Sleepy "Hello!"

Just in time for Halloween—I'll be reading at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center this Sunday, located in Sleepy Hollow. Here are the details! (Click here for directions...I think the HVWC is actually in the same structure as Philipse Manor Station.)

The Comic Novel

Our reading series takes a comic turn on October 25 with two authors whose novels are witty and intelligent, quirky and hopeful.

Christine Lehner, whose new novel, Absent a Miracle, came out this August, was described by the New York Times as a “talented humorist” and the book as “pure, unadulterated adulterous entertainment”. Her previous book was a collection of stories, What to Wear to See the Pope (Carroll & Graf, 2004), and her novel Expecting was published in 1983. Lehner’s short stories and essays have appeared in various literary magazines, including the North American Review, Agni, New Directions Anthologies, Chelsea, Salmagundi, Image, the Southwest Review and The New York Times. She writes the blog Sort Quench & Dump (http://sortquenchdump.blogspot.com/). She lives near the Hudson River with Charles Branch, two dogs, and thousands of bees.

Ed Park’s first novel, Personal Days, published by Random House in May 2008, was a finalist for the PEN Hemingway Award and the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, and was named one of Time’s Top Ten Fiction Books of the year. He is a founding editor of The Believer and the former editor of the Voice Literary Supplement. His articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Salon, and other publications. For several years he wrote film criticism for The Village Voice, famously ending his review of Clifford the Big Red Dog with the questions: “Why big? Why red? Why dog?” His short fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in various anthologies and journals such as Trampoline, Burn This Book, and Read Hard. He drew a comic strip at Yale and received his M.F.A. from Columbia, where he currently teaches in the graduate writing program. Ed writes a science fiction column, Astral Weeks, for the Los Angeles Times, runs the blog Disambiguation (formerly The Dizzies), and publishes the e-zine, New-York Ghost. He lives in Manhattan with his family.

The reading will be introduced by Marilyn Johnson, author of The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries. Marilyn’s latest, This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All, is due out from Harper on February 2, 2010—and Marilyn will read for us at the Writers’ Center just a few weeks later on February 28!

Suggested Donation: $5 ($3 for HVWC members)