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NYC | February 19, 2012: Literary & Musical Sizzle!

We’re welcoming that pleasingly potent combination of literary and musical talent at the upcoming Salon. So escape the wintry winds and long work week for an inspiring new year event. Join us! 7pm.

Suzzy Roche is a singer/songwriter/performer/ and founding member ofWaywardSaints e1327941574754 NYC | February 19, 2012: Literary & Musical Sizzle! the singing group The Roches. She has recorded over fifteen albums, written music for TV and Film, and toured extensively for thirty years all across the U.S. and Europe. Zero Church: an unusual collection of prayers (a collaboration with Maggie Roche) which was developed at Harvard’s Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue was originally staged at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, and has been staged around the country. Suzzy has been an associate member of The Wooster Group; the experimental theater company based in New York City, and performed with them off and on for years throughout Europe. Her children’s book Want To Be In A Band (Random House) will be published in January 2013. Wayward Saints (Hyperion/Voice) is her first novel and is a selection of the Spring 2012 B&N Discover Great New Writers Program. For more information on suzzy: www.suzzyroche.com.

Marlon James was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1970. His second NightWomen e1327941536250 NYC | February 19, 2012: Literary & Musical Sizzle! novel, The Book Of Night Women was a National Book Critics Circle Award fiction finalist, a NAACP Image Award Finalist, and winner of the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the 2010 Minnesota Book Award. His first novel, John Crow’s Devil, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. His short fiction has appeared in Iron Balloons, Bronx Noir, and Silent Voices, and his essays have been published in New Orleans: What Can’t Be Lost, and Publishers Weekly. Marlon James teaches Literature and Creative Writing at Macalester College, St.Paul Minnesota and is working on his third novel.

Daniel Nester most recent book is How to Be Inappropriate, HTBICover500high e1327941171522 NYC | February 19, 2012: Literary & Musical Sizzle! a collection of humorous nonfiction called “hilarious” and “actually funny.” His first two books, God Save My Queen (Soft Skull Press, 2003) and God Save My Queen II (2004), are collections on his obsession with the rock band Queen. His third book, The History of My World Tonight (BlazeVOX, 2006), is a collection of poems. His work has appeared in such places as Poets & Writers, Salon, The Morning News, McSweeney’s, The Daily Beast, The Rumpus, the Poetry Foundation website and Bookslut, and anthologized in The Best American Poetry, The Best Creative Nonfiction, and Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock and Roll. He is associate professor of English at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY. He is managing editor of the group culture-slash-literature blog We Who Are About To Die. Find him online at danielnester.com and on Twitter.

When she is not writing fiction, Kio Stark writes about relational Follow Me Down hi res e1327941113889 NYC | February 19, 2012: Literary & Musical Sizzle!technology and teaches at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, a graduate program for geeks, hackers, and artists. Her fiction has been published in Joyland and Swink. She has written about feminism, NYC night court, the history of documentary, graphic novels, failure and her favorite saints for The Nation, Killing the Buddha, Feed, Lime Tea and other publications and wrote the introduction to Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots, a collection of vernacular police photography. She spent a racetrack season in Miami interviewing old thugs for her doctoral work in American Studies at Yale. She’s currently working on a handbook for independent learning called Don’t Go Back to School and a new novel. Follow Me Down is her first novel. www.kiostark.com.

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{SALON NYC BLOG}

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…

NYC | June 12, 2011: The Salon celebrates 9 years!

Break out the champagne! This month, Sunday Salon will celebrate 9 years of literary love. Since 2002, we’ve welcomed to the stage over 360 fantastic writers from near and far, and we’re going to, as the fabulous M. Jackson put it, “Keep on with the force don’t stop!” Join us in welcoming four more literary powerhouses and a special musical guest. Let’s celebrate! At Jimmys 43, 7pm.

Justin Taylor is the author of the novel, The Gospel of tn NYC | June 12, 2011: The Salon celebrates 9 years!Anarchy, and the story collection, Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever. Both books were New York Times Editor’s Choice selections. With the poet Jeremy Schmall he edits The Agriculture Reader, a limited-edition arts annual.

Cara Hoffman is the author of So Much Pretty. Cara grew up tn 1 e1306275835828 NYC | June 12, 2011: The Salon celebrates 9 years!in an economically depressed town in upstate New York. She dropped out of high school, bought a one-way ticket to London with her savings, and spent the next three years working under-the-table jobs in Europe and the Middle East. In the 1990s, she returned to the United States, became a mother, and began working as an investigative reporter at a daily newspaper. Hoffman covered New York State’s rural and rust-belt communities for over a decade, reporting on environmental politics, county legislatures and crime. In 2000, she received a New York State Foundation for the Art Fellowship for her writing on the aesthetics of violence and its impact on children.

Benjamin Hale is the author of The Evolution of Bruno Hale e1306275670654 NYC | June 12, 2011: The Salon celebrates 9 years!Littlemore. He is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. He is the recipient of an Iowa Provost’s Fellowship and a Michener-Copernicus Award. He grew up in Colorado and now lives in New York.

Sarah Rose Etter is the author of Tongue Party, which was NYC | June 12, 2011: The Salon celebrates 9 years! selected by Deb Olin Unferth as the winner of the 2010 Caketrain chapbook competition. Tongue Party is available for pre-order from Caketrain Press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Collagist, Flatmancrooked, PANK Magazine, elimae, The Baltimore Review, and more. her stories have also been performed in London by the Liars’ League. She earned her B.A. in English from Pennsylvania State University and her M.F.A. in Fiction from Rosemont College.

MUSICAL GUEST:

R.A. Villanueva lives in Brooklyn. A finalist for the Beatrice Hawley Award and the Alice James Books/Kundiman Poetry Prize, his writing has appeared in Gulf Coast, AGNI, Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, DIAGRAM, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere.
ronv NYC | June 12, 2011: The Salon celebrates 9 years!

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{SALON NYC RECENT WRITERS}

Kio Stark

When she is not writing fiction, Kio Stark writes about relational technology and teaches at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, a graduate program for geeks, hackers, and artists. Her fiction has been published in Joyland and Swink. She has written about feminism, NYC night court, the history of documentary, graphic novels, failure and her favorite saints for The Nation, Killing the Buddha, Feed, Lime Tea and other publications and wrote the introduction to Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots, a collection of vernacular police photography. She spent a racetrack season in Miami interviewing old thugs for her doctoral work in American Studies at Yale. She’s currently working on a handbook for independent learning called Don’t Go Back to School and a new novel. Follow Me Down is her first novel. www.kiostark.com.

Daniel Nester

Daniel Nester most recent book is How to Be Inappropriate, a collection of humorous nonfiction called “hilarious” and “actually funny.” His first two books, God Save My Queen (Soft Skull Press, 2003) and God Save My Queen II (2004), are collections on his obsession with the rock band Queen. His third book, The History of My World Tonight (BlazeVOX, 2006), is a collection of poems. His work has appeared in such places as Poets & Writers, Salon, The Morning News, McSweeney’s, The Daily Beast, The Rumpus, the Poetry Foundation website and Bookslut, and anthologized in The Best American Poetry, The Best Creative Nonfiction, and Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock and Roll. He is associate professor of English at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY. He is managing editor of the group culture-slash-literature blog We Who Are About To Die. Find him online at danielnester.com and on Twitter.

When she is not writing fiction, Kio Stark writes about relational Follow Me Down hi res e1327941113889 Daniel Nestertechnology and teaches at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, a graduate program for geeks, hackers, and artists. Her fiction has been published in Joyland and Swink. She has written about feminism, NYC night court, the history of documentary, graphic novels, failure and her favorite saints for The Nation, Killing the Buddha, Feed, Lime Tea and other publications and wrote the introduction to Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots, a collection of vernacular police photography. She spent a racetrack season in Miami interviewing old thugs for her doctoral work in American Studies at Yale. She’s currently working on a handbook for independent learning called Don’t Go Back to School and a new novel. Follow Me Down is her first novel. www.kiostark.com.

Suzzy Roche

Suzzy Roche is a singer/songwriter/performer/ and founding member of the singing group The Roches. She has recorded over fifteen albums, written music for TV and Film, and toured extensively for thirty years all across the U.S. and Europe. Zero Church: an unusual collection of prayers (a collaboration with Maggie Roche) which was developed at Harvard’s Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue was originally staged at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, and has been staged around the country. Suzzy has been an associate member of The Wooster Group; the experimental theater company based in New York City, and performed with them off and on for years throughout Europe. Her children’s book Want To Be In A Band (Random House) will be published in January 2013. Wayward Saints (Hyperion/Voice) is her first novel and is a selection of the Spring 2012 B&N Discover Great New Writers Program. For more information on suzzy: www.suzzyroche.com.

Marlon James

Marlon James was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1970. His second novel, The Book Of Night Women was a National Book Critics Circle Award fiction finalist, a NAACP Image Award Finalist, and winner of the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the 2010 Minnesota Book Award. His first novel, John Crow’s Devil, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. His short fiction has appeared in Iron Balloons, Bronx Noir, and Silent Voices, and his essays have been published in New Orleans: What Can’t Be Lost, and Publishers Weekly. Marlon James teaches Literature and Creative Writing at Macalester College, St.Paul Minnesota and is working on his third novel.

Josh Rolnick

Josh Rolnick’s debut short story collection, Pulp and Paper, won the 2011 John Simmons Short Fiction Award, selected by Yiyun Li. His stories have won the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editor’s Choice Prize. They have also been published in Harvard Review, Western Humanities Review, Bellingham Review, Gulf Coast, and Storyville, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best New American Voices. Rolnick holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and an MA in Writing from Johns Hopkins University. He is publisher of Sh’ma, a journal of Jewish ideas, and editor of Unstuck, an independent literary annual. Rolnick has previously worked as a reporter or editor for publications including the Associated Press, Congressional Quarterly, Moment, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review. He is a frequent day-guest lecturer in fiction writing classes at the University of Akron, and a proud inductee of the Akron Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. He currently divides his time between Akron, OH and Brooklyn, NY, where he lives with his wife and three sons. His website is www.joshrolnick.com.

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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.