Andre Dubus III, Author of "Townie," Describes the Bones of his Memoir as "I Know What Happened, But What the Hell Happened?"
Standing before a tightly packed audience upstairs at the South End Library, novelist Andre Dubus III talked about the genesis of Townie, and the pitfalls of writing memoirs in general.Townie was an "accidental memoir," he told the mesmerized listeners. He had written several novels (House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, Bluesman), but started on what became Townie as an exploration of why he never learned to play baseball the way his sons had. Watching their coaches yell things at them like "Bobby, I want nothing but strikes outta you, you hear that, nothing but strikes," Dubus III always assumed he never got into baseball because it was "too competitive" and therefore just "didn't give a damn." Four years and five hundred pages later he had produced a heart-rending memoir detailing his family's life after his "charismatic father," one of America's best short-story writers, Andre Dubus, "dumped" his mother, a former Louisiana beauty pagaent winner. She was 27, uneducated, with four young children and no income. She found a job and went back to school but her social-work career left the fridge bare and the rent often unpaid.
Andre Dubus III signing books
Author Doug Bauer, who introduced Dubus III, said Townie's "raw prose" told two tales: of growing up amid the economic despair of the mill towns of the Merrimack River valley with a mother "long on love and short on cash," and of Dubus III 's "generous acceptance" of his father as a man for whom writing was "essential." Dubus III, now reconciled and resolved about who his father was, told the audience he finds he has to defend him to reviewers and readers. A priest who had once been a stockbroker, asked him if his father, who wrote so "insightfully," had been "a fraud." "All I could say," Dubus III commented, "was that the writer was larger than the man. He was gifted, but AWOL as a father." He worried that perhaps he had not "nailed" his father in his memoir but realized one of the pitfalls of memoir-writing is that it is your truth at a particular moment in time, not someone else's. "It is easy to confuse the writer with the man," he told the crowd. "But I couldn't idealize him. My father was a deeply flawed man who, as a writer, illuminated the truth."
Dubus III's new novel, "Dirty Love," will appear in October. The author has promised to return to the South End Library for a repeat performance. His five favorite books are listed under The South End Reads.
The next South End Writes reading will be on Tuesday, March 19, when South End writer Mari Passananti will talk about her latest suspense thriller, The K Street Affair.
Tuesday, March 19, 6:30 p.m.
will read from her second novel, The K Street Affair.
Tuesday, April 16, 6:30 p.m.
Editor, writer of numerous books of fiction and non-fiction, and revered professor of English at Bennington College (to where he commutes from the South End), Bauer will read from his most recent collection of essays, What Happens Next?: Matters of Life and Death, to be published in the fall of 2013 by the University of Iowa Press. His previous work includes several novels, including Dexterity, The Very Air, and The Book of Famous Iowans; and two non-fiction books, Prairie City, Iowa and The Stuff of Fiction. He has edited anthologies, such as Prime Times: Writers on their favorite television shows; and Death by Pad Thai and Other Unforgettable Meals.
Tuesday, April 30, 6:30 p.m.
wrote The Art Forger as a fictionalized suspense thriller based on the heartbreaking heist of 13 irreplacable paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990. The author of five other suspense novels, and the non-fiction The Big Squeeze, the South End resident teaches creative writing at Northeastern University.
Tuesday, May 14, 6:30 p.m.
the spectacularly successful author who grew up in Dorchester and is ALSO a BPL trustee, published his latest novel, Live by Night, in 2012. Set in Boston in the 1920s, the New York Times’ reviewer called the book a “sentence-by-sentence pleasure.” Previous novels include, among others, Gone Baby Gone,Shutter Islandand Mystic River, all made into fabulous movies.
Tuesday, May 21, 6:30 p.m.
The Dovekeepers, a historical novel describing the AD70 massacre at Masada from the point of view of four women at the fortress before it fell during the Jewish-Roman war, is the most recent of the nearly two dozen novels by Hoffman and just came out in paperback. To be introduced by Sue Miller.
Tuesday, June 11, 6:30 p.m.
the local filmmaker whose mesmerizing documentary, Angelo Unwritten, has followed the life of a teenager adopted out of foster care when he was twelve, will return with an update of new material gathered since December 2011.
Tuesday, June 18, 6:30 p.m.
will return to read from his current work-in-progress, retracing the steps of his father who, as a soldier, was sent to Europe during the Second World War.
Looking for Good Reads? Visiting "South End Writes" Authors List Their Five Favorite Books...
reading books
Susan Naimark (09/20/12 "The Education of a White Parent: Wrestling with Race and Opportunity in the Boston Public Schools"): 1. The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson
2. The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander
3. Country of My Skull, by Antjie Krog
4. The Education of a WASP, by Lois M. Stalvey
5. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman
L. Annette Binder (09/25/12, "Rise")
1. No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy
2. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
3. Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
4. Play It as It Lays, by Joan Didion
5. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, by David Foster Wallace
Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (10/09/12: "The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk and Adventure in the 25 Years after Fifty")
1. Still Alice by Lisa Genova
2. The Known World by Edward P. Jones
3. Plainsong by Kent Haruf
4. Brown Girl Brownstones by Paule Marshall
5. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Margaret Sullivan and Sgt. Detective Dr. Kim L. Gaddy (10/16/12:“Boston’s Fairest,” an exhibit and lecture about the first 50 years of women in the Boston Police Department by the BPD’s archivist, documenting the careers of wives and mothers who took on gangsters and bootleggers.)
1.Sarah's Long Walk: The free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America, by Stephen Kendrick and Paul Kendrick
2. THE SISTERS: The Saga of the Mitford Family, by Mary S. Lovell
3. DARK TIDE: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, by Stephen Puleo
4. A City in Terror : The 1919 Boston Police Strike, by Francis Russell. Digitized by the Boston Public Library at <http://archive.org/details/officersmenstati00tapp>http://archive.org/details/officersmenstati00tapp
Maryanne O'Hara (10/2//5/12, "Cascade")
1. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
2. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
3. Immortality, Milan Kundera
4. The Master, Colm Toibin
5. Selected Stories, Alice Munro
6. Collected Stories, William Trevor
Margot Livesey (10/30/12, "The Flight of Gemma Hardy")
1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
2. The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West
3. The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
4. Middlemarch by George Elliot
5. The Leopard by Lampedusa
Stephen Davis(11/1/12, "More Room in a Broken Heart: the True Adventures of Carly Simon")
1. The Aleph, by Jorge Luis Borges
2. Collected Stories, by Paul Bowles
3. Offshore, by Penelope Fitzgerald
4. For Your Eyes Only, by Ian Fleming
5. Spies of the Balkans, by Alan Furst
Leah Hager Cohen (1/15/13, "The Grief of Others")
1. How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn
2. Dime Store Alchemy, by Charles Simic
3. The Keeping Days, by Norma Johnston
4. Binocular Vision, by Edith Pearlman
5. Middlemarch, by George Eliot
Lynne Potts(1/29, "A Block in Time: a History of the South End from a Window on Holyoke Street")
1. The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino (fiction)
2. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (fiction)
3. Omenos, by Derek Walcott (poetry)
4. To the Lighthouse , by Virginia Woolf (fiction)
5. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: a Journey through Yugoslavia," by Rebecca West (non-fiction)
April Bernard (2/5, "Miss Fuller")
1. Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
2. Geography IIIby Elizabeth Bishop
3. Virgil's Eclogues, translation by David Ferry
4. Villette by Charlotte Bronte
5. Desire by Frank Bidart
Andre Dubus III(2/26, "Townie")
1. Ironweed, by William Kennedy
2. Let the Great World Spin, by Column McCann
3. Any short story collection by Alice Munro
4. Bastard Out of Carolina, by Dorothy Alison
5. Dalva, by Jim Harrison
Mari Passananti (3/19, "The K Street Affair")
1. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
2. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
3. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
4. The God of Small Things by Arundati Roy
5. A Time to Kill by John Grisham
Doug Bauer (4/16, "What Happens Next: Matters of Life and Death")
1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Collected Stories of John Cheever;
3. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
4. The Professor's House by Willa Cather
5. Ragtime, by E. L. Doctorow
Barbara Shapiro (4/30, "The Art Forger")
1. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
2. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
3. The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien
4. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
5. Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
Dennis Lehane (5/14, "Live by Night")
1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. Clockers, by Richard Price
3. Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
4. The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley
5. The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas
Alice Hoffman (5/21, "The Dovekeepers")
1. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
2. Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury
3. Andrew Lang's Books of Fairytales (any color)
4. Beloved, Toni Morrrison
5. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Local History and Dynamic Poetry Draw Big Crowds for Lynne Potts (A Block in Time) and Poet April Bernard (Miss Fuller, and New Poems)
It's a good thing that the South End Library offers elevator access to its second-floor community room: It allowed a harried-looking mother with three young children and a squeaky-wheeled stroller to come up and listen to a reading underway by poet April Bernard on a recent Tuesday night. "It made my day," the grateful mother said afterwards.
She was not alone. A large crowd had taken every seat in the room, spellbound first by Bernard's forceful reading from her 2012 fictionalized history of Boston-based feminist Margaret Fuller, followed by five new poems received with appreciative laughter and applause. A week earlier, a standing-room audience listened intently to Lynne Potts describe her 35 years living on Holyoke Street and the research she has done to tie the colorful fortunes of that single block to the larger tale of the South End's many cycles of rise and decline.
Poet April Bernard signing books
While "Miss Fuller" is fictionalized history, it is based on years of research and "coincides with facts as known," said Bernard, who teaches creative writing at Skidmore College. The story of how Henry Thoreau traveled to the shores of Long Island hoping to find a manuscript that might have survived the shipwreck in which Fuller drowned with her husband and young son in 1850, "planted a seed in my tooth" when she first heard of it, said Bernard. "What if he found something else?" That conceit is at the root of the novel's fiction, and allowed Bernard to weave a new and complex picture of Fuller's character and beliefs, set in tumultuous times when the changes she advocated caused great discomfort not just to close friends and others but also to herself. After a few audience questions, Bernard read five new poems, titled, When I was Thirteen I Saw Uncle Vanya; Werner Herzog in the Amazon; Tis Late; Lids; and Thunder-Mountain-Mesa-Valley-Ridge, all likely to be included in Bernard's next collection. Both Lynne Potts's and April Bernard's five favorite books can be found on this web site under the tab The South End Reads.
Local author Lynne Potts signing books
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On Tuesday, February 26, acclaimed author Andre Dubus III (House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days) will read from his riveting memoir, Townie, in which he describes the violence, bullying and loneliness of his childhoodafter his father, short-story writer Andre Dubus, leaves the family. He will be introduced by his colleague, Doug Bauer. The reading starts at 6:30 PM.
Those who missed Lynne Potts's reading have another chance to hear her when she will read from her book on Thursday, February 21 at the South End Historical Society, 532 Massachusetts Ave, at 6:30 PM. Reservations are required: 617 536-4445 or by email at admin@southendhistoricalsociety.org.
Nemo the Nor'easter Forces the Closing of the Entire Boston Public Library System --Including the South End Library-- Friday, February 8, Saturday, February 9 and Sunday, February 10.
Nemo the Nor'easter
On a day filled with headlines like "Potential Historic Blizzard Looms" and "Historic Crippling Blizzard Ahead" the Boston Public Library wisely decided to shut down all its branches Friday and Saturday February 8 and 9. And yes, that includes the South End library. In addition, the Central Library at Copley Square, the only facility in the library system open on Sundays, will be closed on Sunday, February 10, as well.
If you can't make it through the snowy weekend without that book or DVD you meant to pick up, hop on a train, bus or bike and get to the Copley Library now: it's open tonight till nine o'clock. Otherwise, dust off the sled and the trash-can lids, flatten out the cardboard box that new 80-inch television screen came in, and go sledding in Titus Sparrow Park. It will be the hot spot in the South End.
Poet April Bernard to Read from "Miss Fuller," a Fictionalized History of Feminist Margaret Fuller, Once "the Most Famous Woman in America," Tuesday, February 5, 6:30 PM at the SE Library
The cover of Miss Fuller shows a stormy sea seen from the coast, ostensibly New York's Fire Island, where, in 1850, Margaret Fuller perished in a shipwreck with her Italian husband and two-year-old son. The tragic dimensions of Fuller's life and death are narrated from the points of view of various characters belonging to the Concord Transcendentalists, who had awaited her return. Henry David Thoreau, traveling to Fire Island hoping to find manuscripts among the soaked debris that washed ashore after the hurricane passed, finds something else instead, which forms the fictionalized framework of Bernard's 2012 work.
April Bernard is a novelist, poet, and essayist whose most recent book of poems is Romanticism (2009). Previous poetry collections are Blackbird Bye Bye, Psalms, and Swan Electric. Her work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, The Nation, and Slate. She has taught widely and was for many years a magazine and book editor in New York City. Her honors include a Guggenheim award, the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, a Whitney Humanities Fellowship at Yale University, a Sidney Harman Fellowship, and the Stover Prize. As Director of Creative Writing, she is a member of the English Department faculty at Skidmore College, and is also on the faculty of the Bennington MFA Writing Seminars. Her five favorite novels are listed under The South End Reads tab of the FOSEL web site.
Ms. Bernard will read from Miss Fuller as well as from her poetry collection, Romanticism. Both books will be available for sale, signing and borrowing from the library. The writer will be introduced by author Doug Bauer, also on the faculty of Bennington College, whose next collection of essays --What Happens Next?--will be published this fall.
On February 26, the South End Writes will host nationally known writer Andre Dubus III, who will read from Townie, a Memoir.
New Art Journaling (for the Young) and Writing Workshops (for the Young at Heart) to Start Thursdays at the South End Branch
art journaling
Two new art and writing workshop will be offered at the South End branch on Thursday afternoons, starting next week for one and a week later for the other. The first, "Art Journaling for Fifth-graders and Up" has been organized by children's librarian Margaret Gardner and will be held under the guidance of graphic designer Mary Owens, a long-time library supporter who also designs the snappy posters for The South End Writes series. The first art-journaling workshop will be held next Thursday from 4:00 -5:00 PM, followed by additional ones each last Thursday of the month. In case you wondered what this might be about, here's a link to an art-journaling web site for kids, teens and beginners. Participants will create their own keepsake art journals in which to draw, write and make collages. The first session will be devoted to making the journals from materials provided for free at the library.
Ernest Hemmingway
"Writing in the World: a Creative Writing Workshop for Adults" will beginThursday, February 7 at 3:00 PM and run weekly through April 11. Led by writer and teacher, Debka Colson, the workshop is aimed at beginning writers age 55 and up to experiment with short fiction and poetry. Students will develop their skills through writing prompts, discussing examples by major writers, peer review and a public reading/reception at the end of the course. Fun exercises will help writing students reflect on life in their communities, and their roles in it, from a fresh perspective. The class is limited to 10 participants who must commit to attending all sessions. Registration is required: call Anne Smart at 617 536-8241.
The writing workshop was funded by the MetLife Foundation in partnership with the Boston Public Library, Lifetime Arts Inc., and the American Library Association's Public Programming Office. In addition, The Friends of the South End Library are paying for materials and refreshments.
Looking Back 45 Years and Longer, Lynne Potts Will Read from her Memoir, "A Block in Time: a History of the South End from a Window on Holyoke Street" Tuesday, January 29, 6:30 PM
Lynne Potts
"Holyoke Street, a single block of row houses in the South End of Boston, was built in the 1860s as housing for upper- and middle-class families," is how Lynne Potts begins the memoir of her time in what is now the largest Victorian neighborhood in the United States. In a carefully documented paperback illustrated with photographs and drawings, the author weaves a history of the beginnings of the South End in the early 1800s, when it was still mostly underwater, to its nascent form as a neighborhood for wealthy Bostonians decades later, and its subsequent decline toward the end of the 19th century. How it reemerged in the 20th and 21st centuries as one of the most sought-after and diverse neighborhoods in Boston is the tale with which she intertwines her own, arriving first in 1968 from New York City as a student and ten years later as a single mother with two young children, Sam and Emmy, to whom the book is dedicated.
Many names of local characters who helped shape the history of the neighborhood can be found in the pages of this delightful book, some still around, others not, including Eleanor Strong, Allan Crite, Ann Hershfang, Marcie Curry and Mel King. The movement to preserve open space in the neighborhood by means of establishing community garden plots, the opening of first Bread and Circus store (now Whole Foods), the creation of Southwest Corridor Park and historic fights to keep the South End branch of the Boston Public Library open are covered as well. In the 1980s, Potts began to write about it all for The South End News, then just founded as a 24-page local newspaper by Alison Barnet and Skip Rosenthal.
Lynne Potts is a poet who currently lives both in the South End and in New York City, where she received an MFA from Columbia University. Her poems have appeared in the Paris Review and other literary journals, and she was the Poetry Editor of the Columbia Journal of Literature and Art. Her five favorite books are listed under The South End Reads on this web site.
Author Leah Hager Cohen Explores the Unique Dimension of Sorrow Experienced by Each of her Characters in her Novel, "The Grief of Others,"
A roomful of people greeted Leah Hager Cohen on January 15 when she read at the South End branch from her latest, and highly acclaimed, novel, The Grief of Others. Introduced by author Doug Bauer, who substituted for Sue Miller, out with a bad cold, Hager Cohen started out by saying that she is happiest when writing but "second happiest' when in a library "with other library people." She read a section from the novel that harkened back to a summer vacation in a family cabin where a couple and three children from two relationships are united for the first time in years, each bringing with them an assortment of wounds and sorrows that are explored underneath the starry skies of the Adirondack mountains, a place where, as Hager Cohen described it, the lake's black water at night "is warmer than the air." This is the first novel where she used physical details from places she knows well, the Adirondacks and the town of Nyack, NY, something she had resisted in her previous work, she told the spellbound audience, until her agent suggested doing otherwise for this novel.
Author Leah Hager Cohen at the South End library
How people grieve is not quantifiable, the author suggested in response to various comments about how contemporary culture deals with sorrows large and small because "we each do it in our own unique way." Her mother taught her "no one lives very long without sorrow or grief," and that, through like experiences, we are all part of a larger community, in our own time --horizontally-- and through time --vertically-- with our ancestors and descendants.
One of Hager Cohen's earlier non-fiction books, Train Go Sorry, offered personal history of a different kind, specifically the experience of her immigrant grandparents, both deaf, and of her father who ran a school for deaf children, told from the author's perspective as a person with hearing. Or, as Doug Bauer put it, as someone who "yearns to be part of that culture, one she grew up so close to, and yet could not fully be a member of."
Author Doug Bauer introduced Hager Cohen
Answering a question from the audience of how she became a writer Hager Cohen said that, when she was little, she would name each of her fingers and tell stories about them, which her mother transcribed. "She gave me the gift of taking seriously what I was doing," Hager Cohen said. Later on, in journalism school, a professor asked whether he could show the non-fiction she had written, about the deaf culture, to his agent, which set her on the road to being a published writer, first in non-fiction, but in fiction shortly after.
Hager Cohen said she is "excited" about the new book she is working on: It is based on the question of how to love, or live with, someone who is hard to love.
Her five favorite books are listed on the FOSEL web site under The South End Reads.
Local Advisors for BPL's Project to Add Stores to Copley Library Express Concern about Mixing Library Mission with Commerce but Agree on One Thing: Johnson Building Needs a Major Overhaul
johnson building
A group of local advisors from the Back Bay met at the BPL for the second time on January 10 to look into a proposal by the Menino administration to add retail commercial space to what is by all accounts a dead zone on Boylston Street: the 1972 addition to the Central Library's McKim building, otherwise known as the Johnson building. Its cavernous street-level entry features Soviet-style security gates, a drab circulation counter and a lonely reference desk way down in the center, but "nothing that welcomes or embraces me," complained Meg Mainzer-Cohen of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay. The conference room where the meeting was held came itself under fire from Karen Cord Taylor of the Independent Newspaper Group who looked at the colorless rug, unattractive wood paneling and neon lighting and declared it all "ugly."
Yet fixing the building's shortcomings by adding commercial space to attract shoppers to the library did not appear to be the logical solution to the Community Advisory Committee's (CAC) members, either. "There's no doubt about the demand. I could rent the space tomorrow," said Chris Gordon, a BPL development advisor. "But is it compatible with the BPL? Does it have to be integrated or separate? Is the mission of the BPL revenue or library services?" "Store owners don't want to feel they're passed by on the way to somewhere else, like a library," added Peter Sherin, also of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay. "I have an aversion to franchises," commented Cord Taylor. "Any retail here should be iconic for Boston. Another "Curious George" store puts me off."
Support for creating a conference center that would bring in revenue seemed equally lukewarm. "There's no daylight downstairs," Gordon pointed out. Cord Taylor said that a conference center is someplace you'd want to go to, not because you have to. She reiterated there's little architectural or visual interest in the Johnson building, as opposed to the adjacent McKim Building, which is filled with natural light and architectural detail. "Or like the JFK Library," piped up several other advisors, extolling the breathtaking water views from that library. How to make the BPL competitive with already available conference space in Boston was not an easy task, the consensus was, and unlikely to generate a lot of money.
A market analysis report by a consultant group, Byrne-McKinney, was not yet available for the committee's discussion, but library-mission-centered proposals seemed to generate most excitement among its members: a light-filled Children's Room; a prominently displayed exhibit about the history of libraries; a place for chess instruction or even a 'Little League of Chess centered in the library.' Architect Bill Rawn, who in the 1980s worked on a masterplan to revamp the New York Public Library and more recently designed both the successful Mattapan branch as well as the Cambridge Public Library, said his take on libraries is that they are egalitarian institutions that should be accessible to everyone and offer opportunities to all. "Parts of the Johnson building work very well, but others don't match the excitement of the McKim building,"said Rawn, whose firm heads the Johnson Improvements project. Referring to the library's Boylston Street location as a "weak retail block," Rawn suggested that "we have to think about this project as one that extends into the sidewalk."
BPL trustee, Rep. Byron Rushing, who attended the meeting as an observer, said plainly that the Johnson building was a 'mistake' that we are now 'stuck with.' "Had we had a Community Advisory Committee when planning the Johnson building, it would never have been built," he asserted. "Before there was a Johnson building, we never talked about a McKim building. It was always the Central Library or Copley Library." Rushing expressed a strong desire to change the name of the Johnson building. "The trustees are very open to this project," he said. "We don't want to hear that something is 'too cutting-edge' or even 'too expensive.' "
The next meeting for the Johnson Improvements project will be Wednesday, March 13, 8:30 am, Central Library's Commonwealth Salon. The public is invited.
The "South End Writes" Author Series Resumes Tuesday, January 15, with Leah Hager Cohen Reading from her 2012 Novel, "The Grief of Others"
FOSEL president Marleen Nienhuis, author Margot Livesey and novelist Sue Miller
When the Friends of the South End Library (FOSEL) began to sponsor authors at the South End Library to read from their work three years ago, we had no idea how popular the adventure would become, or whether anyone would show up. What we did know was that the South End branch had an incredibly supportive and interested staff who would help us, that the South End is, was, and likely will always be a haven for writers, artists, musicians and other creative minds, and that we had a wonderful graphic designer on our board, Mary Owens, who would generously and cleverly volunteer to do the posters we needed to announce the readings.
It's easy to take for granted all the different roles a free public library plays in the community it serves, from the vaulted place of research to the simple refuge that is cool in the summer, warm in the winter, with a free, clean bathroom in a culture where that sort of basic amenity can be hard to find.
What FOSEL was not fully cognizant of at the time is that a library is also a place where local residents can find out who else actually lives here, who is writing what, who is thinking what, and what our local history is. This is what The South End Writes has become: a mirror of literary achievement by the many fine writers, journalists and poets who live where we live, shop where we shop, take the T and go to the polls just like we do. We just didn't know who they were, but increasingly we do. Writers are invited by FOSEL board members, by FOSEL supporters and literary luminaries like Sue Miller and Doug Bauer, and by the South End Library staff, headed by Anne Smart. The ones who have enriched us with their work include Sue Miller, Doug Bauer, Chris Kimball, Joanne Chang, John Sacco, Phil Gambone, Johnny Diaz, Susan Naimark,, Henri Cole, Sara Lawrence Lightfoot, Stephen Davis, Margot Livesey, Alice Stone, Mari Passananti, Maryanne O'Hara, L. Annette Binder, Edith Pearlman, Christine Chamberlain, Sven Birkerts, Wendy Wunder, Lily King, Susan Conley, Alison Barnet and Scott Pomfret, among others.
Coming up between now and the summer are:Leah Hager Cohen, Lynne Potts, April Bernard, Andre Dubus III, Mari Passananti, Doug Bauer, Dennis Lehane, Alice Hoffman, Alice Stone, and Phil Gambone. Some will read at the South End branch for the first time; others are returning to update us on new work, or work in progress.
Perhaps the best compliment paid to The South End Writes is that another library Friends group, at the Jamaica Plain branch, has begun its own series, Jamaica Plain Writes, with the first author, JP resident Chuck Collins, appearing there on Thursday, January 24, at 6:45 p.m. Collins is an expert on U.S. inequality, the author of several books, and a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank. For further information about the JP Writes series, check the link to their web site here.
Below is the list of writers scheduled to appear at the South End Library until July. Occasionally, schedules need to change, but FOSEL posts them on this web site as soon as they become known.
Wishing you a Happy and Writerly New Year....
UPCOMING READINGS FOR THE SOUTH END WRITES ARE:
January 15, 2013, 6:30 p.m.
Leah Hager Cohen
The author, who publishes both fiction and non-fiction, will read from her latest novel which the New York Times described as “her best work yet.” With an introduction by Sue Miller
Tuesday, January 29, 6:30 p.m.
A Block in Time: a History of Boston’s South End from a Window on Holyoke Street. The author, who moved into a house on Holyoke Street with two young children in 1978, has written a personal history that includes what it was like to be young in the 60s, the turmoil and transformations of the South End from the time it was created out of Boston Bay, and captivating details of the characters in her neighborhood. A poet as well as a writer, she splits her time living on Rutland Street and in New York City, where she was Poetry Editor of the Columbia Journal of Literature and Art.
Tuesday, February 5, 6:30 p.m.
The poet (Romanticism)and novelist, most recently of history (Miss Fuller), is currently the director of creative writing at Skidmore College. With an introduction by South End author Doug Bauer, whose own new collection of essays, "What Happens Next?" will come out this fall.
Tuesday, February 26, 6:30 p.m.
Andre Dubus III
The examination of the author’s violent past has been described ”best book” of non-fiction of 2011 and 2012 by many literary-gate guardians, and was preceded by his previous novelsHouse of Sand and Fog (made into a movie by the same name) and The Garden of Last Days. Sue Miller will introduce the author.
Tuesday, March 19, 6:30 p.m.
will read from her second novel, The K Street Affair.
Tuesday, April 16, 6:30 p.m.
Editor, writer of numerous books of fiction and non-fiction, and revered professor of English at Bennington College (to where he commutes from the South End), Bauer will read from his most recent collection of essays, What Happens Next?, to be published in the fall of 2013 by the University of Iowa Press.
Tuesday, May 14, 6:30 p.m.
Dennis Lehane, the spectacularly successful author who grew up in Dorchester and is ALSO a BPL trustee, published his latest novel, Live by Night, in 2012. Set in Boston in the 1920s, the New York Times’ reviewer called the book a “sentence-by-sentence pleasure.”
Tuesday, May 21, 6:30 p.m.
The Dovekeepers, a historical novel describing the AD70 massacre at Masada from the point of view of four women at the fortress before it fell during the Jewish-Roman war, is the most recent of the nearly two dozen novels by Hoffman and just came out in paperback. To be introduced by Sue Miller.
Tuesday, June 11, 6:30 p.m.
the local filmmaker whose mesmerizing documentary, Angelo Unwritten, has followed the life of a teenager adopted out of foster care when he was twelve, will return with an update of new material gathered since December 2011.
Tuesday, June 18, 6:30 p.m.
will return to read from his current work-in-progress, retracing the steps of his father who, as a soldier, was sent to Europe during the Second World War.
The five favorite books recommended by the authors mentioned above, and previous speakers, can be found under THE SOUTH END READS.
Pat Loomis & Friends Will Play Their Annual Holiday Jazz Concert at the South End Library Tuesday, December 18 at 6:30 P.M.; Delicious Food Provided by Staff and FOSEL
Pat Loomis & Summer Friends
Every year around the holidays, Pat Loomis & Friends come to the South End Library and get the joint clapping and cheering with their passionate jazz performance. The teenage son of Loomis takes a turn at the horn. The cheers really take off. The hot chili, shopped for and cooked by library staff and a spouse, is heaped on paper plates. Plastic forks and knives tick-tock at the edges of the library tables in synch with the rhythm. The chicken is gone before you know it. Patrons lean against bookshelves or sit on whatever chairs can be pulled around. It's that season, and we need this now, more than we ever thought. It's free, too. What are you waiting for..Tuesday night, December 18, 6:30 p.m. See you there..
South End Photographer/Social Worker Jennifer Coplon Will Talk About Her "Ugandan Elders" Exhibit December 12 at the South End Library
Ugandan Elders Exhibit
On Wednesday, December 12, the strikingly beautiful portraits of Ugandan elders now on exhibit at the South End Library will be further illuminated by Jennifer Coplon, a longtime South End resident and clinical social worker who took the pictures when she traveled to the African country last year. Coplon uses photography to capture "the resilience, resourcefulness, and courage of elders who are often considered "down and out." The exhibit, Ugandan Elders: JaJa Mamas and Papas, is part of a larger study in which Coplon is interviewing and photographing elders who have often been marginalized or discounted. Her next focus will be residents at Olmsted Green, the newest housing offered by Hearth, Inc. for formerly homeless elders.
The talk will begin at 6 p.m.
Puppeteer Nicola McEldowney & Her Puppet Troupe Will Perform "The Story of Ferdinand" at the South End Library, Tuesday, November 26, at 6:30 PM
Puppeteer Nicola McEldowney
If everyone were like Ferdinand the Bull, we could replace the Defense Department with a very large Department of Peaceful Negotiations. If you want to know more about this revolutionary thought, come to the South End Library on Tuesday, November 27 to watch puppeteer Nicola McEldowney perform the heart-warming 1936 children's tale by Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson, The Story of Ferdinand, about sweet-natured Ferdinand who'd rather smell the flowers than lock horns with other bulls and fight.
Nicola McEldowney is a graduate of Columbia University who lived in Paris in 2010 where she studied puppet theatre. She wrote, directed, and performed in several original shows, including her musical Aisle Six, which debuted at the Players Club of NYC. McEldowney also created the original puppet play, The Golden Stoat, in which she performed the roles of both Princess Marcheline and the penurious mouseherd Alban Turtulutu. In 2011 she was commissioned by Columbia University's Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures to create their first-ever departmental puppet show, for which she was awarded a Gatsby Charitable Foundation Arts Grant. She has performed children's tales at a number of public libraries.
The performance on Tuesday, November 27 starts at 6:30 PM and is sponsored by The Friends of the South End Library, which means... your contributions. Thanks, and please come. After the show, there will be a puppet-making session with Nicola..
Author Marylou Depeiza Will Read from her Suspense Novel, "Walking in her Shoes," the Story of her Mother's Secret Life While Raising a Traditional Family in the South End
Marylou Depeiza
After her mother's death in the mid-1990s, Marylou Depeiza decided to find out what might be the mystery at the center of her mother's life, something she had tried to uncover before but been told to stay away from. Leola Williams, wife of a World War II veteran who was raising a family of six while living in the South End, had a secret life that her daughter discovered doing genealogical research on the Internet. "Walking in her Shoes" is the result. Depeiza will read from the suspenseful novel based on her mother's life at the South End Library, Tuesday, November 27, at 6:30 PM.
New South End Library Photo Exhibit of Ugandan Elders Highlights Dignity of Homeless/Landless Africans Despite Decades of Civil War and AIDS
A Ugandan Elder, by photographer Jennifer Coplon
Ugandan Elders: JaJa Mamas and Papas, a photo exhibit that will open officially on Tuesday, November 20 at the South End Library,is the brainchild of Jennifer Coplon. A longtime South End resident and community-based clinical social worker, Coplon spent the last few years training to be a photographer as well, at MassArt, the MFA and the New England School for Photography. Last summer, a social-work trip to Uganda brought her face to face with the homeless/landless poor of Uganda. She encountered people who had suffered multiple losses from AIDS, malaria and civil-war trauma, elders for whom there was little likelihood of improvement in their economic circumstances. Coplon was struck by their dignity, an observation that happened to interface with another passion of hers, creating positive images of the elderly homeless. Coplon, whose work includes photographing and interviewing formerly homeless elders here placed in permanent housing through Hearth Inc., says that by developing a portraiture focused on human dignity she hopes to counter the marginalization and discounting of our own elders: "When you look at this man here," she said, pointing to a portrait of a Ugandan in a brilliant deep-blue garment,"you'd never guess he's dirt-poor."
There's recent precedent for the fusion of photography and homeless-centered social work on display in a library setting. Earlier this year, the San Francisco Public Library mounted the photo exhibit, Acknowledged, which featured portraits of the many homeless serviced by local agencies affiliated with their library system (San Francisco is quite advanced in this area: it is the first public library to have hired a social worker on its staff to deal with homeless patrons). Photographer Joe Ramos, who volunteered for the homeless, was handed a camera in 2006 and asked to tell the agencies' clients' story in portraits. His photographs and accompanying texts shone a light on the frayed social safety net, too close for many Americans, with examples like Ethel, a direct descendant of Abraham Lincoln, and Graham, a middle-class college graduate from Indiana who spiraled into depression, job loss and homelessness after a car accident he caused killed another person.
Jennifer Coplon's exhibit opens Tuesday, November 20, at 6:30 PM, at the South End Library. It is free to all.
Handicapped-access Door Pads Have Been Installed at the South End Library, Easing Access for All
Better handicapped-accessibility at the South End library
Thanks to donations by library supporters and a PruPAC grant collected by FOSEL, opening the doors at the South End branch is now as easy as a tapping on a door pad. No more acrobatics by parents trying to hustle strollers, shopping bags and other youngsters through the entryway all at the same time. No more children tugging at the heavy door to be let in when a stiff wind blowing in from Tremont Street tries to keep them out. Whether you're in a wheelchair, leaning on a cane, or simply carrying too many books and DVDs under your arms to also open the library's door, your access into the branch has been greatly improved.
Head librarian, Anne Smart, told FOSEL she's making it her job to instruct everyone how to use the pads. There are three: one on the outside of the building, at the corner of Tremont, as illustrated in the picture where library user Francis Pugliese is pointing to it. The second pad is one the inside between the two glass doors, on the left when entering and the right when leaving. The third is on the inside, across from the staff counter. The South End Library is now one of only a few in the BPL's constellation of branches that is fully handicapped accessible. An elevator to its second floor was installed more than a decade ago, and its bathrooms are fully equipped for wheelchairs and strollers. The campaign for automatic doors was sponsored by FOSEL and its president, Glyn Polson. Thanks to the board, the generous contributors in the South End, and the grantors at Pru-PAC.
Recent Readings by Authors at the South End Library Illustrate the Varied Richess of the Local Writing Scene and the Unique Role Played by Branch Libraries in their Neighborhoods
FOSEL founding president Marleen Nienhuis and novelists Margot Livesey and Sue Miller
The range of authors who came to talk about their work at the South End Library during Halloween season provided a nice illustration of the deep and varied pool of writing talent that exists at the local level, and the supportive role neighborhood libraries play in hosting them. On October 25, Maryanne O’Hara, a short-story writer who lives in the South End, discussed her much-praised first novel, Cascade, which is based on the flooding of a town in Western Massachusetts in the 1930s. She was followed a few days later by acclaimed novelist and Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College, Margot Livesey, who talked about her latest work, The Flight of Gemma Harding,a re-imagening of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. That same week, rock biographer Stephen Davis, arrived at the South End branch with a seemingly inexhaustible collection of anecdotes and observations about the rock and pop stars he’d written about for decades, after reading from his most recent (unauthorized) biography of Carly Simon, More Room in a Broken Heart.
Maryanne o'Hara giving a talk at the South End library
O’Hara’s novel, while a fictionalized account of a to-be-drowned town, attracted an audience interested in the actual flooding of small towns in Massachusetts by the Quabbin reservoir in the 1930s. The author did not disappoint: she brought copies of old photographs of the four towns that became submerged –Dana, Enfield, Greenwich and Prescott– and, after signing copies of her book, even used a stamp with a special postmark of the novel's make-believe town, Cascade, on the last date of its supposed existence, December 27, 1934. Part of the research for the novel was done at the Waterworks Museum on Chestnut Hill, O’Hara said, which documents the history of the country's first metropolitan water systems. O’Hara’ inspiration for the main character, artist Dez who is torn between ambition and family tradition, was sparked by an interview with WPA painter James Lechay in Truro, MA, a decade ago. Her subsequent interest in the WPA, and the 1930s' government support for the arts, turned first into a magazine article, but eventually found its way into her novel, as did O'Hara's love for Shakespeare --a Shakespeare summer theatre features prominently,-- and the author's fascination with the actual drowned towns of the Quabbin reservoir.
Author Stephen Davis
Margot Livesey was introduced by novelist Sue Miller, who said she loved Livesey's novels before she ever met the author, and especially appreciated what she described as the novelist's thoughtfulness for the “mysteriousness of otherness.” Livesey explained that in The Flight of Gemma Hardy she examined why 21st-century female readers of Jane Eyre still identify in such profound ways with the 19th-century character, even though their lives are vastly different. She suggested that the novel, which has not been out of print in 165 years, still speaks to readers for two reasons: the heroine represents the arche-type of orphan and pilgrim, and it explores the fundamental question asked by the Bronte sisters of how a girl of no special talents, without a family or special skills, can make her way in the world. In The Flight of Gemma Hardy she wanted to “re-imagine the appeal of Jane Eyre for those who loved it and those who hadn’t read it.” Having been raised herself in a boys’ private school in Scotland, where her father was headmaster, and her ‘severe’ stepmother’s notion of children was they best be ‘seen but not heard,’ the author recounted she spent much time hoping for a natural disaster that would destroy the school and its Gothic buildings. Nevertheless,the English landscape has been the setting for most of her writings but after living in the US for many years, her current work-in-progress, or as she described it, “the novel I am failing to write,” is set in contemporary New England.
Stephen Davis’s animated talk about the world of pop and rock as he experienced it, writing first for the Boston Phoenix and Rolling Stone magazine and concentrating on rock biographies later, centered on the life of singer/songwriter Carly Simon, who he knew closely through friendships with her brother Peter, and the time their families spent on Martha’s Vineyard growing up. Describing her rise to fame, Davis placed her squarely in the culture of the 60s and 70s, when successful female singers were few and far between but the female audience of baby boomers was ready for their music, even when they didn’t know it until they heard it. “Carly was part of the continuum of how things should be rather than were,” Davis said. “When her Greatest Hits came out, it was what the women in minivans listened to taking their kids to soccer practice.” The talented Simon had romantic relationships with many stars, and “learned from her boyfriends,” said Davis. They included Cat Stevens --a date with him inspired Simon's song Anticipation-- and James Taylor, who was her husband until she “threw him out” when she feared his drug addiction would become an issue for their two children. “She doesn’t have his phone number to this day,” said Davis, even though theirs was a “great romantic love story,” he added. Davis, who ghost-wrote the autobiography of Michael Jackson at the request of Doubleday's then-editor Jacqueline Onassis --"she made the phone calls; someone else edited,” he said,-- is currently working on the biography of Stevie Nicks, the singer/songwriter who sang for many years with Fleetwood Mac.
The five favorite books recommended by the authors mentioned above, and previous speakers, can be found under THE SOUTH END READS.
UPCOMING READINGS FOR THE SOUTH END WRITES ARE:
January 15, 2013, 6:30 p.m.
Leah Hager Cohen
The author, who publishes both fiction and non-fiction, will read from her latest novel which the New York Times described as “her best work yet.” With an introduction by Sue Miller
Tuesday, January 29, 6:30 p.m.
Lynne Potts
A Block in Time: a History of Boston's South End from a Window on Holyoke Street.
Details will be posted as they become available.
Tuesday, February 5, 6:30 p.m.
April Bernard
The poet (Romanticism)and novelist, most recently of history (Miss Fuller), is currently the director of creative writing at Skidmore College. With an introduction by South End author Doug Bauer
Tuesday, February 26, 6:30 p.m.
Andre Dubus III
The examination of the author’s violent past has been described ”best book” of non-fiction of 2011 and 2012 by many literary-gate guardians, and was preceded by his previous novelsHouse of Sand and Fog (made into a movie by the same name) and The Garden of Last Days. Sue Miller will introduce the author.
Tuesday, March 19, 6:30 p.m.
will read from her second novel, The K Street Affair.
Tuesday, April 18, 6:30 p.m.
Editor, writer of numerous books of fiction and non-fiction, and revered professor of English at Bennington College (to where he commutes from the South End), Bauer will read from his most recent collection of essays, What Happens Next?, to be published in the fall of 2013 by the University of Iowa Press.
Tuesday, May 14, 6:30 p.m.
Dennis Lehane, the spectacularly successful author who grew up in Dorchester and is ALSO a BPL trustee, published his latest novel, Live by Night, in 2012. Set in Boston in the 1920s, the New York Times' reviewer called the book a "sentence-by-sentence pleasure."
Tuesday, May 21, 6:30 p.m.
The Dovekeepers, a historical novel describing the AD70 massacre at Masada from the point of view of four women at the fortress before it fell during the Jewish-Roman war, is the most recent of the nearly two dozen novels by Hoffman and just came out in paperback. To be introduced by Sue Miller.
Tuesday, June 11, 6:30 p.m.
the local filmmaker whose mesmerizing documentary, Angelo Unwritten, has followed the life of a teenager adopted out of foster care when he was twelve, will return with an update of new material gathered since December 2011.
Tuesday, June 18, 6:30 p.m.
will return to read from his current work-in-progress, retracing the steps of his father who, as a soldier, was sent to Europe during the Second World War.
Rock'n Roll Biographer Stephen Davis Reads From the Unauthorized Biography of Singer/Songwriter Carly Simon, "More Room in a Broken Heart," at the SE Library, Thursday, November 1, at 6:30 p.m.
stephen davis
Music journalist Stephen Davis will read from his most recent rock'n roll biography, More Room in a Broken Heart: the True Adventures of Carly Simon, at the South End Library this Thursday, November 1, at 6:30 p.m. It is an unauthorized biography, ostensibly because singer/songwriter Simon feels the book is 'too revealing,' according to Davis, who was interviewed earlier this year on the Emily Rooney show. Controversy also centered on other authors accusing him of using their material in this book. Davis says he'd prefer to recast that criticism as 'copying' of material already published although, he freely acknowledged, without the complete bibliographic attribution by the publisher he had hoped for. "In the paperback, we'll do that," Davis told Rooney.
Davis has a distinguished record of more than a dozen pop and rock biographies, including Hammer of the Gods: the Led Zeppelin Saga (1985), Watch You Bleed: the Saga of Guns 'N Roses (2008), and Bob Marley: Conquering Lion of Reggae (1994). He was the ghostwriter for the autobiography of the late pop star Michael Jackson, Moon Walk, which was edited by Jacqueline Onassis and sold out as soon as it hit the New York Times bestseller list. It was never reprinted or issued in paperback. Davis, whom the Boston Globe described as "the gold standard of rock biographers," began his career at The Boston Phoenix. His articles, written in an engaging and lively prose style, have been featured in Rolling Stone magazine and the New York Times, among other publications.
The author will be introduced by FOSEL board member Courtney Fitzgerald, who invited him to speak at the South End branch. Davis has promised to give the audience "an excruciating evening of R & R lore unfit to print but fun to hear about."
Davis's books will be available for purchase and signatures and, thanks to head librarian Anne Smart, for borrowing, as well.
Margot Livesey Will Read from her Latest Novel, "The Flight of Gemma Harding," Tuesday Night, October 30, at 6:30 P.M.
livesey
Scottish-born Margot Livesey, who is currently a distinguished writer in residence at Emerson College, will read from her latest novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, this coming Tuesday, October 30, at 6:30 p.m., at the South End Library. She will be introduced by novelist Sue Miller, who invited her to The South End Writes program. Liveley has suggested that a novel, "as its name intimates, brings us news of another kind, and it is news that we vitally need, though it may not make the headlines. For what a novel does is to help us fill the abyss between the self and other." About learning the craft of writing a novel, she has said, "I had spent many happy hours in the house of fiction, but I knew nothing about plumbing or wiring or putting up drywall."
The Flight of Gemma Harding is Livesey's seventh novel and is loosely based on Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Other novels include Eva Moves the Furniture (2001) and The House on Fortune Street (2008). While writing, she has taught at Boston University, Bowdoin College, Brandeis University, Carnegie Mellon, Cleveland State, Emerson College, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Tufts University, the University of California at Irvine, the Warren Wilson College MFA program for writers, and Williams College. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the N.E.A., the Massachusetts Artists' Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Livesey's books will be available at the reading for borrowing, purchasing and signing.
FOSEL Book Bags for Sale to Help Pay for Library Programming for Young, Old and In-betweens
In case you wondered what to buy your friends and relatives for holiday gifts, you can stop that right now. FOSEL has just received its order of beautiful, 100 percent cotton book bags, designed by our tireless and talented graphic-design volunteer, Mary Owens, as per the pictures alongside this text.
The totes have a color-accented bottom and an additional shoulder strap for easy carrying. The green tote features a logo that says, "The South End Library Rocks," as indeed it does. The red bag's logo consists of six sayings about libraries that should warm the heart of all patrons, as displayed above.
They will be available at FOSEL-sponsored events like The South End Writes, and can be ordered and picked up at the South End branch. FOSEL also offers payment through PayPal on the web site by clicking on DONATE. The cost per bag is $10. All proceeds will be used to fund programs for young and old at the library.
