April 8, 2007 / 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm

Cornelia Street Cafe, 29 Cornelia St., New York, NY

Hotel St. George Press launch party. $6 admission good for one drink.

Dear Friends,

Please join us in celebrating the launch of the first installment in our newest imprint, HOTEL ST. GEORGE PRESS:

Author/Playwright/Solo Performer Aaron Petrovich performs an unforgetable selection from THE SESSION, the debut installment in the new AKASHIC BOOKS imprint, HOTEL ST. GEORGE PRESS at the CORNELIA ST. CAFE:

AKASHIC BOOKS Introduces:

AARON PETROVICH: A writer and performer whose memorable performances from THE SESSION consistently yield STAFF PICKS and return engagements, including an invitation to read from THE SESSION at THE CALABASH INTERNATIONAL LITERARY FESTIVAL. His theatrical works have appeared in the Midtown International Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theatre Source, Improvised and Otherwise (a festival of sound and form), the Estrogenius Festival, and the New York Solo Play Lab.

“The comparison is not to New York psycho-ward inhabitants, but to Samuel Beckett’s damned individuals.”–NYTheatre.com

“Petrovich’s dialogue is like an existential Abbot & Costello routine.”–Nathan Cain, Independent Crime

THE SESSION: A novella in dialogue between two Detectives who share the same name, and who become unable to discern if they are speaking to themselves or one another as their investigation into a murdered Mathematician’s missing organs leads them to an asylum they may never leave–or may always have been in. Original monotypes by VILEM BENES.

“Petrovich is Beckett’s organ.”–Andrei Codrescu

VILEM BENES: The artist whose 14, breathtaking monotype images in THE SESSION set the standard for HSGP’s mission to pair its authors with artists for each print installment, reflective of it’s multi-disciplinary online venue, HOTEL ST. GEORGE.

HOTEL ST. GEORGE: The online literary and arts quarterly, curated by Alex Rose, David Willems, and Aaron Petrovich, featuring original fiction, films, installation art, music, soundscapes, spoken word, and secret histories, all occupying different, carefully designed rooms in the ever-expanding, virtual hotel. (www.hotelstgeorgepress.com)

“By far the most unique, creative, and rewarding web design of any online literary press in existence.”–Wordsmiths Books

“One of the more beautifully designed online lit sites I’ve seen–it’s definitely worth a visit.”–Ed Park, The Dizzies

April 11, 2007 / 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Labyrinth Books
536 West 112th Street
New York, NY 10025

From Labyrinth:

Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents’ cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them. What grows from the depths of their spirits is a romance of scarcely six weeks’ duration and an experience that marks them for a lifetime. For what the two discover on the Riviera and during a sultry evening in Rome is the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy.

The psychological maneuvers that accompany attraction have seldom been more shrewdly captured than in André Aciman’s frank, unsentimental, heartrending elegy to human passion. Call Me by Your Name is clear-eyed, bare-knuckled, and ultimately unforgettable.

April 10, 2007 / 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Labyrinth Books
536 West 112th Street
New York, NY 10025

From Labyrinth:

This event is a “must-attend” for any creative writer. Acclaimed author Noah Lukeman utilizes his best-selling title, A Dash of Style to share some helpful hints on mastering the art of punctuation.

The first practical and accessible guide to the art of punctuation for creative writers. Punctuation reveals the writer: haphazard commas, for example, reveal haphazard thinking; clear, lucid breaks reveal clear, lucid thinking. Punctuation can be used to teach the writer how to think and how to write. This short, practical book shows authors the benefits that can be reaped from mastering punctuation: the art of style, sentence length, meaning, and economy of words. There are full-length chapters devoted to the period, the comma, the semicolon, the colon, quotation marks, the dash and parentheses, the paragraph and section break, and a cumulative chapter on integrating them all into “The Symphony of Punctuation.” Filled with exercises and examples from literary masters (Why did Poe and Melville rely on the semicolon? Why did Hemingway embrace the period?), A Dash of Style is interactive, highly engaging, and a necessity for creative writers as well as for anyone looking to make punctuation their friend instead of their mysterious foe.

Noah Lukeman is the author of the best-selling books on writing The First Five Pages and The Plot Thickens , now featured in curricula in many universities. He lives in New York City .

April 9, 2007 / 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Labyrinth Books
536 West 112th Street
New York, NY 10025

From Labyrinth:

He was not much of a player and not much more of a manager, but by the time Branch Rickey (1881 to 1965) finished with baseball, he had revolutionized the sport not just once but three times. In this definitive biography of Rickey, the man sportswriters dubbed The Brain, The Mahatma, and, on occasion, El Cheapo, Lee Lowenfish tells the full and colorful story of a life that forever changed the face of America’s game.

As the mastermind behind the Saint Louis Cardinals from 1917 to 1942, Rickey created the farm system, which allowed small-market clubs to compete with the rich and powerful. Under his direction in the 1940s, the Brooklyn Dodgers became truly the first America ’s team. By signing Jackie Robinson and other black players, he single-handedly thrust baseball into the forefront of the civil rights movement. Lowenfish evokes the peculiarly American complex of God, family, and baseball that informed Rickey’s actions and his accomplishments. His book offers an intriguing, richly detailed portrait of a man whose life is itself a crucial chapter in the history of American business, sport, and society.

Lee Lowenfish, a historian, journalist, broadcaster, and jazz commentator, is the author of The Imperfect Diamond: A History of Baseball’s Labor Wars .

April 7, 2007 / 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm

Labyrinth Books
536 West 112th Street
New York, NY 10025

From Labyrinth:

The war in Iraq has put the condition of Iraqi women firmly on the global agenda. For years, their lives have been framed by state oppression, economic sanctions and three wars. Now they must play a seminal role in reshaping their country’s future for the twenty-first century.

Nadje Al-Ali challenges the myths and misconceptions which have dominated debates about Iraqi women, bringing a much needed gender perspective to bear on the central political issue of our time. She traces the political history of Iraq from post-colonial independence, to the emergence of a women’s movement in the 1950s and Saddam Hussein’s early policy of state feminism. The book also discusses the increases in social conservatism, domestic violence and prostitution, and shows that, far from being passive victims, Iraqi women have been, and continue to be, key political actors. Following the invasion and occupation, al-Ali analyses the impact of Islam on women’s lives and argues that US-led calls for liberation may in the long term serve to oppress the women of Iraq further.

April 6, 2007 / 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Labyrinth Books
536 West 112th Street
New York, NY 10025

From Labyrinth:

An extraordinarily vivid look inside post-revolutionary Iran, Camelia is the memoir of Iranian journalist Camelia Entekhabifard, who was sent to prison because of her provocative reporting for reformist newspapers. Her gorgeous account of growing up amid the turmoil of the revolution and the Iran/Iraq War is followed by her stark narration of her arrest and imprisonment. Faced with threats of execution, she realizes that the cruel man who interrogates her daily could actually become her savior. Then unfolds Camelia’s harrowing account of their ensuing relationship, and ultimately of the steep price she paid to obtain the personal and professional independence that had always been her goal.

CAMELIA ENTEKHABIFARD was born in Tehran in 1973. While in high school and university, she became active as an emerging poet and painter. She then turned to journalism, writing for a number of papers, including the leading reformist daily, Zan. In 1999 she was arrested for her journalistic activities and spent three months in prison. Upon her release, she came to the United States and was granted the status of political refugee. Since then, she has reported on Iranian and Afghan affairs for AP, Reuters, Eurasia Net, the Village Voice, and Mother Jones. The recipient of an MA in journalism from NYU and an MA in international and public affairs from Columbia University, Entekhabifard lives in New York City and reports frequently from Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East.

April 5, 2007 / 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Labyrinth Books
536 West 112th Street
New York, NY 10025

From Labyrinth:

In the years immediately following World War II , America embraced modern architecture–not as something imported from Europe, but as an entirely new mode of operation, with original and captivating designs made in the USA . In Domesticity at War, Beatriz Colomina shows how postwar American architecture adapted the techniques and materials that were developed for military applications to domestic use. Just as manufacturers were turning wartime industry to peacetime productivity–going from missiles to washing machines–American architects and cultural institutions were, in Buckminster Fuller’s words, turning “weaponry into livingry.”

This new form of domesticity itself turned out to be a powerful weapon. Images of American domestic bliss–suburban homes, manicured lawns, kitchen accessories–went around the world as an effective propaganda campaign. Cold War anxieties were masked by endlessly repeated images of a picture-perfect domestic environment. Even the popular conception of the architect became domesticated, changing from that of an austere modernist to a plaid-shirt wearing homebody.

Colomina examines, with interlocking case studies and an army of images, the embattled and obsessive domesticity of postwar America . She reports on, among other things, MOMA’s exhibition of a Dymaxion Deployment Unit (DDU), a corrugated steel house suitable for use as a bomb shelter, barracks, or housing; Charles and Ray Eames’s vigorous domestic life and their idea of architecture as a flexible stage for the theatrical spectacle of everyday life; and the American lawn as patriotic site and inalienable right.

Domesticity at War itself has a distinctive architecture. Housed within the case are two units: one book of text, and one book of illustrations–most of them in color, including advertisements, newspaper and magazine articles, architectural photographs, and more.

Beatriz Colomina is Professor of Architecture and Founding Director of the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University . She is the editor of Sexuality and Space, which was awarded the International Book Award by the American Institute of Architects. She is the coeditor of Cold War Hot Houses: Inventing Postwar Culture from Cockpit to Playboy. Her most recent book is Doble exposición: Arquitectura a través del arte.

April 4, 2007 / 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Labyrinth Books
536 West 112th Street
New York, NY 10025

From Labyrinth:

Ever get the feeling that life’s a game with changing rules and no clear sides, one you are compelled to play yet cannot win? Welcome to gamespace. Gamespace is where and how we live today. It is everywhere and nowhere: the main chance, the best shot, the big leagues, the only game in town. In a world thus configured, McKenzie Wark contends, digital computer games are the emergent cultural form of the times. Where others argue obsessively over violence in games, Wark approaches them as a utopian version of the world in which we actually live. Playing against the machine on a game console, we enjoy the only truly level playing field–where we get ahead on our strengths or not at all.

Gamer Theory uncovers the significance of games in the gap between the near-perfection of actual games and the highly imperfect gamespace of everyday life in the rat race of free-market society. The book depicts a world becoming an inescapable series of less and less perfect games. This world gives rise to a new persona. In place of the subject or citizen stands the gamer. As all previous such personae had their breviaries and manuals, Gamer Theory seeks to offer guidance for thinking within this new character. Neither a strategy guide nor a cheat sheet for improving one’s score or skills, the book is instead a primer in thinking about a world made over as a gamespace, recast as an imperfect copy of the game.

McKenzie Wark is the author of four books, Virtual Geography, The Virtual Republic and Celebrities, Culture and Cyberspace and his latest offering, Gamer Theory. He was a co-editor of the Nettime anthology Readme! and with Brad Miller co-produced the multimedia work Planet of Noise. He lives and works in New York.

April 3, 2007 / 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Labyrinth Books
536 West 112th Street
New York, NY 10025

From Labyrinth:

What practical political lessons can we learn from corporate theme parks, ad campaigns, video games like Grand Theft Auto , celebrity culture, and Las Vegas? Stephen Duncombe proposes that such examples of popular fantasy can help us define and make possible a new political future.

Dream makes the case for a progressive political strategy that embraces a new set of tools. Although fantasy and spectacle have become the lingua franca of our time, Duncombe points out that liberals continue to depend upon sober reason to guide them. Instead, they need to learn how to communicate in today’s spectacular vernacularnot merely as a tactic but as a new way of thinking about and acting out politics. Learning from Las Vegas, however, does not mean adopting its values, as Duncombe demonstrates in laying out plans for what he calls ethical spectacle.

Stephen Duncombe teaches the history and politics of media and culture at the Gallatin School of New York University. He is the author of Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture , the editor of the Cultural Resistance Reader , and the co-author of The Bobbed-Haired Bandit . He lives in New York City.

April 29, 2007 6:30 pm to May 29, 2007 7:45 pm

The Great Hall
Cooper Union
7 East 7th St

When: Sunday, April 29
Where: The Great Hall at Cooper Union: 7 East 7th St.
What time: 6:30–7:45 p.m.

With Nadine Gordimer

Tickets: $15/$10 PEN Members
Purchase tickets from Smarttix: www.smarttix.com or (212) 868-4444