University, New York University, Columbia College Chicago, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Currently, he is visiting assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Miami.

Jamaal May

Jamaal May is a Cave Canem Fellow, Callaloo Fellow and graduate from Warren Wilson’s MFA for writers. He is the author of a poetry chapbook (The God Engine, Pudding House Press, 2009) and editor of the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Series. His work appears in Callaloo, Indiana Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Sou’western, Blackbird and Verse Daily among other journals, magazines, and anthologies. He has appeared on radio and television, as well as in documentaries such as “A Poet in Every Classroom” and “Televising a Revolution,” jury prize winner at the Trinity Film Festival. May has received two scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, two Pushcart Prize nominations, an International Publication Prize from Atlanta Review, and he was a finalist for the 2010 and 2011 Ruth Lilly Fellowships. Currently, he is the 2011-2013 Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University where he runs a poetry slam, reads for the lit journal West Branch and tweaks his first full-length manuscript, which was a finalist for The National Poetry Series as well as the Levis Prize from Four Way Books.

Rickey Laurentiis

Rickey Laurentiis was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. His manuscript, “One Country,” received an honorable mention in the 2010 Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award, judged by Claudia Rankine, and was a finalist for the 2011 National Poetry Series. The recipient of fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and a Work-Study Scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, his poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and have appeared or are forthcoming in Callaloo, The Feminist Wire, Indiana Review, jubilat, and elsewhere. Currently, he is pursuing his MFA in creative writing at Washington University in St Louis, where he is a Chancellor’s fellow.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes

Darrel Alejandro Holnes is an award-winning poet and playwright from Panama City, Panama and the Programs Director of the Poetry Society of America. He holds degrees in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan and the University of Houston. He and his work have been featured nationally and internationally in the Kennedy Center Annual College Theater Festival, TIME Magazine, and The Caribbean Writer among others. He is the recipient of scholarships to Cave Canem, Summer Literary Seminars, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and a writer’s residency at VCCA. He continues to work as a writer and emerging performance artist in New York. The latest news about his performances can be found at www.darrelandpreston.com. And most recently, he was selected as one of “The Phantastique 5″ by Jericho Brown for the Best American Poetry blog.

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{ABOUT SALON NYC}

Nita Noveno and co-host/fellow New School grad Caroline Berger keep a refreshing blend of new and experienced literary voices on tap at Stain Bar every third Sunday of the month and online in the Sunday Salon zine.

Nita Noveno and Caroline Berger Nita Noveno is a graduate of the New School MFA Creative Writing Program. She founded the Sunday Salon series in the summer of 2002. She has most recently been published in Lost and Found: An Anthology of Teachers Writing and Worldview and was a finalist for the Missouri Review's 2005 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors Prize. Nita read at the July 2002 Salon.

Caroline Berger lives in up-and-coming Bed Stuy (she's waiting patiently). Her proetry (that's not a typo; she likes to make up her own genres) has appeared most recently on La Petite Zine and Pindeldyboz and in Barrow Street. She is the co-host of the Sunday Salon and once used all 7 letters in a game of Scrabble to spell e-t-i-o-l-a-t-e. She teaches writing at The New School & has recently succumb to the world of blogging: Apocalyptic Whimsy. Caroline read at the August 2002 Salon.