The Folding Chair

Next at TFC ~ May 7, 2013 at 7:30pm ~ Farrah Field, Eric Nelson and Cynthia Cruz

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 00:13:00 -0400

Please join us for May 2013’s edition of The Folding Chair. This month’s talented lineup features the following literary luminaries.

Cynthia Cruz was born in Germany and raised in Northern California. She is the author of The Glimmering Room (Four Way Books) and Ruin (Alice James Books), and is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and a Hodder Fellowship. Her poems have been published in the New Yorker, The Paris Review, Boston Review, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review and others. She lives in Brooklyn.

Eric Nelson is a writer originally from New Jersey. His essays, criticism and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in The Billfold, HTMLGIANT, chimes/SIRENS, Volume 1 Brooklyn, Quail Bell Magazine and Squawk Back, among others. His short story collection The Silk City Series was published by Knickerbocker Circus in 2010 and “The Walt Whitman House” was recently published as a book by the Crumpled Press. He is currently guest-editing the next issue of Five [Quarterly] and lives in Queens, New York.

Farrah Field is the author of Wolf and Pilot (Four Way Books), Rising (Four Way Books) and the chapbook Parents (Immaculate Disciples Press). Her poems and essays have appeared in many publications including Sixth Finch, Ploughshares, Harp & Altar, Lit, Typo, La Petite Zine, and Drunken Boat. Two of her poems were selected by Kevin Young for The Best American Poetry 2011. Her essays and reviews have appeared in Harp & Altar and Coldfront. She lives in Brooklyn where she co-hosts an event series called Yardmeter Editions. She occasionally blogs atadultish.blogspot.com and is co-owner of Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop.

The Folding Chair is merry and free, but if you wish to take advantage of the wine, beer, and delicious food at Local 61, you’ll have to come correct with cash.

TO GET HERE:
61 Local, 61 Bergen St, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
Bergen St. (F/G) or Borough Hall (2,3,4,5)

THE FOLDING CHAIR ON TWITTER:
@foldingchairbk

LIKE OUR FACEBOOK PAGE
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Folding-Chair/167392426647430

Our Second Anniversary ~ April 2, 2013 at 7:30 at 61 Local!

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:29:00 -0400

Come celebrate The Folding Chair’s second anniversary!

Tuesday, April 2^nd at 7:30 pm, upstairs at 61 Local (61 Bergen Street, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn)

Birthday Toast Courtesy of 61 Local

& Readings by

Will Schutt, Craig Morgan Teicher, Douglas Watson, and Christine Schutt

WILL SCHUTT is the author of Westerly, selected by Carl Phillips for the 2012 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. A graduate of Oberlin College and Hollins University, he is the recipient of fellowships from the James Merrill House, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University. His poems and translations have appeared in Agni, FIELD, The New Republic, The Southern Review and elsewhere. More information can be found at his website: www.wschutt.com.

CRAIG MORGAN TEICHER is the author of three books, most recently To Keep Love Blurry (BOA 2012). He works at Publishers Weekly, reviews widely, and lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children. More information can be found at his website: www.craigmorganteicher.com.

DOUGLAS WATSON will read from his debut collection of stories, The Era of Not Quite, winner of the BOA Editions Short Fiction Prize. His stories have appeared or will soon appear in One Story, Fifty-two Stories, Tin House (Flash Fridays), Ecotone, Salt Hill, Sou’wester, and other publications. In June, at One Story’s annual Literary Debutante Ball, he will be, for the first time in his life, a debutante. He holds an MFA in fiction from Ohio State University, an MA in history from Brown University, and a BA in something or other from Swarthmore College. He lives in Brooklyn and works for Time magazine. More information can be found at his website: douglaswatsonfiction.com

CHRISTINE SCHUTT is the author of two short story collections and three novels. Her first novel, Florida, was a National Book Award finalist; her second novel, All Souls, a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. A third novel, Prosperous Friends, was published by Grove/Atlantic in fall of 2012. Among other honors, Schutt has twice won the O.Henry Short Story Prize. She is the recipient of the New York Foundation of the Arts and Guggenheim Fellowships. Schutt is a senior editor of NOON, a literary annual, and lives and teaches in New York.

Next at TFC ~ March 5, 2013 ~ Henry Alford, Marian Lorraine and Amelia Kahaney

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 17:17:43 -0500

The Ides of March are (almost) upon us, so friends, writers, bibliophiles please join us on Tuesday, March 5, 7:30 at 61 Local for March 2013’s edition of The Folding Chair. This month, TFC features Henry Alford, Marian Lorraine and Amelia Kahaney.

HENRY ALFORD is the author of “Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That?: A Modern Guide to Manners.” He writes a monthly column about manners for the New York Times. He contributes humor to the New Yorker’s website, and can be heard on the public radio show “Studio 360.” He has also written a book about the wisdom of the elderly (“How to Live”), a humor collection (“Municipal Bondage”), and an account of his failed acting career (“Big Kiss”) which won a Thurber Prize.

MARIAN LORRAINE’s work has appeared in the New York Press, Joey Magazine, the L Magazine and Blackbook, as well as on Gawker, and Nerve.com. She majored in philosophy, works as a cocktail waitress and lives in a haunted hotel.

AMELIA KAHANEY is the author of The Brokenhearted, the first book in a
young adult novel series to be published by Harper Collins in November
2013. Her short stories have appeared in Best American Nonrequired
Reading, One Story, Crazyhorse, and other publications, some of which
are Canadian. She has taught writing at Brooklyn College, The New
School, and the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop. She also makes a
mean guacamole.

The Folding Chair is merry and free, but if you wish to take advantage of the wine, beer, and delicious food at Local 61, you’ll have to come correct with cash.

TO GET HERE:
61 Local, 61 Bergen St, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
Bergen St. (F/G) or Borough Hall (2,3,4,5)

THE FOLDING CHAIR ON TWITTER:
@foldingchairbk

and coming soon: a website relaunch!

LIKE OUR FACEBOOK PAGE
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Folding-Chair/167392426647430

Next at TFC ~ February 5, 2013 ~ Diane Cook, John Kenney and Tanya Rey

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:33:43 -0500

Come in from the cold on Tuesday, February 5, 7:30 at 61 Local for February 2013’s edition of The Folding Chair. This month, TFC features Diane Cook, John Kenney and Tanya Rey.

DIANE COOK’s writing is forthcoming in Guernica and Salt Hill. She won the 2012 Italo Calvino Prize for fabulist fiction and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for work in Redivider. She was a producer for public radio’s This American Life and has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, The Albee Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. She is currently working on a novel.

JOHN KENNEY has worked as a copywriter in New York for 17 years. He has been a contributor to The New Yorker’s Shouts & Murmurs since 1999. His first novel, Truth In Advertising, was released in January by Touchstone/Simon&Schuster.

TANYA REY’s work has appeared in The Chattahoochee Review and online at McSweeney’s. She holds an MFA degree in fiction from New York University and has received fellowships from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, UCross Foundation, and Blue Mountain Center. She has worked as managing editor of One Story magazine and currently works as a biographer of people with Traumatic Brain Injury. She was born and raised in Miami, Florida and now lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she often complains about the winter.

The Folding Chair is merry and free, but if you wish to take advantage of the wine, beer, and delicious food at Local 61, you’ll have to come correct with cash.

TO GET HERE:
61 Local, 61 Bergen St, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
Bergen St. (F/G) or Borough Hall (2,3,4,5)

THE FOLDING CHAIR ON TWITTER:
@foldingchairbk

and coming soon: a website relaunch!

LIKE OUR FACEBOOK PAGE
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Folding-Chair/167392426647430

Next at TFC ~ January 8th, 2013 ~ Nicole Fix, Ted Dodson and Judy Batalion

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 13:45:20 -0500

Please join us to ring in another year with TFC! Tuesday, January 8th, 7:30 pm upstairs at the one and only 61 Local. This month we feature the talents of NICOLE FIX, TED DODSON and JUDY BATALION:

NICOLE FIX received an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant and has been awarded fellowships from Can Serrat International Artist Residency, Drisha Institute and Summer Literary Seminars. Recent publications include Post Road Magazine and Go Magazine. Nicole is currently writing a novel.

TED DODSON is the co-founder and editor of the filmed journal On the Escape, a curator for the Triptych Reading Series, and an editor and the events coordinator for Futurepoem. Select publications can be found in The Death and Life of American Cities, la fovea, SET, Tim, and Well Greased, and an untitled chapbook is forthcoming from Diez in early 2013.

JUDY BATALION’s personal essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The New York Times, Salon, The Jerusalem Post, Babble, Nerve, The Frisky and many others. A former art curator with a background in stand-up comedy, Judy also writes cultural criticism, arts reviews, and humor pieces. In March, she will begin teaching essay writing at mediabistro.

The Folding Chair is merry and free, but if you wish to take advantage of the wine, beer, and delicious food at Local 61, you’ll have to come correct with cash.

TO GET HERE:
61 Local, 61 Bergen St, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
Bergen St. (F/G) or Borough Hall (2,3,4,5)

THE FOLDING CHAIR ON TWITTER:
@foldingchairbk

and coming soon: a website relaunch!

LIKE OUR FACEBOOK PAGE
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Folding-Chair/167392426647430

Next at TFC: December 4th, 2012 ~ Anthony Tognazzini, Matthew Goodman and Robin Beth Schaer

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 01:07:00 -0500

It’s a festive chair! Please join us on Tuesday, December 4th upstairs at 61 Local at 7:30 for the last Folding Chair of 2012. This month we feature the talents of:

ANTHONY TOGNAZZINI has new work appearing or forthcoming in Guernica, BOMB, Gigantic, Crazyhorse, Forklift Ohio, and TriQuarterly. His fiction collection, I Carry a Hammer in My Pocket for Occasions Such As These, is available from BOA Editions. He lives in Brooklyn.

MATTHEW GOODMAN’s debut novel, Hold Love Strong, was published by Touchstone Fireside (Simon and Schuster). The novel was chosen by Barnes and Noble as a Discover Great New Writers Book and by USA Today as a New Voices Pick. From 2008-2011, he was an Assistant Editor on Pen America’s Pen Journal. He teaches Multicultural American Literature and Creative Writing at Hunter College. Recent writing has been published by Bomb Magazine, Pen America, Tikkun, and Canteen Magazine.

ROBIN BETH SCHAER’s work has appeared in Tin House, Paris Review, The Awl, Bomb, Denver Quarterly, and Prairie Schooner, among others. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, Djerassi, Saltonstall, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She teaches writing at Cooper Union and Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, and has worked as a deckhand aboard the tall ship HMS Bounty.

The Folding Chair is merry and free, but if you wish to take advantage of the wine, beer, and delicious food at Local 61, you’ll have to come correct with cash.

TO GET HERE:
61 Local, 61 Bergen St, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
Bergen St. (F/G) or Borough Hall (2,3,4,5)

THE FOLDING CHAIR ON TWITTER:
@foldingchairbk

Next at TFC: November 13th, 2012 ~ Anne Ray, Ben Clague and DW Gibson

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 11:22:00 -0400

Please join us on Tuesday, November 13 for the the next installment of The Folding Chair. Please note that this reading takes place on the second Tuesday of the month, rather than the usual first, since November 6 is Election Day. We encourage everyone to get out and VOTE!

The Folding Chair is free, but if you wish to take advantage of the wine, beer, and delicious food at Local 61, you’ll have to come correct with cash.
This month we feature the talents of:

ANNE RAY was raised in suburban Maryland and has worked as a gardener, a waitress, an English teacher, and a fish monger. Anne Ray’s work has appeared in Conduit, Gulf Coast, LIT, Brooklyn Review and Opium. She received the 2011 Montana Prize in Fiction and was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She received an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College, and now works on the 18th floor of an office building in lower Manhattan. You can follow her on Twitter @AnneRay347

BEN CLAGUE is a fiction writer who lives in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in journals such as Midwestern Gothic, Cousin Corrine, H.O.W. Journal, and 12th Street Journal. He is currently at work on a book of short stories, as well as a novella. He was born and raised in southern Iowa.

DW GIBSON is the author of Not Working: People Talk About Losing a Job and Finding Their Way in Today’s Changing Economy (Penguin, 2012). His work has appeared in several publications including The New York Times, The New York Observer, The Daily Beast, BOMB, and The Caravan. He has been a contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered and worked on documentaries for the A&E Television Network and MSNBC. His credits include “The Hate Network” and “Inside Alcoholics Anonymous.” His directorial debut, Pants Down, premiered at Anthology Film Archives in New York. He is currently working on a companion documentary for his book Not Working. Gibson serves as director of Writers Omi at Ledig House in Ghent, New York, which is part of the Omi International Arts Center. He is also the co-founder and co-director of Sangam House, a writers’ residency in India. Find out more at www.notworkingproject.com

TO GET HERE:
61 Local, 61 Bergen St, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
Bergen St. (F/G) or Borough Hall (2,3,4,5)

THE FOLDING CHAIR ON TWITTER:
@foldingchairbk

LIKE OUR FACEBOOK PAGE
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Folding-Chair/167392426647430

Next at TFC ~ October 2, 2012 ~ Mellini Kantayya, Danica Novgorodoff/ Dawn Landes and Katie Wudel

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 21:14:00 -0400

MELLINI KANTAYYA is an actor and writer living in Brooklyn, NY. Her recent independent film credits include the Untitled Drake Doremus Project (opposite Amy Ryan and Guy Pierce) and Colin Hearts Kay (Brooklyn International Film Festival, et al). She has appeared on the television show Nurse Jackie and had a recurring supporting role on the daytime serial One Life to Live from 2005-2011. Her book, Actor. Writer. Whatever. (essays on my rise to the top of the bottom of the entertainment industry), will be released early 2013 by Ako Dako Press.

DANICA NOVGORODOFF/ DAWN LANDES

DANICA NOVGORODOFF is a painter, comic book artist, and writer from Kentucky who currently lives in Brooklyn. She has published three graphic novels: A Late Freeze, Slow Storm, and Refresh, Refresh, which was included in Best American Comics 2011. Her fourth graphic novel, The Undertaking of Lily Chen, is forthcoming from First Second Books in 2014.

DAWN LANDES is an American singer-songwriter and musician originally from Louisville, Kentucky. Her career as an international recording artist includes three critically acclaimed albums: Dawn’s Music (2005), Fireproof (2008) and Sweetheart Rodeo (2010). In support of her albums, Landes has toured extensively in the US, Europe and around the world, often sharing the stage with artists such as Ray Lamontagne, Feist, Andrew Bird and Suzanne Vega. Her music has been featured in popular films and TV shows, including Bored to Death, House, Gossip Girl and United States of Tara. She composed original scores for two feature films and has lent her to voice to various musical endeavors including appearances with The American Songbook Series and the Boston Pops. Her latest album, “Mal Habillée,” a collection of original french songs was released this summer in interactive ebook form with illustrations by the artist Danica Novgorodoff to accompany the text.

www.dawnLandes.com
facebook.com/dawnlandes
twitter.com/dawnlandes

KATIE WUDEL is a writer, educator, and arts advocate making her home in the wilds of Morningside Heights. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Monkeybicycle, the Ploughshares blog, and many other publications. Katie has taught creative writing at San Francisco’s School of the Arts and the University of Nebraska-Omaha Writer’s Workshop, and has been awarded scholarships and fellowships from Hedgebrook, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and Summer Literary Seminars. In 2011, her story “Tongueless” was one of Wigleaf’s Top [Very] Short Fictions. You can find it, along with more of her work, at katiewudel.com.

The Folding Chair is (as ever) free, but bring your allowance for local kombucha/ beer/ wine and small plates. The program starts at 7:30 sharp and lasts about an hour.

TO GET HERE:

61 Local, 61 Bergen St, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

Bergen St. (F/G) or Borough Hall (2,3,4,5)

THE FOLDING CHAIR ON TWITTER:

@foldingchairbk

Next at TFC ~ September 11, 2012 ~ Jan Bindas-Tenney, Michael Hollander and Carley Moore

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 04:03:00 -0400

JAN BINDAS-TENNEY is mostly an organizer. She spent many years going on strike in Allentown, Pennsylvania and driving circles around New Jersey trying to find lunch ladies to form a union. Now she is organizing about violence and space here in New York City. Jan is also a writer. Her writing has appeared in the mailboxes of dear friends and lovers: urgent communications on ripped up pieces of notebook paper sent from China, New Mexico, Northern California, her living room. Jan is queer, working class; she loves to swim. She has lived in Brooklyn for six years and grew up in the mountains of Northern New Hampshire.

MICHAEL HOLLANDER stopped writing in his 20s when he became a relatively settled person. By his mid 40s he had more or less stopped typing. Every once in a while he throws off an aphorism. He is the author of several unexpected very short works in progress known collectively as Forty Microseconds of Solitude and an as of yet unnamed comic strip. This is his first public reading since 1988.

CARLEY MOORE’s poetry and essays have been published or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Aufgabe, Drunken Boat, Fence, and Swink. She teaches writing in the Liberal Studies Program at New York University and is a Book Review Editor for the website, Writing in Public. Her debut young adult novel, The Stalker Chronicles, was published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2012. You can find her blogging and see more of her work at: www.carleymoorewrites.com.

The Folding Chair is (as ever) free, but bring your allowance for local kombucha/ beer/ wine and small plates.

TO GET HERE:

61 Local, 61 Bergen St, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

Bergen St. (F/G) or Borough Hall (2,3,4,5)

THE FOLDING CHAIR ON TWITTER:

@foldingchairbk

Next at TFC ~ August 7, 2012 ~ Elizabeth Kadetsky, Erin Lennox and Joshua Furst

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 23:27:00 -0400

ELIZABETH KADETSKY’s personal essays have appeared in the New York Times, Guernica, Antioch Review, Agni and elsewhere, and her short stories have been chosen for a Pushcart Prize, Best New American Voices and Best American Short Stories notable stories. She has been a fellow at MacDowell Colony, Ucross Foundation, Djerassi Resident Artists Program and the St. James Centre for Creativity in Malta. She began studying yoga in college, and went on to live in India as a Fulbright scholar in creative writing while studying with the yogi BKS Iyengar. Her experiences became the subject of her first memoir, published with Little Brown in 2004 and scheduled for rEprint with Dzanc Books. She is director of creative writing at Penn State.

ERIN LENNOX is a nice girl and a writer / comedian based in Brooklyn, NY. She is originally from Chapel Hill, NC and has been in exactly 3 bar fights. Since starting stand up in 2010, Erin has performed at the Bridgetown Comedy Festival, the Women in Comedy Festival, the Cape Fear Comedy Festival, the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival, and at an impromptu roast of her grandfather. She regularly performs all over New York and wherever someone in her family is getting married. She hosts a monthly variety show called I LIKE YOU TOO with girl band beauties the Bandana Splits. Erin also opens for bands a lot cause they don’t know much about comedy. In her spare time Erin writes for a lot of the commercials you probably hate.

JOSHUA FURST’s novel The Sabotage Café was named to the 2007 year-end best-of lists of the Chicago Tribune, the Rocky Mountain News and the Philadelphia City Paper, as well as being awarded the 2008 Grub Street Fiction Prize. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed book of stories, Short People. His work has been published in The Chicago Tribune, Esquire, Salon, Nerve, Conjunctions, PEN America, The Jewish Daily Forward, and BOMB among many other journals and periodicals and been given citations for notable achievement by The Best American Short Stories and The O’Henry Awards. Among the accolades his work has received are a 2001-2002 James Michener-Paul Engle Fellowship from the James Michener Foundation/Copernicus Society of America and a Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren Award, and his criticism for the Forward has received a Rockower Award and been nominated for a 2011 Society of Professional Journalists’ Deadline Club Award. His plays include Whimper, Myn and The Ellipse and Other Shapes. He teaches at The New School’s Eugene Lang College and is a founding member of the publishing collective Kristiania.

The Folding Chair is (as ever) free, but bring your allowance for local kombucha/ beer/ wine and small plates.

TO GET HERE:
61 Local, 61 Bergen St, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
Bergen St. (F/G) or Borough Hall (2,3,4,5)

THE FOLDING CHAIR ON TWITTER:
@foldingchairbk

LIKE OUR FACEBOOK PAGE
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Folding-Chair/167392426647430

Next at TFC ~ July 10th, 2012 ~ Evan Wilson, Aimee Herman and Honor Molloy

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 14:44:00 -0400

Come celebrate poetry, songwriting and fiction!
with AIMEE HERMAN, EVAN WILSON & HONOR MOLLOY

AIMEE HERMAN is a queer performance poet. She is turned on by gender warriors, semi-colons and farmer’s markets. Her full-length book of poetry, to go without blinking, was recently published by BlazeVOX books. She can be found writing poems on her body in Brooklyn or at: aimeeherman.wordpress.com

Rising film composer EVAN WILSON is lending his distinctive musical talents to an increasing number of today’s independent films. Recently, Evan was praised for his score to the movie La Soga (2009 Toronto International Film Festival), winning an award for best music at the 2010 Oaxaca International Film Festival. Other highlights include Forged (2010 NYILFF) and Salvage (2006 Sundance Film Festival). In addition to scoring for film, Evan recently released an EP of original songs called The Still Point. The songs “The Dreamer” and “The Wall” both have music videos that can be seen on Youtube. The album is available digitally at iTunes, Amazon, Soundcloud, and Spotify. You can listen to and view more of his work at www.evanwilsonmusic.com.

HONOR MOLLOY holds an MFA from Brown University and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. She has held residencies at Hedgebrook, Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. Her autobiographical novel, Smarty Girl - Dublin Savage was published in March by GemmaMedia and Simon & Schuster Audio. Born in Dublin, Honor Molloy lives in Brooklyn.

The Folding Chair is (as ever) free, but bring your allowance for local kombucha/ beer/ wine and small plates.

TO GET HERE:
61 Local, 61 Bergen St, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
Bergen St. (F/G) or Borough Hall (2,3,4,5)

THE FOLDING CHAIR ON TWITTER:
@foldingchairbk

61 Local's Spotlight on The Folding Chair

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 14:37:00 -0400

61 Local's Spotlight on The Folding Chair :

Here’s an interview 61 Local did with the occasion of our anniversary reading. For our friends at 61 Local, just so you know, the crush is mutual; in fact, we liked you first.

Some photos from the first year of The Folding Chair!

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 15:07:00 -0400

Some photos from the first year of The Folding Chair!

Next at TFC ~ June 5th, 2012 ~ Rachel Cantor, Marie-Helene Bertino and Eric Sasson

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:33:00 -0400

Nineteen of RACHEL CANTOR’s stories have appeared in magazines such as the Paris Review, One Story, Ninth Letter, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and DoubleTake. Her stories have been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, and have been short-listed by both the O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. She lives in Kensington.

MARIE-HELENE BERTINO has been a diner waitress, a muralist, and a singer in a band. Her stories have appeared in The Pushcart Prize Anthology XXXIII, North American Review, Mississippi Review, Inkwell, The Indiana Review, American Short Fiction, Five Chapters, and West Branch. She has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize three times, receiving the award in 2007 and a Special Mention in 2011. She hails from Philadelphia and lives in Brooklyn, where for six years she was the Associate Editor of One Story. She has taught for The Gotham Writer’s Workshop and One Story’s Emerging Writer’s Workshop and has received fellowships from Hedgebrook Residency and NYC’s Center for Fiction, where she is a current fellow. Her collection of short stories SAFE AS HOUSES received The 2012 Iowa Short Fiction Award, judged by Jim Shepard, and will be published in Fall of 2012.

ERIC SASSON received his M.A. in Creative Writing from New York University and has taught fiction writing at the Sackett Street Writers Workshop. His short story collection, “Margins of Tolerance,” was the 2011 Tartt First Fiction Award runner-up and is forthcoming from Livingston Press in May 2012. His story “Floating” was a finalist for the Robert Olen Butler prize. Other recent publication credits include stories forthcoming in Connotation Press and Explosion Proof as well as recently published in BLOOM, Nashville Review, The Puritan, Liquid Imagination, Alligator Juniper, Trans, The Ledge, MARY magazine and THE2NDHAND, among others. He’s honored to have been awarded a 2010 residency fellowship to the Anderson Center in Minnesota, where he completed an edit of his first novel, as well as a Hambidge residency for August 2012. He was born, bred and still resides in Brooklyn.

The Folding Chair is (as ever) free, but bring your allowance for local kombucha/beer/wine and small plates.

TO GET HERE:

61 Local, 61 Bergen St, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

Bergen St. (F/G) or Borough Hall (2,3,4,5)

THE FOLDING CHAIR ON TWITTER: @foldingchairbk

Next at TFC ~ May 1, 2012 ~ Keith Varadi, Anastassiia Botchkareva and Matt Longabucco

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:56:00 -0400

Come celebrate May Day and poetry on Tuesday, May 1st at TFC 2:2 at 61 Local, Brooklyn from 7-8:30 pm with KEITH J. VARADI, ANASTASSIIA BOTCHKAREVA and MATT LONGABUCCO.

KEITH J. VARADI is an artist, poet, and musician. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1985. He received his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2011 and his BFA in Painting and Printmaking with a minor in English from Rutgers University in 2008.

An interloper in the field of poetics, ANASTASSIIA BOTCHKAREVA is working on her dissertation in art history at Harvard University. She is currently based in New York on a research fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As an undergraduate, she completed the creative writing program at Columbia University, where she also studied art history and philosophy.

MATT LONGABUCCO’s poems have appeared most recently in Clock, With+Stand, X Poetics, and Conduit. He teaches writing and literature in the Liberal Studies Program at New York University, and lives with his wife and daughter in Brooklyn. He is sentimental or superstitious about aspects of this life onto which others cast a coldly realistic eye, and vice versa.

THE FOLDING CHAIR is (as ever) free, but bring your allowance for local kombucha/beer/wine and small plates.

TO GET HERE:
Bergen St. (F/G) or Borough Hall (2,3,4,5)

One Year Anniversary of The Folding Chair ~ April 3rd: Cathy Park Hong, Mores McWreath and Ben Lerner...and much more!

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 10:25:00 -0500

Please join us for our one year anniversary party of THE FOLDING CHAIR! Tuesday, April 3 from 7-9 pm at 61 Local, 61 Bergen Street Brooklyn, as we celebrate local art, food, and the community it creates. Our illustrious lineup includes CATHY PARK HONG, MORES McWREATH and BEN LERNER.

CATHY PARK HONG’s first book, Translating Mo’um was published in 2002 by Hanging Loose Press. Her second collection, Dance Dance Revolution, was chosen for the Barnard Women Poets Prize and was published in 2007 by WW Norton. Her third book, Engine Empire, will be published in May 2012. Hong is also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her poems have been published in A Public Space, Poetry, Paris Review, Conjunctions, McSweeney’s, Harvard Review, Boston Review, The Nation, American Letters & Commentary and other journals, and she has reported for the Village Voice, The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine, and Salon. She is an Assistant Professor at Sarah Lawrence College.

MORES McWREATH was born in Washington, Pennsylvania, USA in 1980. He received a BFA from The Cooper Union, an MFA from the University of Southern California and attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. Recent solo shows include CUE Art Foundation selected by Andrea Zittel and Between Everywhere at Kunsthalle M+B in Los Angeles. His work has been exhibited in two person or group shows at the Allcott Gallery UNC Chapel Hill, ICA Philadelphia, Walker Art Center, Art in General, International Studio and Curatorial Program NY, and John Connelly Presents. His videos have been screened in festivals and exhibitions both nationally and internationally including the Taiwan International Video Exhibition, Videomedeja Serbia, 700IS Iceland, and the Jakarta International Video Festival. He currently teaches at The Cooper Union.

BEN LERNER is the author of three books of poetry, all published by Copper Canyon Press: The Lichtenberg Figures (2004), Angle of Yaw (2006), and Mean Free Path (2010). His first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, was published last year by Coffee House Press. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry and the Northern California Book Award, a Fulbright Scholar in Spain, and a Howard Foundation Fellow. In 2011 he became the first American to win the Preis der Stadt Münster für Internationale Poesie for the German translation of The Lichtenberg Figures.

The night also includes musical performances by SIMON BEINS, MARGARET GLASPY and ROWLAND STEBBINS, a specially designed limited edition poster by GRAHAM PARKS and KAYROCK SCREENPRINTING, local libations generously provided by KINGS COUNTY DISTILLERY, RED HOOK WINERY, and local brewers JARED GREENFIELD and AUSTIN HAASE, pie by FOUR & TWENTY BLACKBIRDS, and a door raffle by CUT BROOKLYN. Free and open to the public. Come celebrate with us! xo, the Folders, Oana Marian and Prudence Peiffer.

Same time, same place: 7pm, 61 Local

TO GET HERE:
Bergen St. (F/G) or Borough Hall (2,3,4,5)

Next at TFC, March 6, 2012: Debora Kuan, Letha Wilson and Sari Wilson

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:43:00 -0500

Pull up a chair for a multimedia TFC with poetry, art and fiction!

DEBORA KUAN is a poet, writer, and critic. Her debut collection of poetry, XING, was published in October 2011 by Saturnalia Books. She is the recipient of a Fulbright creative writing fellowship (Taiwan), University of Iowa Graduate Merit Fellowship, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference scholarship, Santa Fe Art Institute writer’s residency, and two Pushcart Prize nominations. Her fiction has appeared in Opium, The L Magazine, The Rumpus, and Wigleaf, and in 2010, she won The L Magazine’s Literary Upstart award. She has also written about contemporary art and film for Artforum, Art in America, Modern Painters, Paper Monument, and other publications.

LETHA WILSON was raised in Colorado and received her MFA from Hunter College in New York City, and her BFA from Syracuse University. Letha attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2009, and her artwork has been shown at many venues including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Socrates Sculpture Park, Exit Art, Arko Arts Center (Seoul), BravinLee Programs, Sue Scott Gallery, PARTICIPANT Inc, Vox Populi, Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, and the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2012 Letha will be an artist-in-residence at Yaddo, and has been awarded the Farparth Grant and Residency in Dijon, France. Her first solo exhibition in NYC will be at Higher Pictures in Fall 2012. Letha currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. See www.lethaprojects.com.

SARI WILSON recently finished a draft of her first novel, which centers on New York in the 1970s and 1980s and a girl’s perilous journey through the ballet world. Her fiction has appeared in literary journals such as Slice, Agni, and The Oxford American and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her honors include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in fiction, a Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship in fiction, and a residency from Yaddo. She has worked as a writer and editor at publishing venues as varied as Harcourt Education and Playboy Magazine. (The latter made for better cocktail party conversation.) Sari grew up in Brooklyn and trained professionally as a ballet dancer, which gave her a lifelong distaste for cottage cheese and lots of material for this novel.

The reading is (as ever) FREE, but bring your allowance for local kombucha, beer & wine.

Please also mark your calendars: The Folding Chair celebrates its 1 year anniversary next month, on Tuesday APRIL 3rd…You won’t want to miss it!

Same time, same place: 7pm, 61 Local

TO GET HERE:
Bergen St. (F/G) or Borough Hall (2,3,4,5)

Next at TFC, February 7, 2012: Nicholas Boggs, Margaret Glaspy and Cheryl Tan

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:44:00 -0500

Description

Please join us upstairs at 61 Local for words and music at the 11th TFC, with Nicholas Boggs, Margaret Glaspy and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan.

NICHOLAS BOGGS is working on his first book, a personal account of his search for the untold story of James Baldwin’s collaboration with the French painter Yoran Cazac. His work has appeared in the anthology James Baldwin Now (NYU Press), Callaloo, and Mary: A Literary Quarterly. A 2011 MacDowell Colony Fellow, he’s also recently been a resident at Yaddo and the recipient of a work study (“waitership”) scholarship in Non-Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. He teaches part-time at Columbia University and curates the reading series Queer Readings at Dixon Place on the Lower East Side.

Born and raised in Northern California, MARGARET GLASPY has brought her indescribable voice to the east coast and New York City couldn’t be happier. Recognized by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts in 2007, Glaspy was given a Gold Award in Popular Voice and proceeded to earn recognition as a Presidential Scholar of the Arts and an SLE Ambassador of the Arts in China, all in the same year. Now, a few years later, she is a committed student to the music around her and has been writing some of the most innovative and heartfelt material of her generation. With a list of influences including Omou Sangare, Feist, Jeff Buckley, and Nina Simone, she has created a sound and writing style that is undeniable, honest, and a tribute to the beautiful music that she has discovered throughout her 23 years.

CHERYL LU-LIEN TAN is the New York-based author of “A Tiger In The
Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family” (www.atigerinthekitchen.com) which was published by Hyperion in 2011. She was a staff writer at the Wall Street Journal and InStyle magazine. Her stories have also appeared in The New York Times,The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Food & Wine, Marie Claire, among other places. In March/April 2010 and also in December 2010, she was an artist in residence at the Yaddo artists’ colony, where she completed her memoir. Born and raised in Singapore, she crossed the ocean at age 18 to go to Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. She started her full-time journalism career helping out on the cops beat in Baltimore—training that would prove to be essential in her future fashion reporting. Both, it turns out, are like war zones. The only difference is, people dress differently. She is currently working on her second book, a novel.

The reading is (as ever) free, but bring your allowance: there will be local books, music and (as ever) kombucha/beer/wine for sale.

Same time, same place: 7pm, 61 Local

TO GET HERE:
Bergen St. (F/G) or Borough Hall (2,3,4,5)

Next at TFC, January 10, 2012: Mark Sullivan, Will Schutt and Hanna Andrews

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:34:00 -0500

Please join us for our 10th Folding Chair reading on Tuesday, January
10th at 7 pm upstairs at 61 Local (61 Bergen St, BK). It’s an all poetry set with HANNA ANDREWS, WILL SCHUTT & MARK SULLIVAN. Come early and stay late for local beer, wine, kombucha and light fare in a convivial space.

HANNA ANDREWS is the co-editor of the feminist poetry press Switchback
Books. She works as an editor at the Academy of American Poets, where
she edits the journal American Poet. Her first book, Slope Move, is
forthcoming in 2012 from Coconut Books. She lives in Brooklyn.

WILL SCHUTT is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the
Academy of American Poets, Oberlin College and the Stadler Center for
Poetry at Bucknell University. His poems and translations have
appeared in many journals, including Agni, A Public Space, FIELD,
Harvard Review, The Southern Review and Verso, a culture and arts
magazine based in Siena, Italy, which he co-founded in 2003. He was
the fall 2011 James Merrill House Writer-in-Residence.

MARK SULLIVAN’s first collection of poetry, Slag (Texas Tech
University Press, 2005), won the Walt McDonald First Book Series
competition. Booklist praised Slag as a “powerful” debut full of
“deftly written poems [that] have a wonderful and appealing balance of
emotion and intellect.” Sullivan’s other honors include a
“Discovery”/The Nation Prize and a 2007 literature fellowship from the
National Endowment for the Arts. His poems, essays, and reviews have
appeared in many publications, including Beloit Poetry Journal, New
England Review, and The Southern Review. Sullivan was born in Willmar,
Minnesota, and grew up in Massachusetts. He received a B.A. from
Middlebury College and also studied as an undergraduate at Oxford
University. He has an M.A. from Columbia University and has lived for
many years in upper Manhattan with his wife, the painter Elizabeth
Terhune.

The Folding Chair is a monthly reading series in Brooklyn featuring
local writers, artists and musicians.

TO GET TO 61 LOCAL:
Bergen St. (F/G), BOROUGH HALL (2,3, 4, 5)

Next at TFC, December 6th: Alex Tilney, Laurence Klavan and Katie Pfohl

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:49:57 -0500

ALL PROSE LINE-UP:

Alex Tilney has an MFA in fiction writing from Warren Wilson College and has been published in The Southwest Review. He was a recent artist-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony.

Laurence Klavan has had short work published in such literary magazines as The Alaska Quarterly, Conjunctions, The Literary Review, Natural Bridge, and Pank, and a collection is forthcoming from Chizine Publications. His novels, “The Cutting Room” and “The Shooting Script” were published by Ballantine Books, and he won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America under a pseudonym. His graphic novels, “City of Spies,” and “Brain Camp,” co-written with Susan Kim, were published in 2010 by First Second Books, and their Young Adult series, “Wasteland,” will be published by Harper Collins. He received two Drama Desk nominations for the book and lyrics to “Bed and Sofa,” the musical produced by the Vineyard Theater in New York and the Finborough Theatre in London.

More at http://www.laurenceklavan.com/

Katie Pfohl is a PhD Candidate in Art History at Harvard University and currently works as a curatorial fellow in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her dissertation examines the relationship between painting and design in late 19th and early 20th century American art, and she also has designs on writing a novel someday.

Same time, same place, as ever: 7pm, 61 Local. Please join us!