What’s Happening at Writers & Books?

September 2008 Programs & Events

First Fridays

Friday, September 5 6:00 pm
In the Verb Café at W&B
Free

Along with other local galleries and performance spaces, W&B will be open on the first Friday evenings of each month hosting a series of readings and performances in our Verb Café and Performance Space.

Thackeray’s Vanity Fair

A presentation by Lisa Jadwin
Cosponsored by the English Speaking Union and Writers & Books.
September 6, 2 p.m.
Free

Start or renew your relationship with this groundbreaking 19th century English novel and the critique of human nature portrayed therein.

Genesee Reading Series

Hosted by: Wanda Schubmehl
Featuring: Tricia Asklar & Catherine Faurot
Tuesday, September 9 7:30 pm
In the Verb Café at W&B
$3W&B members, $6 general public

Now in its 23rd year, the Genesee Reading Series presents writers from the greater Genesee Valley region reading in the Verb Cafe. Learn more about our featured authors.

Senior Reading Group

Tuesday September 9 2:00 pm- 4:00p.m.
In the Verb Café at W&B
Free and open to the public

Share your writing with other seniors in a comfortable, supportive atmosphere at W&B.

The Bertrand Russell Society

Hosted by: Dr. David White
Thursday, September 11, at 7:00 pm
In the Verb Café at W&B
Admission: Free to W&B Members; $3/General Public

This ongoing lecture series promises to enlighten and entertain. Monthly meetings are open to everyone, not just members of the Bertrand Russell Society.

This Month: Alden Thomas Poehner on BR’s Has Man a Future?

During the late 1920s and early 30s, Bertrand Russell, then a world-famous philosopher, did a series of three books for Horace Liveright, the New York publishing house which had invented the Modern Library and was well known for publishing controversial authors. Russell's books and the U.S. lecture tours he took at the same time were all great successes. Some of his ideas for reform of self, marriage, education and society are taken for granted today, others have been rejected, but the study of Russell's popular advocacy between the wars provides us with a unique portrait of what the American mind was seeing and thinking about during what came to be called the Jazz Age..

David White
Dr. White teaches philosophy at St. John Fisher College, is president of the New York State Philosophers Association, and is a founder of the Greater Rochester Russell Set.

For further information, call 415-5925 or e-mail: tmadigan@rochester.rr.com

Valley Manor Book Group Discussions

Thursday, Sept. 11, 10:30 a.m.–noon.
Free and open to the public.
Registrants must call Valley Manor at 442-6450 for reservations.

Taking the Heat by Kathryn Shay.

Valley Manor Book Group Author Visit

Sept. 16, 2:30–4 p.m.
Free and open to the public.
Registrants must call Valley Manor at 442-6450 for reservations.

Author Visit at Valley Manor: Kathryn Shay will discuss her new book Taking the Heat on Tuesday, There will be a Q&A, book signing and small reception at Valley Manor. Copies of the book will be on sale at the site by Lift Bridge Book Shop

Open History Reading Group

Hosted by: Steve Huff
Thursday, September 18, at 7:00 pm
In the Verb Café at W&B
Free to W&B members, $3 general public

Join us for meetings of an open history-reading group. In these gatherings we choose historical topics rather than specific books, and then you choose a book on the subject that most interests you. The discussions are convivial, exciting, and informative.

Risk, Courage, and Women : Book Publication Party

Thursday, Sept. 18, 7 p.m.
Free to W&B members, $3 general public

A celebration of the new anthology, Risk, Courage, and Women, published by Texas A&M University Press, including readings by area writers who are included in it, Gail Hosking Gilberg, Ruth Kessler, and Barbara Lovenheim

Saturday Young Writers’Society

Facilitator: Greer Nelson
Saturday, Sept. 20, 1 p.m.,
In the Verb Café at W&B
Free to W&B members, $3 general public

The Saturday Young Writers’ Society is an informal group of local writers between the ages of 18 and 30. We will meet weekly to write, discuss, and share things we have written, discuss things that inspire us to write, share ideas, etc. Writers of all genres and levels of ability are welcome, including novelists, poets, sci-fi and fantasy writers, memoirists, bloggers, or anyone who has a passion for writing and a belief that writing should be a social activity. Bring a notebook, snacks will be provided.

25 And Under

Hosted by: Sally Bittner Bonn
Tuesday September 23 7:00 pm
In the Verb Café at W&B
Free to W&B members, $3 general public

More than a quarter century ago W&B first opened its doors. To celebrate that milestone anniversary we initiated a brand new monthly reading series featuring writers who are 25 and younger. Join us as we discover a new generation of writers for the next quarter century.

As Quarks Are to Cicadas by Ruth Lunt

Wednesday, Sept. 24, 7 p.m.
Free

Ruth Lunt, who died in 2001 from cancer, was a poet who was very active at Writers & Books. As Quarks Are to Cicadas by Ruth Lunt

Wednesday, Sept. 24, 7 p.m.
Free

Ruth Lunt, who died in 2001 from cancer, was a poet who was very active at Writers & Books.

Kath Anderson, Ruth’s mentor and friend, has selected some of her poems and organized them in sections for this publication.
  At age 54 Ruth Lunt wrote her first poem. Since her retirement in 1992 as a Librarian at Rochester Institute of Technology she has made poetry her central endeavor, mainly through workshops and poet groups connected with Writers & Books. She has published in Lake Affect, Desperate Act, City, and Writers and Books Anthology.
In her poetry she writes about joy and sorrows within her family and in the world at large. She writes about nature observed in her garden and as far away as Alaska. She writes about living with ovarian cancer, the disease that took her life in 2001. She opens her life to us through the beauty of her poetry and we are enriched.

Readers:

Thom Ward: Editor, BOA Editions, Ltd.
His publications include Orbits (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2004)

Anne Coon:  Professor Emeritus of English at RIT
Her publications include Via del Paradiso (Foothills Publishing, 2006)

David Ruekberg: English teacher at Hilton High School
Has poems published in Poet Lore, North American Review and others.

Visiting Writers Series : Phil Memmer and Michael Jennings

Thursday, Sept. 25, 7 p.m.
$4 W&B members, $6 general public

Phil Memmer, poet and author of Sweetheart, Baby, Darling, and Threat of Pleasure; and Michael Jennings, author of Silky Thefts. - Philip Memmer is the author of two books of poems, most recently Threat of Pleasure, which was published in June 2008 by Word Press. Word Press also published his Sweetheart, Baby, Darling in 2004. He is also the author of three chapbooks of poems, including Greatest Hits (Pudding House Publications), The Apartment (piccadilly press) and For Resident (FootHills Publishing). In August 2008, he was awarded the Idaho Prize from Lost Horse Press for his third collection of poems, Lucifer: A Hagiography, which will be published in February 2009.

Philip Memmer's poems have appeared widely in literary journals, including Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Southern Poetry Review, Mid- American Review, Epoch, Tar River Poetry, and many others. His work has also appeared in several anthologies, including 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, edited by Billy Collins.

Memmer is the director of the Arts Branch of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse, where he founded the Downtown Writer's Center in 2001. He is the editor of Two Rivers Review, associate editor for Tiger Bark Press, and the current poetry editor of the journal Stone Canoe.

Michael Jennings was born in the French Quarter of New Orleans and grew up in east Texas and the deserts of southwestern Iran before graduating from the University of Pennsylvania and the Creative Writing Program of Syracuse University. He is the author of eight collections of poetry, including Silky Thefts (2007) and Once (2008), and three books on the Siberian Husky, a breed he raises and judges. His New and Selected Poems, entitled Bone-Songs and Sanctuaries, is due to be released by Sheep Meadow Press in April of 2009.

He has won numerous grants and awards for poetry including a Creative Artist Public Service Program (CAPS) Grant from New York State, First Prize in the Society of Alumni Poetry Contest at the University of Pennsylvania, First Prize in the Loring Williams Academy of American Poets Prize at Syracuse University, and Second Prize in the 2002 Milton Dorfman Poetry Prize Contest awarded by the Rome Arts Council of Rome, New York. His poems have appeared in such journals as The Sewanee Review, The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Tar River Poetry Review, Stone Canoe and Yellow MedicineReview

Wide Open Mic

Hosted by: Norm Davis
Moday September 29 7:30 pm
In the Verb Café at W&B
Free to W&B members, $3 general public

W&B is proud to sponsor Rochester's largest running open mike, hosted by Norm Davis, poet and editor of HazMat Review. Known for its eclectic mix. Wide Open Mike welcomes poets, performers, and writers of all kinds.

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