Second Friday Café
Estha Weiner, Patricia Carlin, and Helen Barolini
Friday, December 4 at 7:30 pm

Join us this Friday evening when the Slapering Hol Press hosts its Second Friday Café beginning at 7:30 at the Writers' Center. Featured readers are poets Estha Weiner, Patricia Carlin, and Helen Barolini.

Estha Weiner is co-editor and contributor to Blues For Bill: A Tribute To William Matthews (Akron Poetry Series, 2005), author of The Mistress Manuscript (Book Works, 2009), and Transfiguration Begins At Home (Tiger Bark Press, 2009). Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including The New Republic, Barrow Street, and Rattapallax. She is a 2008 nominee for a Pushcart Prize, a 2005 winner of a Paterson Poetry Prize, and a 2008 Visiting Scholar at The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford, England. Estha is founder and director of The NY Writers Nights Series for Sarah Lawrence College, and serves on the Advisory Board of Slapering Hol Press. In her previous life, she was an actor and worked for BBC radio.

Patricia Carlin’s new poetry collection, Quantum Jitters, appeared this year from Marsh Hawk Press. Previous books include Original Green (poems) and Shakespeare’s Mortal Men (prose). She has published widely in journals and anthologies including BOMB, Boulevard, Verse, American Letters & Commentary, Pleiades, POOL, The Literary Review, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and she has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and VCCA. She teaches literature and poetry writing at The New School, and she co-edits the poetry journal Barrow Street. Elaine Equi describes Carlin’s “adventurous sense of form” and “unmistakably personal voice of wit and subtle intelligence” and adds, “but there is also a disquieting beauty to these lyrics that lingers long after”, and Molly Peacock remarks, “her voice is among those changing the face of poetry as we will come to know it in the 21st century.”

Helen Barolini is the author of Hudson River Haiku. She began a publishing career with her novel, Umbertina, and is the author of ten other books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Her short stories and essays have appeared in literary journals as well as in Best American Essays. Ms. Barolini’s collection The Dream Book, an anthology of women writers, was the recipient of an American Book Award, and she has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the MELUS Society. Most recently she received an Italian literary award, the Premio Acerbi, for the Italian edition of Umbertina. Ms. Barolini’s translation of stories by her late husband, the Italian author Antonio Barolini, appeared in The New Yorker. She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Syracuse University, received a MLS degree from Columbia University, and studied at the University of London.

Admission $5 (HVWC members $3).

A Reading by Cynthia Ozick
at Pelham Art Center, as part of Free Arts Day
Sunday, December 6 at 2:30 pm

Sunday, December 6 is the ninth annual Free Arts Day coordinated by ArtsWestchester. Free Arts Day, sponsored this year by Ronald McDonald House Charities and Target, gives participating organizations the opportunity to give back to their communities with a gift of art during this unforgettable day of free arts events. We are thrilled to announce that Cynthia Ozick, a resident of New Rochelle and one of our major living American writers, has generously agreed to read for us that day in the gallery of Pelham Art Center, our sister ArtsWestchester affiliate (and new writing workshop collaborator!) The reading will take place at 2:30 pm during the 1:30 - 3:30 opening reception for PAC’s annual artisan exhibition and sale, Home Sweet Home. The event is free and open to the general public.

Cynthia Ozick is acclaimed for her work in fiction and criticism. She was a finalist for the National Book Award for her novel, The Puttermesser Papers, which was named one of the top ten books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Fame & Folly, essays, was a finalist for the Pulitzer, and Heir for the Glimmering World, a novel, was shortlisted for the Man-Booker Award. She was a three-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; her essay collection, Quarrel & Quandary, won the 2001 award for criticism. Ozick’s work has been translated into languages worldwide. A dramatic sequel to her classic novella The Shawl was produced for the stage in New York, directed by Sidney Lumet. The Shawl was also selected for the National Endowment for the Arts nationwide Big Read program. In 2007 Ozick received the Presidential Medal for the Humanities.

Ms. Ozick will be introduced by author Roxana Robinson (Cost; A Perfect Stranger and Other Stories; Sweetwater) www.roxanarobinson.com

Pelham Art Center is located at 155 Fifth Avenue in Pelham, New York.
For directions, go to www.pelhamartcenter.org. For more information about Free Arts Day,
call ArtsWestchester at 914-428-4220 or go to www.artswestchester.org.

Writers' Center Selected
for WNYC's Salute The ARts *STAR* Initiative

WNYC Radio's Salute The ARts (STAR) Initiative is a program profiling 36 small cultural non-profit organizations in the New York Metropolitan area over a 12-month period, through on-air promotional announcements (93.9 fm and 820 am) and a listing on its website, www.wnyc.org. We are thrilled to announce that the Writers' Center has been selected by WNYC staff to be one of the three participating organizations for the month of December.

For more information about WNYC events and the *STAR* Initiative, go to http://www.wnyc.org/events/

Marthe Jocelyn
wins Writers' Trust Award

Congratulations to Marthe Jocelyn www.marthejocelyn.com on being this year’s recipient of the Vicky Metcalf Award for Children's Literature. This award honours a Canadian author of children's literature whose body of work is judged to demonstrate the highest literary standards. Marthe accepted this award last Tuesday at the 9th Annual Writers' Trust Awards held at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto, just a few days before traveling to New York where she is teaching a two-part workshop here at the Writers' Center. Her "Eleven Essentials To Writing Your Best Children's Book" began on Monday with full enrollment, and finishes up on Monday, December 7. We look forward to offering another workshop with Marthe during her next trip south, hopefully this coming spring! For more on the award, see http://tundrabooks.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/9th-annual-writers-trust-awards/ and http://www.writerstrust.com/events_writers_trust_awards.html.

Upcoming Writing Workshops

new session just added: Memoir Writing with Susan Hodara
at Pelham Art Center, 155 Fifth Avenue, Pelham, NY
6 Thursdays, December 3 - January 28 (skips Dec 24 & 31; Jan 14) from 7:00 to 9:00 pm

Are you compelled to write about the transforming events in your life? Do you want to record stories from your past? Are you haunted by vivid memories and drawn to explore the circumstances that surround them? Whether you are a first-time writer or seeking response to ongoing work, this class provides a supportive environment where you will read your writing aloud each week and receive constructive feedback. It also provides a structure to help you develop and maintain a regular writing practice. Writers of all levels welcome.

Susan Hodara has been writing memoir for over 15 years. Her work has been published in literary journals and anthologies including Illness & Grace, Terror & Transformation; The Westchester Review; I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers; salon.com; Cesium; and others. She has taught a private weekly memoir workshop since 2003. She is also a freelance journalist and editor whose work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Communication Arts, Harvard Magazine, Wesleyan Magazine, and others. With a Bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a Master's from Columbia University, she is Consulting Editor for Davler Media, the publisher of eight local parenting newspapers. www.susanhodara.com

new session: Creative Writing for 11 - 14 year olds with Charlotte Walsh
at Pelham Art Center, 155 Fifth Avenue, Pelham, NY
6 Mondays, November 30 - January 11 (skips Dec 28) from 5:00 to 6:30 pm

Some of us like nature stories, some like fantasy, some like adventure, some like personal stories, and some of us like to write poetry. In this workshop we will tap into our experiences and let our imaginations flow. We will listen to our dreams and ideas as we explore the world around us and the world within us. We will embark on an adventure in writing, as we mold our words into stories and poems.

Charlotte Walsh has taught poetry workshops at the Lakeland Schools Children’s Center, in New York City schools in cooperation with the Lehman College Art Gallery, The Scarsdale Young Writers’ Conference and the Armonk Library. Her works have been published in “Into the Teeth of the Wind” and by other small presses.

Details of all of our workshops, information on our instructors, and registration information can be found by going to www.writerscenter.org and clicking on Classes & Workshops. You can also register for a workshop by calling us at 914-332-5953. We're currently working on our Winter 2010 schedule and will begin posting details on our website very soon.