welcome to the blog of the department of english, philosophy, and languages at LIU Brooklyn!
John Casquarelli: News
John Casquarelli (Creative Writing MFA, 2012) has been awarded a Kafka Residency Prize and will be in Hostka, Czech Republic this summer.
Tina Barry: Readings from Mall Flower
Come hear Tina Barry, LIU MFA graduate, read from Mall
Flower, her newly released, first book of poetry and short fiction, at the
Inquiring Minds Book Store in Saugerties, NY (corner of Main and Partition).
Saugarties is a 2 hour drive from NYC, or Trailways bus ride from Port Authority. The date is 12/19
at 3 pm. Sugarties and the neighboring towns in Upstate NY, is a beautiful place to
spend a day or two, full of great bookstores, restaurants and stunning scenery.
Jessica Hagedorn said Mall Flower “shimmers with delicate
and gritty insights.”
Poet Joanna Fuhrman says, “Tina Barry is a master of the
image that packs it all in: social commentary, pathos, humor, you name it.”
Short story writer Jen Knox, says, “With a sort of precision and attention most
poets would reserve for the mapping of a butterfly wing, Barry
dedicates both her short fictions and poems to something equally perplexing and full
of beautiful angles and confusing symbols - she points the magnifying glass so that
it reflects the sun against the sheen of plastic, the semi-precious, the
hair-sprayed, fast-food fed realities that usher many of us into and out of days, years,
and even decades of
longing for genuine connections.”
Any questions, call Tina at 646-925-0281, or send an email to
tbarrywrites@gmail.com.
Patrick Horrigan: Actors With Accents
Patrick E. Horrigan (Dept. of English) and Eduardo Leanez present ACTORS WITH ACCENTS.
Celebrate the holidays and sing your heart out with ACTORS WITH ACCENTS. We have a very special program of comedy, drama, and music in store for you, featuring Serena Candiani, Gregory Couba, Martha Dao, Inma Heredia, Patrick E. Horrigan, Basil Horn, Eduardo Leanez, Priyank Rastogi, John Sannuto, Jasmine Spiess, Reggie Street, Raquel Vargas, and Adam Wiggins.
Mark your calendars!
Date: Friday, December 18, 2015
Time: 7:00 - 10:00 PM (performance to start at 8:00 PM)
Place: Teatro Circulo @ 64 East 4th St. between Bowery and 2nd Ave., 3rd floor; Manhattan
Admission: FREE! (but donations are welcome)
Like us on Facebook: Actors with Accents<https://www.facebook.com/pages/Actors-with-Accents/616475841746290 >
Follow us on Twitter: @actorswaccents
For more information, or to find out how to participate in an upcoming ACTORS WITH ACCENTS, visit us on Facebook or email us at actorswithaccents@aol.com<mailto:actorswithaccents@aol.com >.
"Everybody has an accent. What's yours?"
Celebrate the holidays and sing your heart out with ACTORS WITH ACCENTS. We have a very special program of comedy, drama, and music in store for you, featuring Serena Candiani, Gregory Couba, Martha Dao, Inma Heredia, Patrick E. Horrigan, Basil Horn, Eduardo Leanez, Priyank Rastogi, John Sannuto, Jasmine Spiess, Reggie Street, Raquel Vargas, and Adam Wiggins.
Mark your calendars!
Date: Friday, December 18, 2015
Time: 7:00 - 10:00 PM (performance to start at 8:00 PM)
Place: Teatro Circulo @ 64 East 4th St. between Bowery and 2nd Ave., 3rd floor; Manhattan
Admission: FREE! (but donations are welcome)
Like us on Facebook: Actors with Accents<https://www.facebook.
Follow us on Twitter: @actorswaccents
For more information, or to find out how to participate in an upcoming ACTORS WITH ACCENTS, visit us on Facebook or email us at actorswithaccents@aol.com<
"Everybody has an accent. What's yours?"
Update From Jonathan Haynes
Professor Jonathan Haynes (English) delivered the keynote address, “Nollywood and Nollywood Studies,” at the Media Studies in Nigeria: Genesis and Detours Conference, at the University of Ibadan, in Ibadan, Nigeria, November 2015.
Haynes was also a speaker in a roundtable discussion -- New Media and Literary Initiatives in Africa -- at the African Studies Association Annual Meeting, in San Diego, November 2015.
Haynes was also a speaker in a roundtable discussion -- New Media and Literary Initiatives in Africa -- at the African Studies Association Annual Meeting, in San Diego, November 2015.
Angus McLinn Will Read His Award-Winning Story "Baby Teeth" In Group Reading at Cornelia Street Cafe
Angus McLinn (Creative Writing MFA candidate) will be giving a public reading of his short story "Baby Teeth," which won first prize in the "Quarter Life Crisis" contest held by Three Rooms Press and will be featured in that press's forthcoming book Songs of My Selfie: An Anthology of Millennial Stories (April, 2016).
The reading will be at the Prose Poetry Party 3 at Cornelia Street Cafe (29 Cornelia Street, Manhattan) on Friday, December 4th.
The reading will be at the Prose Poetry Party 3 at Cornelia Street Cafe (29 Cornelia Street, Manhattan) on Friday, December 4th.
LIU Brooklyn Campus Goes Tobacco-Free
LIU
is committed to providing its students, employees, and visitors with a safe and
healthy environment as well as aggressively promoting the values of reason and ethics at the
core of higher education. In light of these commitments and the findings of the
U.S. Surgeon General that tobacco use and exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke
are significant health hazards, LIU Brooklyn, after many months of discussion
and outreach, has established the following tobacco-free policy, effective
January 1, 2016.
The
use of any form of tobacco is prohibited anywhere on the property of the LIU
Brooklyn campus, including all buildings, private offices, open park areas and
green space, University vehicles, playing fields, dormitories, locker rooms,
loading docks, storage areas, terraces and garages. This policy covers the use
of all tobacco products including, but not limited to, cigarette and cigar
smoking, chewing and smokeless tobacco, e-cigarettes, and powdered tobacco.
Further, all tobacco promotions, advertising, marketing, sponsorship of events
or individuals and distribution are prohibited from campus. This policy applies
to anyone who uses the LIU Brooklyn campus, including employees, students, and
visitors.
For
those who would like to participate in on-campus activities to promote a
smoke-free campus, please contact Carole Griffiths (cgriff@liu.edu)
or Jolanta Kruszelnicka (Jolanta.Kruszelnicka@liu.edu).
Patrick Horrigan: Messages for Gary
LIU Brooklyn's
Performing Arts Department Theatre Program presents MESSAGES FOR GARY, by
Patrick E. Horrigan (English Department, LIU Brooklyn),
directed by Iris Rose.
This absorbing one-act play documents the true-life story of a young political activist and writer named Gary Lucek. For unknown reasons, from 1987 until 1991 Gary saved all of his incoming answering machine tapes. Horrigan transcribed those tapes word for word (15 tapes in total, amounting to 18 hours of messages), and shaped them into this one-act play, which tells the story of Gary's life in silhouette. Through the ordinary voices of everyday people, the play chronicles the dawning of AIDS activism, the changing tides of local and national politics, as well as the often tangled lives of Gary's family, friends, lovers, and acquaintances. MESSAGES FOR GARY is both an intimate portrait of a unique individual and a devastating commentary on the struggle to find humanity in an increasingly alienated world. More than just a time capsule of the late 80s and early 90s, MESSAGES FOR GARY is a meditation on technology and its impact on the way we talk, listen, and care for each other.
This absorbing one-act play documents the true-life story of a young political activist and writer named Gary Lucek. For unknown reasons, from 1987 until 1991 Gary saved all of his incoming answering machine tapes. Horrigan transcribed those tapes word for word (15 tapes in total, amounting to 18 hours of messages), and shaped them into this one-act play, which tells the story of Gary's life in silhouette. Through the ordinary voices of everyday people, the play chronicles the dawning of AIDS activism, the changing tides of local and national politics, as well as the often tangled lives of Gary's family, friends, lovers, and acquaintances. MESSAGES FOR GARY is both an intimate portrait of a unique individual and a devastating commentary on the struggle to find humanity in an increasingly alienated world. More than just a time capsule of the late 80s and early 90s, MESSAGES FOR GARY is a meditation on technology and its impact on the way we talk, listen, and care for each other.
MESSAGES FOR GARY was a commercial and critical hit when it was first produced
as part of the 1999 New York International Fringe Festival. This new
production, with a wonderful cast of LIU-Brooklyn student actors, is the first
revival in over 16 years.
Student actors include Chris Burgess, Morgan Hotchkiss, Winchelle Jean-Pierre,
Kyle Petrshin, Samantha Samant, Alexander Simon, Aidan Wallace, and Andrew
Williams.
November
17-21, 2015 @ 7PM.
The Barbara and Melvin Pasternack Little Theatre (Humanities Building, Room H608).
The Barbara and Melvin Pasternack Little Theatre (Humanities Building, Room H608).
Tickets
are $5 each.
Email Valerie Cardinal at vscardinal@gmail.com to reserve seats.
Barbara Henning: Poems
Four poems from Twelve Green Rooms by Barbara
Henning (English) have been republished online at Water, Water
Everywhere, a blog of poems, short prose & art.
Book Party & Reading for Daniel Owen & Tony Iantosca
We are happy to report that two
recent alumni from the English Department's Creative Writing MFA program have
new poetry collections available from United Artists Books (Editor, Lewis
Warsh).
United Artists and Shoestring
Press, a fine art print shop and art space in Crown Heights, Brooklyn,
will be hosting a book party and reading for Toot Sweet by
Daniel Owen and Shut Up, Leaves by Tony Iantosca.
When:
Saturday, November 21, 2015, at 7
PM.
Where:
Shoestring Press
663 Classon Ave.
Brooklyn, NY
Directions:
2/3/4/5 to Franklin (on Eastern
Parkway)
C or S to Franklin (on Fulton)
A to Nostrand
G to Classon.
About the books....
Daniel Owen
Cover by Pareesa Pourian
ISBN 0-935992-41-3
58p. $15.00
“Like its punning title, Dan Owen’s
agile first collection is playful but with a subtext of urgency. “We ask for
nothing less than new / means of new streets,” he writes, but the request goes
unanswered—which is what happens when poems end but whatever prompted them
persists. Here, the prompts range from the cannibalism of cockroaches to the
terrifying specter of ‘the Capital skull,’ from an image of ‘40 active war
heads” to an intuition of existing in “a prison of safety.’ The cumulative
effect is one of a quiet, persistent claim to some kind of agency against the
odds. Even the puns and wordplay in Toot Sweet make for small
acts of resistance, not in lieu of but in line with action in the world
(‘things happen so we / take to the bridge’)—for puns also have the power to
divert traffic from its prescribed course. Owen has developed a disabused but
undeterred lyric mode, fit to metabolize ‘futurity’s bitty / beads of
fat.’” Anna Moschovakis
“Toot Sweet, Daniel
Owen’s exquisitely scaled long poem full of jaunts and song and a wry
foregrounding of diction, strums delight. And values bewilderment. And
acknowledges, without giving into, the power of despair. Its line--the sense of
where you are in a poem--goes horizontal when you think you’ve caught its
rhythm, never settles, is unmachine-like and possessed by touch. This makes for
a pleasure-giving, complex, and quite beautiful read, open to anyone who looks
for such qualities in this world.” Anselm Berrigan
Tony Iantosca
Cover by Zachary Cummings
ISBN 0-935992-42-1
96p. $15.00
“Tony Iantosca's sentences sharpen
all the senses at once; the heard world is as present as the seen and touched.
"I’m tapping my foot to nothing much," but actually, it's the
profound rhythm of elegy disguised as mundane, everyday life: street, couch,
phone, heart. Something or someone is missing, it could be a dog, it could be
the poet. There are rumors of Ted Greenwald and Joseph Ceravolo in these poems,
amidst their self-deprecating vernacular, calling to mind William Carlos
Williams when Spring and All was green. ‘Once poetry / was important I guess or
at least / peripherally relevant to something / everyone else was doing.’ This
is unfashionable and excellent poetry. Consider reading it to a lover so as to
elicit a reciprocal feeling, ‘or whatever.’ It will work.” Matvei
Yankelevich
“The poet-voyeur in Shut Up, Leaves
walks his reader into a world of senseless losses and discrepancies. We go
along, each poem a door to a new labyrinth of paradoxical situations, and we
believe we are really heading somewhere. Iantosca’s poems are compelling in
their imaginative engagement with language and emotion, and they make us
rethink the way we see and live in the world. This is a necessary book.” Barbara
Henning
Both books are available from the
following:
Small Press Distribution, spdbooks.org
United Artists Books, www.unitedartistsbooks.com.
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