December 1, 2006 / 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm

McNally Robinson Booksellers, 52 Prince St, New York, NY

Roger Santivanez and Miguel Angel Zapata with Isaac Goldemberg

From McNally Robinson:

Roger Santivanez reads poems from his latest anthology, Dolores Morales de Santivanez, and Zapata introduces his Iguana: a fly of color and metaphor, with the paintings of Jorge Valdivia Carrasco. Miguel Angel Zapata was born in Piura, Peru, and now lives in Long Island, where he is Assistant Professor of Spanish Department of Romance Languages and Literature at Hofstra University. He is an acclaimed poet and critic and has won the Latino Prize in 2003. Roger Santivanez, also from Piura, was founder and leader of the mythic movement Kloaka in the 80’s, and was part of group Hora Zero. He has published several poetry books and has won prizes in America and Peru. Isaac Goldemberg is the renowned writer and critic from Peru. He has lived in New York since the 60’s and is the Director of LAWI (Latin American Writers Institute) at Hostos University. Join us for a toast after the readings. Please note: This event will be held in both English and Spanish.

December 4, 2006 / 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Barnes & Noble, 33 E 17th St, New York, NY

From GeorgeSoros.com:

No single person has done more to promote the open society—a society in which free expression and political opposition are protected—over the past thirty years than George Soros. During the Communist era he used his Open Society Foundation to support greater freedom in the Soviet bloc and China. After the Communist system imploded his foundations acted to mitigate the impact of ethnic war in former Yugoslavia. Later they backed reform movements in Georgia and Ukraine, and Soros formed close relationships with the new leaders that emerged, such as President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia. This led Russian President Vladimir Putin to accuse him of orchestrating the “color revolutions.”

December 3, 2006 / 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Sunny’s Bar, 253 Conover St between Beard and Reed Sts, Brooklyn

From Portside New York:

Memoirist and skyscraper window washer Ivor Hanson, poet Christian Barter, and short story writer Doreen Baingana.

December 3, 2006 / 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, New York, NY

From Bowery Poetry Club:

Alana Free, Amy Ouzoonian, Brenda Coultas, Celena Glenn, Fay Chiang, Hettie Jones, Honor Moore, Janine Pommy Vega, Kristin Prevallet, Lee Ann Brown, Lynne Procope, Marty McConnell, May Joseph, Patricia Spears Jones, Sarah Herrington, Simone Gorrindo $5 or Free with a book* to donate to Books Through Bars

December 3, 2006 / 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Magnetic Field, 97 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn Heights

From Magnetic Field:

ANDREW RICHMOND is from Dixon, Missouri and currently lives in Astoria, Queens. He works as a freelance photographer and attends The New School University where he is seeking an MFA in Creative Writing. His fiction has appeared in Post Road and The New Orleans Review and he is currently working on a novella.

IAN BICKFORD’s poetry and other writing has appeared in Agni, Asheville Poetry Review, Beloit, Colorado Review, CutBank, LIT, Post Road, Sleeping Fish, Smartish Pace, and elsewhere. He and his wife, Lacy Schutz, divide their time between Brooklyn (where there are bars) and Pownal, Vermont (where there are barns).

December 1, 2006 / 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm

West Side YMCA, 5 W 63rd St, New York, NY

December 2, 2006 / 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm

Green-Wood Cemetery Chapel, 500 25th St, Brooklyn

From Publisher Weekly:

Barron, a New York Times staff writer, expands on his series of articles published in the newspaper for a thoroughgoing chronicle of how a New York immigrant family created an American cultural institution. Barron tracks, from inception to stage, one Steinway concert grand piano named K0862, a direct descendant of the first Model D developed in 1884 by the German family of piano makers established in New York. Heinrich Englehard Steinweg from Seesen, Germany, installed his piano business, now anglicized to Steinway & Sons, on the Lower East Side by 1853, before moving to a factory on Fourth Avenue and eventually to Queens. The original Steinway pianoforte was a compact “square” designed for Victorian parlors, and evolved into a grand that contained longer strings under the lid to “deliver the kind of room-filling sound that earlier pianos lacked.” Most fascinating are Barron’s descriptions of the old-fashioned handcrafting of K0862 in the Queens factory, from the crucial bending of the maple rim (”the chassis of the piano”), to the fitting of Part No. 81 (the spruce soundboard), cast-iron plate, and action parts, before the piano is tuned for its distinctive sound. In this solid book, Barron pursues the family’s fortunes from the company’s peak in 1905 through the golden years of 1920s to its sale in 1972.

December 1, 2006 / 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Barnes and Noble, 1972 Broadway, New York, NY
From Publisher Weekly:

Rooney, revered 60 Minutes commentator, weekly syndicated newspaper columnist, and best-selling author (most recently of Years of Minutes) delivers a collection of caustic, comic essays on topics ranging from the serious (Iraq, global warming) to the absurd (the outdated semi-colon, irritating cell phone ring tones) that proves he hasn’t lost his cranky appeal. Written over the past four years, these highly opinionated and often chuckle-worthy vignettes are refreshingly candid and paint a fortified portrait of Rooney’s frustrations with the state of the world. In 10 themed sections (including Daily Life, Politics and Sports), Rooney showcases his broad knowledge and voluminous gripes; though they won’t dazzle the literati, Rooney’s signature cynicism and stream-of-consciousness voice shine through. There is something for everyone in this collection: election junkies will find the petulant “Crab Grassroots Campaigning” particularly amusing; pack rats and recyclers alike will identify with “We’re Wasting Away” (the perfect case of “sad, but true”); and those who just plain love Andy will cherish his quirky lists in “Things I Love to Hate” and “Things to Do Today.” In the preface, Rooney asks himself, “How much do I have to say that anyone cares about reading?” Luckily for him-and for us-he has an entire book’s worth.

December 1, 2006 / 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Barnes and Noble, 4 Astor Pl, New York, NY

From Akashic Books:

Dear Reader,

The story thus far, as you may have forgotten: Even as a young boy, Billy Argo showed an uncanny talent for solving puzzles of almost every configuration, arrangement, and design.

That is all.

No–it was more than a talent. It was a kind of very sad genius, so that in the end, the very sad genius appeared on the boy detective the way a child born with a deformity–a missing hand or one leg shorter than the other–might make the same adolescent distant and dreamy; like a birthmark in the shape of an elephant smack dab on the forehead, it led Billy to be somewhat shy, somewhat withdrawn, though not at first. No, at first the boy was at play: happy, daring, secretly cunning.

In the stark world of Gotham, New Jersey–small white houses and green, murky woods surrounding a modern factory town, home to both the Mold-O-Form Plastic and Harris Heating Duct plants, a burg bustling with both Prosperity and its companion Crime–Billy would run hand in hand with his younger sister, Caroline, and behind them, their childhood friend, a husky neighborhood boy by the name of Fenton Mills, would often come calling.

Through the nearby grassy field, with the chimneys of the plastics factory churning black clouds in the distance, the children would hurry, shouting, trampling the fuzzy white puffs of dandelions and sprawling knotty underbrush. Their hideout was an abandoned lot which was wide and silver and green with enormous, expressive daisies.The lot had remained unsold–being too filthy with lead after an explosion during the days when the land had been home to the old Drip-Less Paint Factory. Above the dirt of an unmarked grave and beneath the shadow of the abandoned refinery, the children would play their own made-up games: Wild West Accountants! in which they would calculate the loss of a shipment of gold stolen from an imaginary stage coach, or Recently Divorced Scientists! in which they would build a super-collider out of garbage to try and win back their recently lost loves. Together, forever, they would explore the near-dark world of wonder and mystery.

December 1, 2006 / 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm

Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia St, New York, NY

Roberta Gould’s poetry has appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice and more. She will read from her new chapbook Pacing the Wind. Followed by open mic.
Visit her website.