The Sunset Reading Series brings writers of national renown to Cold Spring, New York.
Sunday, October 2, 2011 - 4PM --- Monica Youn & Matthea Harvey
Past Events
Sam Lipsyte is the author of the story collection Venus Drive and three novels: The Ask, a New York Times Notable book for 2010, The Subject Steve and Home Land, a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the first annual Believer Book Award. A 2008 Guggenheim Fellow, his fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Open City, The Paris Review,The Quarterly, Tin House, Noon, and many other places. He lives in New York and teaches at Columbia University.
Mary Gaitskill is the author of the novels “Two Girls, Fat and Thin” and “Veronica,” as well as the story collections “Bad Behavior,” “Because They Wanted To” and “Don't Cry.” Her story “Secretary” was the basis for the feature film of the same name. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. In 2002 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction. She has taught at U-C Berkeley, the University of Houston, New York University, Brown and Syracuse University. Her novel “Veronica” was nominated for the National Book Award in 2005; it was also nominated for the National Critic’s Circle Award and the L.A. Times Book Award. She is currently a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library.
David Hollander is the author of the novel L.I.E., a finalist for the New York Public Library’s “Young Lions” Award. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in McSweeney’s, Post Road, The New York Times Magazine, Poets & Writers, The Brooklyn Rail, Swink, Unsaid, The Black Warrior Review, and many other venues less impressive-sounding but equally well-intentioned. His work has been adapted for film and frequently anthologized, most recently in Best American Fantasy 2 and the forthcoming The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature. Hollander teaches in the graduate fiction writing program at Sarah Lawrence College, where he is revered as a God.
Max Watman is the author of Race Day, which was an editors’ choice in the New York Times Book Review. He was the horse racing correspondent for the New York Sun and has written for various publications on books, music, food, and drink. In 2008, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded Max a literary fellowship. His latest book Chasing the White Dog about moonshine was praised by many, including Publishers Weekly and NASCAR legend Junior Johnson. He lives in the Cold Spring.
Erika Wood is the author of the novel The Colorman (Tatra Press) released in 2009. She lives in Cold Spring where she is also an artist, a website designer and the first lady.
Jeffrey Yang is a poet, translator, and an editor at New Directions Publishing. He is the author of the poetry books An Aquarium (winner of the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Poetry Award) and the forthcoming Vanishing-Line, both with Graywolf Press. He has translated Su Shi's East Slope (Ugly Duckling Presse) and a collection of classical Chinese poems called Rhythm 226 (Tioronda Books). An anthology of nature poems from New Directions he edited--Birds, Beasts, and Seas--will be published in Spring 2011; and the new issue of the world literature anthology Two Lines: Some Kind of Beautiful Signal is edited by Natasha Wimmer (fiction) and Yang (poetry).
Jo Ann Beard is the author of a collection of autobiographical essays, The Boys of My Youth, and a forthcoming novel. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Best American Essays, and other magazines and anthologies. She received a Whiting Foundation Award and nonfiction fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Scott Spencer is the author of nine novels, including Endless Love (National Book Award Finalist 1980), Waking the Dead, A Ship Made of Paper (National Book Award Finalist 2003), and Willing. His nonfiction has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, O, Harper's, and The New York Times. He has a new book coming out in September.
Thomas Lux is the author of ten books of poetry including The Cradle Place (Houghton Mifflin, 2004); New and Selected Poems, 1975-1995 (1997), which was a finalist for the 1998 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; and Split Horizon (1994), for which he received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Jeffrey McDaniel is the author of 4 books of poetry, most recently The Endarkenment from the University of Pittsburgh Press. His previous three books are The Splinter Factory (2002); The Forgiveness Parade (1998); and Alibi School (1995). Individual poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, and many other literary magazines and anthologies.
Amber Tamblyn is an Emmy and Golden Globe Award–nominated actor and poet. She came to fame on the soap opera General Hospital followed by starring roles on the television series Joan of Arcadia and The Unusuals and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Her publications include the collections Free Stallion (2005) and Bang Ditto (2009) and she is the winner of a Borders Choice Award for Breakout Writing.
Aimee Bender is the author of three books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) which was a NY Times Notable Book, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000) which was an L.A. Times pick of the year, and Willful Creatures (2005) which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year. Her short fiction has been published in Granta, GQ, Harper's, Tin House, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, and many more, as well as heard on PRI's This American Life and Selected Shorts. She's received two Pushcart prizes, and was nominated for the TipTree award in 2005.
This program is made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts Decentralization Program. In Putnam County, the Decentralization Program is administered by the Putnam Arts Council.
Upcoming Events
The Sunset Reading Series is pleased to announce the Fall 2011 schedule of readings, all of which take place at the Chapel of Our Lady Restoration on the banks of the Hudson River in Cold Spring, NY.
The Sunset Reading Series is pleased to announce the Fall 2011 schedule of readings, all of which take place at the Chapel of Our Lady Restoration on the banks of the Hudson River in Cold Spring, NY.
Sunday, October 2, 2011 - 4PM --- Monica Youn & Matthea Harvey
Monica Youn is the author of Barter (Graywolf, 2003), and Ignatz (Four Way Books, 2010), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. She lives in New York, where she is an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, focusing on election law issues. Her political commentary has appeared in Slate, Roll Call, and The Huffington Post. She has taught creative writing at Columbia University and Pratt Institute. For her work on Ignatz, she has been awarded the Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Matthea Harvey is the author of Sad Little Breathing Machine (Graywolf, 2004) and Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form (Alice James Books, 2000). Her third book of poems, Modern Life (Graywolf, 2007) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Cirlcle Award and a New York Times Notable Book. Her first children’s book, The Little General and the Giant Snowflake, illustrated by Elizabeth Zechel, was published byTin House Books in 2009. An illustrated erasure, titled Of Lamb, with images by Amy Jean Porter, will be published by McSweeney's in 2010. Matthea is a contributing editor to jubilat, Meatpaper and BOMB. She teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence and lives in Brooklyn.
Past Events
Sam Anderson is Critic at Large at the New York Times Magazine. He was formerly the Book Critic at New York Magazine, where he won the National Book Critics Circle's Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. His work has also appeared in Slate, The Paris Review, The American Scholar, Creative Nonfiction, The Oxford American and “The Best Technology Writing 2010.” He lives in Beacon and posts the best sentence he reads every day at twitter.com/shamblanderson.
Gwendolyn (Wendy) Bounds is a writer for The Wall Street Journal and anchor of the noon news & lifestyle show “WSJ Lunch Break” on WSJ.com. She can often be found wielding a chainsaw, weed-whacker or maul while reporting her first-person column called“About the House.” Bounds is an on-air contributor to ABC News and a speaker and moderator of panels on environmental issues, entrepreneurship and the arts. Her second non-fiction book, "Little Chapel on the River," was published in 2005 and chronicles her experiences at an old Irish pub in New York's historic Hudson River Valley after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She is a native of North Carolina and graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2010, Bounds was awarded the Next Generation Leadership Award from the N.C. Halls of Fame, which recognizes individuals representing leadership in their fields. Bounds currently lives in the Hudson River Valley and is a member and officer of the board of trustees for the Putnam County Historical Society & Foundry School Museum.
Frank Ortega has had work published by The Madison Review, Colorado Review, Ferro-Botanica, Seneca Review, Z Miscellaneous, Downtown, Amicus Journal, Paragraph, and most recently in the latest issue of Oberon as well as by Lost Horse Press in I Go to the Ruined Place, an anthology of human rights poetry. He has been awarded writing residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Edward F. Albee Foundation, Karolyi Foundation (France), Dorland Mountain Colony and Millay Colony for the Arts, and a Poetry Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He has read in New York City at the Poetry Society of America, Knitting Factory, New York Public Library, Brecht Forum, CB’s 313, and Barrow Street Poets. His most recent performance readings were Fifty States at Cornelia Street Café (NYC) and Louisiana Voices at Time & Space Limited (Hudson, NY) and he was recently awarded a performance grant from Poets & Writers, Inc. In March of 2010 he was invited to London as a Commendation Winner in the annual contest sponsored by The Poetry Society of the United Kingdom and in August was awarded a writing residency at the Jentel Foundation in Wyoming. In September he was invited to read at the University of Missoula in Montana. His poem, "Searching for an Affordable Crossbow", has just been published by the British literary journal BRAND, and another, "Laundry", was selected as a finalist for the 2011 Mississippi Review Prize and appears in their latest issue.
Sam Lipsyte is the author of the story collection Venus Drive and three novels: The Ask, a New York Times Notable book for 2010, The Subject Steve and Home Land, a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the first annual Believer Book Award. A 2008 Guggenheim Fellow, his fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Open City, The Paris Review,The Quarterly, Tin House, Noon, and many other places. He lives in New York and teaches at Columbia University.
Mary Gaitskill is the author of the novels “Two Girls, Fat and Thin” and “Veronica,” as well as the story collections “Bad Behavior,” “Because They Wanted To” and “Don't Cry.” Her story “Secretary” was the basis for the feature film of the same name. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. In 2002 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction. She has taught at U-C Berkeley, the University of Houston, New York University, Brown and Syracuse University. Her novel “Veronica” was nominated for the National Book Award in 2005; it was also nominated for the National Critic’s Circle Award and the L.A. Times Book Award. She is currently a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library.
David Hollander is the author of the novel L.I.E., a finalist for the New York Public Library’s “Young Lions” Award. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in McSweeney’s, Post Road, The New York Times Magazine, Poets & Writers, The Brooklyn Rail, Swink, Unsaid, The Black Warrior Review, and many other venues less impressive-sounding but equally well-intentioned. His work has been adapted for film and frequently anthologized, most recently in Best American Fantasy 2 and the forthcoming The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature. Hollander teaches in the graduate fiction writing program at Sarah Lawrence College, where he is revered as a God.
Max Watman is the author of Race Day, which was an editors’ choice in the New York Times Book Review. He was the horse racing correspondent for the New York Sun and has written for various publications on books, music, food, and drink. In 2008, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded Max a literary fellowship. His latest book Chasing the White Dog about moonshine was praised by many, including Publishers Weekly and NASCAR legend Junior Johnson. He lives in the Cold Spring.
Erika Wood is the author of the novel The Colorman (Tatra Press) released in 2009. She lives in Cold Spring where she is also an artist, a website designer and the first lady.
Jeffrey Yang is a poet, translator, and an editor at New Directions Publishing. He is the author of the poetry books An Aquarium (winner of the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Poetry Award) and the forthcoming Vanishing-Line, both with Graywolf Press. He has translated Su Shi's East Slope (Ugly Duckling Presse) and a collection of classical Chinese poems called Rhythm 226 (Tioronda Books). An anthology of nature poems from New Directions he edited--Birds, Beasts, and Seas--will be published in Spring 2011; and the new issue of the world literature anthology Two Lines: Some Kind of Beautiful Signal is edited by Natasha Wimmer (fiction) and Yang (poetry).
Jo Ann Beard is the author of a collection of autobiographical essays, The Boys of My Youth, and a forthcoming novel. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Best American Essays, and other magazines and anthologies. She received a Whiting Foundation Award and nonfiction fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Scott Spencer is the author of nine novels, including Endless Love (National Book Award Finalist 1980), Waking the Dead, A Ship Made of Paper (National Book Award Finalist 2003), and Willing. His nonfiction has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, O, Harper's, and The New York Times. He has a new book coming out in September.
Thomas Lux is the author of ten books of poetry including The Cradle Place (Houghton Mifflin, 2004); New and Selected Poems, 1975-1995 (1997), which was a finalist for the 1998 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; and Split Horizon (1994), for which he received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Jeffrey McDaniel is the author of 4 books of poetry, most recently The Endarkenment from the University of Pittsburgh Press. His previous three books are The Splinter Factory (2002); The Forgiveness Parade (1998); and Alibi School (1995). Individual poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, and many other literary magazines and anthologies.
Amber Tamblyn is an Emmy and Golden Globe Award–nominated actor and poet. She came to fame on the soap opera General Hospital followed by starring roles on the television series Joan of Arcadia and The Unusuals and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Her publications include the collections Free Stallion (2005) and Bang Ditto (2009) and she is the winner of a Borders Choice Award for Breakout Writing.
Aimee Bender is the author of three books: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) which was a NY Times Notable Book, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000) which was an L.A. Times pick of the year, and Willful Creatures (2005) which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year. Her short fiction has been published in Granta, GQ, Harper's, Tin House, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, and many more, as well as heard on PRI's This American Life and Selected Shorts. She's received two Pushcart prizes, and was nominated for the TipTree award in 2005.
This program is made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts Decentralization Program. In Putnam County, the Decentralization Program is administered by the Putnam Arts Council.
