Condalmo

Reading: "Personal Days" at Google.

(via Scott)

Sarvas is ill.

As in a sinus infection:

Folks, I am laid up with a fairly severe sinus infection which, in addition to making me completely miserable, is keeping me off planes. Therefore, I am genuinely heartbroken to have to cancel this week's two appearances, the first in Washington, D.C. and the second in Portsmouth, N.H.  I'm a "the show must go on" kind of guy but this grounding is doctor's orders, so I hope you will understand.

No N.H. appearance?  Damn it, I had my outfit already picked out.  I knew I should have rented it instead of buying it.  For sale, unused barely used, B.O. or ARC of the forthcoming Chris Adrian story collection:

Stacy Malkan reading. Dress: casual.

Not perhaps something you'd expect me to link to, but an upcoming reading at Longfellow Books:

Wednesday, May 7th at 7 pm
Stacy Malkan
Author of Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry

Join us this Wednesday when author and activist Stacy Malkan will be here to talk about her new book, Not Just a Pretty Face. The event is made possible by a local non-profit organization, the Enviromental Health Strategy Center. Stacy is the communications director of Health Care Without Harm, and in 2002, helped launch the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics after a startling discovery: the presence of industrial chemicals linked to birth defects in 70% of personal products tested (You can read the full report here). She spent a decade as an investigative journalist, and in recent years has been leading the fight to keep dangerous chemicals out of everyday products.

Not Just a Pretty Face is more than just disturbing statistics and unreported dangers. It's also the compelling story of the scientists, politicians, and activists engaged in this ongoing fight, and their struggles and successes. It's even the story of Stacy herself:

"I admit, I was a teenage make-up diva. I had an elaborate morning ritual involving eight types of make-up and multiple hair products, topped off with a generous cloud of Aqua Net Extra Super Hold hair spray. Twenty years later, I learned that my beauty routine was exposing me to 200 chemicals a day, many of them toxic--all before I even left the house to get on the school bus!"

The good news is, all is not lost. Not all companies are using dangerous substances, and thanks to the efforts of people like Stacy Malkan (and some great new resources--check out the Skin Deep Database) consumers can make informed choices about what they put in their bodies. So stop by this Wednesday, and educate yourself. Remember, knowledge is power.

Saunders in Portland.

Via Longfellow Books:

Thursday, September 27th
The Telling Room presents:
An Evening with George Saunders

at SPACE Gallery, 538 Congress Street
Doors open at 7:00 pm, reading starts at 7:30 pm, $7, All ages

Who else can pack so much dark humor, biting satire, and surreal madness in a piece of writing, bringing a sorry lot of characters to life amidst the chaos of the modern world, and through their struggles make us laugh, cry, but most of all question and think?

George Saunders is a one of a kind talent. His previous works (Civilwarland in Bad Decline and In Persuasion Nation among them) set a new standard for intelligent, irreverent storytelling, and his newly released collection of nonfiction, The Braindead Megaphone, continues down his path of insightful social critique. As a writer and a teacher, he’s a source of fearless inspiration, and thanks to the Telling Room, he’s coming to Portland.

For more information about George Saunders, this special event, and the Telling Room, visit www.tellingroom.org.

High school students interested in meeting with Saunders for a free talk on the craft of writing at 4 pm at The Telling Room should call (207) 321-2780 or email gibson@tellingroom.org.

Rooster loser to give reading.

Sorry.  Not fair.

Tuesday, April 17th at 7:00 pm
Gary Shteyngart
author of ABSURDISTAN
at SPACE Gallery, 538 Congress St.
Tickets $5, all ages

We're thrilled to help bring Gary Shteyngart here to Portland. Following the success of his first book, The Russian Debutante's Handbook, comes Absurdistan , now available for the first time in paperback. A wild satire of love, society, and international relations, Absurdistan has been lauded by critics everywhere. It's been heralded as one of the best books of the year by Time Magazine, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and more, and was listed as one the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year in 2006. (via Longfellow Books)

Update on Eggers reading in Portland, Maine.

Always with the Maine.  Not that other Portland, kids; the Portland.

Answers to questions asked (2,3) and unasked, but certainly most important to people in this area (1):

1. Assumedly to accomodate a larger crowd, the reading has been moved to the University of Southern Maine's Hannaford Hall.  As of this morning, the ticket seller is reporting that it's sold out anyway, but that you may be able to get tickets through the venue, which you'd have the best luck contacting through (207) 780-4141 / 1-800-800-4USM, or possibly at the door.  Seems unlikely, but possible.  Maybe Craigslist Maine will have tickets; not yet. 
2. Yes, I'm going to the reading and plan to do some sort of write-up about it. 
3. Yes, I did think of interviewing them, and they have agreed to do an interview with me. 

Eggers in Portland. (Maine.)

UPDATE:  The venue's been changed.  Details here.

----------

Via Longfellow Books:

Thanks to The Telling Room, a few lucky Portlanders will have an opportunity to meet Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng:

THE TELLING ROOM presents:
an evening with
DAVE EGGERS & VALENTINO ACHAK DENG
Lively stories and provocative discussion,
with a book signing to follow.
at SPACE Gallery, 538 Congress St.
Sunday, February 25th at 7 pm (Doors open at 6:30)

The event is a fundraiser for The Telling Room. Tickets are $10, but availability is very limited. Tickets may still be available at www.space538.org.

For everyone else, we're offering you an extraordinary opportunity: both Dave Eggers AND Valentino Achak Deng have agreed to autograph extra copies of What Is the What--and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to The Telling Room. You can buy them in person, over the phone (772-4045), or online at www.longfellowbooks.com. In any case, they're sure to go fast. Buy your copy today!

Who is DAVE EGGERS?

Dave Eggers is best known as the founder of McSweeney's. His first book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and his most recent, What Is The What, is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In addition, he is the founder of 826 National, an innovative non-profit creative writing program for young adults, fostering our next generation of writers.

What is THE TELLING ROOM?

Founded in 2004, The Telling Room is a non-profit writing center in downtown Portland for young writers and storytellers between the ages of 8 and 18. Much like Eggers' organization, 826 National, The Telling Room is dedicated to providing students and aspiring writers with writing workshops, one-on-one mentoring, public readings, publishing projects, and time with real live authors, free of charge.

Currently, the cornerstone of the Telling Room's programming is a community-based workshop called the Story House Project. Their teachers--all accomplished, working writers--are currently working with more than a dozen Portland-area students originally from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, and Romania on their coming to America stories.

The Kid and The Champ.

Maud gets a guest post on a recent reading with Adam Haslett (of You Are Not A Stranger Here) and Tobias Wolff (of many great story collections and Condalmo favorite Old School) in which young Mr. Haslett reads a story, much to the consternation of Mr. Wolff, who is prompted by his young peer into reading a story of his own, one he reports being nervous about reading, much to the delight of the audience.  I love these guys and strongly encourage them both to go another round, this time closer to Maine, in the very near future. 

Brian Evenson reading, University of Maine Orono, 12.7.06.

I recently had the pleasure of attending a reading given by Mr. Evenson as part of a reading series at UMO.  My notes from the event are horrid, but let me reconstruct what I can of it.  Any quotations here are paraphrased.

The introduction by a UMO literature professor noted Evenson's ability to "make "the other" inhabit the same space as we do," as opposed to other thriller/horror fiction that puts this frightening, unknown "other" near us.  Evenson takes the situation and writes it in such a way as to draw in our own beliefs and presence - to, as he stated himself, make us complicit to whatever is happening.  (Again, paraphrasing, but I was struck by this myself when reading The Open Curtain - because it's not simple shock, but written from a psychological approach and with characters that you feel drawn to, you find yourself with a feeling of looking out from inside the terror, as opposed to being a consumer of the terror.  If that makes any sense.)

The professor also told a funny story involving one particularly moneyed local contributor to the university, who remained nameless and whose name has been synonymous with thrillers and horror for many years.  (A king of the genre, if you will.)  He had his class read an earlier work by Evenson - the O. Henry awarding winning short story "Two Brothers" - and was particularly interested to hear back from one student who had made clear his great affection for this unnamed author.  The student came into class very angry after reading the story.  When the professor asked him why, the student through the Evenson book on the table and exclaimed something to the effect that the professor had ruined This Other Author for him entirely by exposing him to Evenson - meaning, This Other Author (oh hell, Stephen King already) had been soundly whupped off of his pedestal by Evenson's writing. 

Evenson was gracious in the face of this introduction.  He read from Altmann's Tongue, The Wavering Knife, and The Open Curtain.  Nice for me, as I got to hear some of his earlier stuff that I haven't read yet.  "The Ex-Father" in particular got some laughs from the crowd, which showed Evenson's comedic chops; interesting for me was that The Open Curtain also got some laughs, and I don't remember laughing during my read of it - I wonder if it was uneasy laughter on the part of the audience, or more the way it sounded when Evenson read it.  Maybe I was just more taken with the dark, dramatic side and so the humor slipped by me when I read the book. 

Much like at another recent reading - and apparently these were the only two readings that he chose these particular selections - he read a passage from the wedding ceremony and then a passage from the first few months of marriage between two of the characters.  (Those one dollar bills came in handy for multiple coffees the next day.) Evenson spoke of coming from an oral tradition of storytelling and how this has affected his writing; he told the student audience how he came to leave BYU, and how despite the difficulties this caused him, he feels that he's had a fairly easy life, which puts him in a position to write unflinchingly about darkness - as opposed to those who have truly suffered. 

Evenson dismisses any question of being labeled as a genre writer - there's good and bad writing in any category; he grew up reading sci-fi and fantasy, and there's plenty of good and bad in that genre in the same way there's plenty of good and bad in a so-called "literary fiction" genre.  Evenson said he feels the boundaries between them are artificial.

Noir was mentioned and I got in a question about different noir authors - it's started to click for me, given some of the books I've gotten tremendous enjoyment out of over the past 2-3 years, that noir is an area that 1) I've read very, very little, and 2) I need to read very, very much.  Evenson listed some favorites - Jim Thompson, Harry Steven Keeler, Richard Stark/Donald Westlake (and it's possible I'm mangling the names here) are all folks for me to look into.  I suspect I'm not the only one, as a student talking with him after the reading had similar questions and a copy of the graphic novelization of Auster's City of Glass in his hands. 

My position as an esteemed member of the book press (ha) snagged me an invitation to go out to dinner afterward with Evenson, the professors, and a few lucky students, where I knew to keep my mouth shut and listen, being in a room of people who know so much more about this stuff than I do. Great conversation, great food.  And a great reading.

Brian Evenson reading today.

Brian Evenson is reading this afternoon at University of Maine Orono, at Jenness Hall in Soderberg Auditorium.  The reading begins at 4:30PM.  For details, 207.581.3809.  Hope to see you there.

Wesley McNair reading at Longfellow.

I have been neglectful of my postings about Maine events.  This is a good one; Wes McNair is the real deal.  I regret not having taken a class with him when I was at UMF.  Here's the details, direct from Longfellow Books:

Thursday, September 28th at 7:00 pm
The Ghosts of You and Me by Wes McNair (Godine, $17.95)

Critically acclaimed Maine poet Wes McNair will be here Thursday night to read from his new collection of poetry, The Ghosts of You and Me.

"McNair is a New England poet, preserving the speech and character of a region intimately known. Because he is a true poet, his New England is unlimited. Whole lives fill small lines, real to this poet and real to us." - Donald Hall, US Poet Laureate

In this new collection, Wesley McNair offers his fullest vision of human life, both its hardships and its rich possibilities. Opening with poems about growing up with family conflict in a New England of broken farms and towns, McNair explores the limits of personal wishes and American dreams. Here too are haunting encounters with ghost selves, the dead, and the gangsters in old movies; lighter fare such as a poem about the poignant hopefulness of comb-overs; and a transcendent series of lyrics that celebrate self-acceptance and the spiritual dimension of "life on the ground." Praised by Maxine Kumin as "a master craftsman" and by Philip Levine as a poet with "a profound love and understanding of people and a superb ear," Wesley McNair here gives us his strongest and most moving volume to date, a major addition to what the Ruminator Review calls "one of the most individual bodies of work by a poet of his generation."

Wesley McNair is one of the nation's most decorated and accomplished poets. He is a real treasure for our state, and we're thrilled to have him for a reading.