7 PM, Mon. Dec 13.
GET LIT!
The Raconteur presents BENNINGTON in MANHATTAN
The KGB Bar
85 East Fourth Street, NYC
(btwn Bowery and 2nd Ave),
Students/graduates of the Bennington College MFA Writing Seminars (ranked as one of the top three programs of its kind by Poets & Writers Magazine) read from recent work. Willa Carroll, Megan Mayhew Bergman, Liz Arnold, Jeremy Oldfield, Robert Hansmann, Lisa Alexander, Hannah Tennant-Moore, Jennifer Acker, Alex Dawson, and the acclaimed poet/Bennington professor Timothy Liu. The work of student participants has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Guardian, Tin House, n+1, The Sun, Mississippi Review, Gulf Coast, Tricycle, Cimarron Review, Surface, The Best Buddhist Writing, Mary Magazine, Tuesday Journal, Ploughshares, One Story, The Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, Oxford American, and the 2010 anthology New Stories From the South.
Timothy Liu is the author of For Dust Thou Art; Of Thee I Sing, selected by Publishers Weekly as a 2004 Book-of-the-Year; Hard Evidence; Say Goodnight; Burnt Offerings; and Vox Angelica, which won the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award. Liu edited Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry and his poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Bomb, Grand Street, Kenyon Review, The Nation, New American Writing, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Virginia Quarterly Review.
Labeled "Best Literary Venue" in Manhattan by New York Magazine and The Village Voice, the iconic KGB Bar, once the expat meeting house of Ukrainian socialists, has grown over the last decade into one of the choicest venues for literary talent. Ricky Moody, Susan Orlean, Michael Cunningham, Robert Bly, Jimmy Breslin, Budd Schulberg, Joyce Carol Oates, Luc Sante, Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace, Jerry Stahl, and Jonathan Lethem have all appeared on its hallowed stage. FREE!
8 PM, Thurs. Dec 16
2,5 PENTYLSENTIRATE: THE PLAY
A Staged Reading/World Premiere
A New Steampunk Penny Dreadful by KAYLA BASHE
W/Carlyle Owens, Gwen Owens, Laurence Mintz, and Kristy Lauricella
The plucky young scientist, Ms. Anna Cartridge, and her bubbly best friend, the mildly famous actress Poppy Valdene, travel to a deceptively charming cliff side resort to save Dr. William Boyle, her fiancé and the ingenious inventor of 2,5-pentlyl sentirate, from the contemptible clutches of long-time rival and nefarious hypnotist, Charles Rawlingson, a would-be scientific mastermind. Running time: 45 min. FREE!
Kayla Bashe is one of my writing students. Witty, precocious, and sixteen, she self-published her first novel at thirteen, and was a recent runner-up in a poetry contest hosted by the Young Adult Review Network. Pentylsentirate is Kayla's first full-length play.
8 PM, Sat. Dec 18
HOLIDAY HOOTENANNY
Steve Kaplan/Guitar & Paul Caluori/Violin
Live Music/Party
400 years of music: from Gustav Holst's "In a Bleak Midwinter" to Coltrane's groovy "Greensleaves" to classic Zep (Led, that is), with detours into Celtic folk and Victorian dance hall. Steve Kaplan and Paul Caluori bring their love of traditional folk, classical music and acoustic jazz into sharp focus by using truly acoustic instruments to perform, exploring sonic possibilities without the "clutter" of other instrumentation. Their approach to the music is deceptively simple: wring out as much emotion as possible without losing the essential structure of the pieces they're playing. Expect a variety of spiked nogs, puissant punches, and a withering concoction called Yukon Cornelius, along with a range of baked, roasted and boiled dishes (capon anyone?), marinated tench, and an edible lifelike scene sculpted in colored marzipan. Plus Cream Wafers, Date Drops, Honey-Filled Biscuits, Cinnamon Stars, Zucker Hutchen, Fattigmands Bakkels, Drumkake, and Buttery Nut Rounds. FREE!
