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Brian Slattery |
Sep 21, 2023 8:25 am
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A rumination on the question of why people write — delivered by legendary culture writer Greil Marcus — that took in his personal history, the history of the tail end of World War II, and David Lynch’s classic Blue Velvet proved a moving and thought-provoking start to Yale’s Windham Campbell Festival on Wednesday evening. The festival, which runs Thursday and Friday, celebrates the world of words, centering on this year’s recipients of the Windham Campbell Prizes.
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Karen Ponzio |
Sep 18, 2023 9:00 am
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Karen Ponzio Photos.
Silent Book Club New Haven selections for September.
Are you one of those people who grabs a book with all intentions of plowing through a decent number of pages and ends up not reading any — distracted by the phone, the TV or household chores? The Silent Book Club might be perfect for you.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 31, 2023 8:09 am
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On one side of Hotchkiss Street at the intersection of Edgewood Avenue on Wednesday evening, along the side of the bookstore Possible Futures, a DJ on the corner pumped out irresistible grooves while friends greeted one another, browsed books, and snacked on empanadas and mimosas.
On the other side of the street was a cheerful sign that read “Happy 75th Birthday Fred!” with a timeline laid out beneath it. The Fred in question is none other than Fred Hampton, Black Panther Party leader and revolutionary.
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Eleanor Polak |
Aug 23, 2023 8:24 am
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Christina Duan, Jess X. Snow, Sheri, Sonja John, Aaron Jafferis, Sarah "TW" Tracy-Wanck, and Rheo June painting Possible Futures.
The outside wall of Possible Futures, the bookstore located at 318 Edgewood Ave., stood blank and dull against the street, devoid of inspiration and creativity. That was about to change.
Tuesday marked the beginning of a 10-day-long painting project to design a mural, a tribute to New Haven local and celebrated prison abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore. The blank wall became a canvas, as muralists and community volunteers worked together to explore all the possible futures the space could hold.
Journalist, documentary filmmaker, and musician Lindsay Skedgell wants to hear about it all. She’s starting a new journal called Heel and Hive that “explores the environmental and climate landscape of our times, our relationships to nature and ecology” — focusing on the region we live in.
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 11, 2023 11:31 am
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Courtesy Yale Peabody Museum
This torosarus skull, now part of the collection of the Yale Peabody Museum, was found at Lightning Creek in Wyoming in 1891 by American paleontologist John Bell Hatcher. A few years later, Hatcher would go fossil hunting in Patagonia and write a book about that expedition that would be published in 1903. Even with his success at the time, he may not have predicted that his star in paleontology would rise to the point where, in 2018, author and fellow paleontologist Lowell Dingus would publish a book about him called King of the Dinosaur Hunters.
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Eleanor Polak |
Jul 6, 2023 9:10 am
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Eleanor Polak Photos
Original printing of the Declaration of Independence.
Eleanor Polak Photos
Exhibit on Frederick Douglass, William Grimes, and the Declaration of Sentiments at the Beinecke.
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library holds one of 26 known surviving copies of the first printing of the Declaration of Independence. The document, printed by John Dunlap in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, has a single typographical error, an indication that the founders issued it in a hurry to declare independence from England.
On Wednesday, a few dozen New Haveners got to hear the words of that revolutionary broadside read aloud — along with that of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 oration “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” — as part of an annual primary-source-focused tradition to celebrate the 247th anniversary of Independence Day.
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Eleanor Polak |
Jun 29, 2023 8:45 am
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Eleanor Polak Photos
Natalie and Randall Beach at RJ Julia.
“My book wouldn’t exist without my dad, so doing a reading with him is only fair, only fitting,” said Natalie Beach. She read from her memoir-in-essays, Adult Drama, Thursday night at RJ Julia bookstore in Madison. Her father, Randall Beach, joined her, reading from his collection of profiles, Connecticut Characters: Profiles of Rascals and Renegades. The father-daughter duo presented their work to a crowd of dedicated New Haveners in an event that celebrated community, culture, and family — both born and made.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 14, 2023 2:38 pm
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Bill Lowe let out a cry from his tuba, guttural and keening, ecstatic and heartbreaking at the same time. Ken Filiano responded in kind from his bass. Hafez Modirzadeh joined in with a moan from his saxophone. Naledi Masilo unspooled a string of skittering vocalizations. Taylor Ho Bynum release a plaintive wail as Kevin Harris laid down ominous piano lines. Luther Gray arrived with a rattling drum line that solidified into a rhythm that Lowe emphasized with snapping fingers. As he directed each of the players to take solos, Lowe broke into smiles. The music may have spoken about complex emotions, but there was great satisfaction in the telling.
Ivana Lewis paints beside her mom, Shauniqua Davis, at a Wilson Library event.
The Wilson Library branch is a “second home” to Helen and her children — especially to 7‑year-old Eli, who devours every animal-themed book he can find.
In spare moments, Wilson staff members set aside volumes they think Eli will like. But most days, they’re kept busy with adults needing job applications or a place to rest their head while inebriated.
So Wilson staff, regulars, and allies are calling on the city to fund a full-time children’s librarian at Wilson — the only branch in the city to lack the funding for one.
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 21, 2023 8:15 am
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Nzima Hutchings at Monday's "Fred Hampton 101" workshop.
The thoughts and deeds of a young fallen revolutionary became fuel for poetic pursuits Monday evening at Possible Futures, the bookstore and meeting place on Edgewood Avenue, as Nyzae James and Nzima Hutchings led a dozen participants through “Fred Hampton 101,” a presentation that was part history, part poetry workshop, and all community building.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 24, 2023 9:13 am
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Stone.
Cult band Buttery Cake Ass are playing what might be their final show, and it might be their best. There aren’t many people in the audience, but what they’re hearing is blowing their minds. The saddest songs make them all cry. The songs filled with rage seem like they could set the hall on fire. The band members are engaged in the kind of musical alchemy that maybe only happens a few times in every musician’s life. Somewhere on the soundboard, a tape is rolling. What will it sound like when they take it home?
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Allan Appel |
Feb 22, 2023 10:23 am
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Library revelers Holly Nardini, Scott McClean, and Lisa Brandes.
Glittering bead necklaces, feather boas, whimsical hats sprouting purple tulips, and — finally! — masks that cover the eyes and the top of your face instead of the nose and mouth were spotted in profusion Tuesday night at the Mardi Gras love-fest for the New Haven Free Public Library.
At Tuesday's online book talk for Revolution in Our Time.
A dive into the history of the Black Panthers once again reverberated loudly into the present — from the Black Lives Matter movement to the backlash against critical race theory to the killing of Tyre Nichols — as educators and community members gathered online to hear award-winning author Kekla Magoon talk about her new book, Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People.
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Brian Slattery |
Jan 27, 2023 9:00 am
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Tripp and Godshall at Thursday's book talk.
Who built the iron fence around the New Haven Green? Where can we still see traces of the work of William Lanson? And what was possibly the biggest party in the city’s history?
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Brian Slattery |
Jan 16, 2023 12:42 pm
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Hanan Hameen of Dance and Beyond Sunday at New Haven Museum.
Through words, music, and movement, storytellers, drummers, and dancers offered dozens of families a chance to find their place in the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., the broader causes of social justice he dedicated his life to, and the rich culture he came out of.
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Thomas Breen |
Dec 22, 2022 4:00 pm
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Maya McFadden photo
At the newly opened Possible Futures bookstore in September ...
Brian Slattery Photo
... at a BAMN books event at Bloom in February.
Words flew off the pages of landmark new New Haven books, brought readers together in bustling new Dixwell and Edgewood community spaces, and sparked City Hall protests and public-education debates around how to create a better city — making 2022 a year even more than most in which books made a difference.
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Lisa Reisman |
Dec 13, 2022 1:52 pm
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Bloom reads at Sunday's mActivity-hosted party.
After moving to a place that Conde-Nast Traveler had judged to be “one of the 10 unfriendliest cities in America,” author Lary Bloom worried that — if he were to slip and fall on an ice-coated sidewalk — his new neighbors would simply look the other way and keep on moving.
Instead, those neighbors sprawled on couches, perched themselves on stools, crammed into chairs that ranged outside a Goatville gym’s common room, and braved the December snow to listen to Bloom read and wisecrack about his newly published slim volume which is, in fact, a valentine to New Haven.
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Allan Appel |
Dec 12, 2022 12:04 pm
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Neighborhood Music School Director Noah Bloom and NMS Production Fellow Ibn Orator Friday.
A young African American musician named Ibn Orator wanted to know if Black and white people, who have such starkly different common memories — the one of slavery and incarceration and the other a rosier patriotic version of the American past — can ever develop a memory broad, shared, and potent enough to be the basis to solve our country’s seemingly intractable problems.
An answer, well, a partial answer to that profound question came during a Friday night book talk from Nicholas Dawidoff, the white, New Haven-born prize-winning author of the recently published The Other Side of Prospect: A Story of Violence, Injustice, and The American City.
The answer was: “Yes, for all our enduring troubles, this is a country where historically change has happened. “
Gail Lerner set out to write a book about a brave 10-year-old girl who climbs trees in New Haven’s Edgerton Park — and summoned bravery of her own to complete it.
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Laura Glesby |
Nov 28, 2022 3:00 pm
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On “Small Business Saturday,” a stack of Michelle Obama’s latest books made its way from the shelf of New Haven’s newest local bookstore to the former First Lady’s Facebook page.
Generations after he unleashed federal law enforcement to destroy the lives of people who disagreed with him, J. Edgar Hoover has finally met his match.
Editor Rachel Kauder Nalebuff with contributor Sofiya Moore ...
... reading from Our Red Book on Saturday.
“We all know womanhood can be very challenging; that’s why it’s good to start it off with a sweet taste of support and a little cream cheese frosting,” Lily Grace Sutton read aloud to celebrate a new New Haven-rich book all about menstruation.
Attorney Mike Jefferson and author Nicholas Dawidoff in conversation at Stetson event Wednesday evening.
When Flemming “Nick” Norcott Jr. was growing up in the Dwight/Kensington neighborhood in the 1940s and ’50s, Prospect Hill wasn’t the only “other side” of town that was off limits to Black families like his.
“There were a lot of ‘other sides’ then,” the retired former state Supreme Court justice remembered at a Wednesday evening book talk. “As a young boy, a pre-teen, a teen, we couldn’t go to Westville. We couldn’t go to Morris Cove. We couldn’t go to Wooster Square, because there would be consequences that would be really, really bad.”
