[Yale-readings] Chace and Birkerts, Tues. 5/18, 7pm

[Kuhl, Nancy]

Ordinary Evening Reading Series Presents
Rebecca Chace and Sven Birkerts
at the Anchor Bar, New Haven
Tuesday, May 18th, 7 PM

Join us for one last spring fling as we conclude our spring 2010 season with novelist Rebecca Chace and nonfiction writer Sven Birkerts on Tuesday, May 18th, in the Anchor Bar's Mermaid Room, 272 College Street in New Haven.

"'A man can choose what he does with his own life,' Papa said to me just after it happened, when I was the only person he would speak to in the upstairs room of the Poughkeepsie house, where the shades remained drawn day after day, his wrists wrapped in bandages that were never removed in front of me. His engraving tools had been taken away from him, we all thought, for good.

"'What should I tell him?' I had asked Mother when I came downstairs. She looked up at me dry-eyed and fierce. 'No, he can't. You tell him that he can't choose anymore.'"

 - from Leaving Rock Harbor by Rebecca Chace

"The words we read - the impressions, the narratives, the conversations and thoughts of characters - not only touch our private sense of ourselves, but merge with it, shaping and directing it. After all, we use our own imaginative energy to bring the words to life and then project their content - their stuff - onto the interior screen. There the world we've generated from the written signals glows vividly, or flickers faintly, or moves in and out of resolution, depending on who we are, what we are reading, and the wattage of our moods."

- from the introduction to Reading Life: Books for the Ages by Sven Birkerts

Sven Birkerts is a noted essayist, editor, instructor, and reviewer. The editor of AGNI<http://www.bu.edu/agni/> since July 2002, he also is director of the Bennington Writing Seminars. His most recent books are Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again (2007, Graywolf) and Reading Life: Books for the Ages (2007, Graywolf). The best-known among his many books is The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (Faber & Faber), and he has also written a memoir, My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time (2002, Viking). Sven has edited a number of works, including Tolstoy's Dictaphone: Writers and the Muse (Graywolf), Writing Well (with Donald Hall), and The Evolving Canon (Allyn & Bacon).

The recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation grant, among others, Sven has also won the Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle and the Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award from PEN for the best book of essays. Sven reviews regularly for The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, The Atlantic, and other publications. He has taught writing at Harvard University, Emerson College, and Amherst. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children. Sven also plays guitar in the Doghouse Band.

Rebecca Chace is the author of the forthcoming novel Leaving Rock Harbor (Scribner, June, 2010) and the memoir Chautauqua Summer, which was a New York Times "Notable Book" and named "Editor's Choice" and one of the "Picks for Summer" in the New York Times Book Review. She wrote the novel Capture the Flag and the essay "Looking for Robinson Crusoe" (Fiction Magazine), which was recently nominated for a Pushcart prize.

An actress and playwright, Rebecca's plays include Colette (Theatre for the New City) in which she played Colette and hung from a trapeze. She also wrote Vershinin's Wife (performed in the FringeACT festival) and adapted Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening, (produced by Book-It Repertory Theatre at the Seattle Repertory Theatre). Capture the Flag was adapted as a screenplay by Rebecca and director Lisanne Skyler, and premiered at the Aspen Short Film Festival in April, 2010. In addition to acting in the film, Rebecca has moonlighted as a trapeze artist and likes to swing flaming torches (outdoors only).

Rebecca has won several prizes and fellowships. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Bard College and also teaches Fiction and Dramatic Writing in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the City College of New York. One of her favorite things in the world is to sing country western songs in the Doghouse Band with Sven Birkerts playing guitar, along with other members from the Bennington Writing Seminars.

We're back next fall on September 21st! The series returns on Tuesday, September 21, with author and playwright Caryl Phillips and fiction writer Matt Debenham.

The Ordinary Evening Reading Series presents readings by poets, novelists, and non-fiction writers. We welcome drinkers and teetotalers alike and hope you can join us for what the New Haven Independent called "one of those unofficial civic ventures that make New Haven such a vibrant place."

Check out previous and future reading dates, read writers' biographies, send us an email, and more at http://www.ordinaryevening.blogspot.com<http://www.ordinaryevening.blogspot.com/>.

The Yale-Readings Listserv is sponsored by the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. To post announcements about poetry and fiction readings, send the full text of the announcement, including contact information, to nancy.kuhl at yale.edu.<http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/yale-readings> Messages sent directly to the Yale-Readings list may not be posted.

For more information about Poetry at the Beinecke Library, visit: https://beineckepoetry.wordpress.com


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