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Coral Ortiz |
Jan 25, 2022 12:04 pm
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Author Megan Shaughnessy with her new children book.
Megan Shaughnessy remembers the day her son came home from kindergarten “embarrassed” to show his artwork with his family.
As she watched his confidence in his artwork dissipate, she thought back to her childhood. when her art teacher “selected students” to be in an advanced class. Shaughnessy was not chosen.
Estate of Winfred Rembert / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Looking for My Mother, 2019; reprinted in new book about the art and life of Newhallville’s Winfred Rembert.
The railroad tracks stretched ahead for miles and miles. Winfred Rembert walked them all day and half the night, searching.
It would take a full 60 years for him to reach his destination, to find what he was truly looking for. He found it right before he died. And laid it out for the rest of us to see.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 30, 2021 12:22 pm
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Lotta Studio photo
Author Mark Oppenheimer.
In a new book about the largest anti-Semitic murder in U.S. history, Westville-based author Mark Oppenheimer offers a new twist on a pressing question: not why bad things happen to good people, but what people can do about it when bad things happen.
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Natalie Kainz |
Aug 5, 2021 9:13 am
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Natalie Kainz Photo
Capt. Von Narcisse, children’s book author.
One stormy night on the heels of Hurricane Sandy, the power in Yale Police Capt. Von Narcisse’s house went out. Winds billowed around the house. His two children D’Artagnan and A’ramus — named after characters from The Three Musketeers — anxiously waited for comfort from their father.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 4, 2021 8:34 am
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“I am welcoming you from my home on Quinnipiac land,” said Elizabeth Nearing on behalf of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas.
The greeting, which has become standard in meetings all over town, took on added meaning with the festival’s presentation, “Indigenous Writers of Connecticut,” part of the National Endowment of the Arts’s Big Read, and held in partnership with the New Haven Museum.
In the virtual event, five Indigenous writers presented a convincing case for us to acknowledge not merely that we live on Indigenous land, but with Indigenous people, whose cultures thrive among us today — and have much to teach about the history and possible future of the state — if we are willing to pay attention.
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Brian Slattery |
May 10, 2021 9:01 am
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Brian Slattery Photos
Thabisa’s band, augmented by members of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, was in the full flower of the music it was making. Thabisa herself took a moment to pause in her singing and instead turn and dance intricate, powerful steps on the Edgewood Park stage set up for ArtWalk.
The people on the ground in front of her followed suit.
Friday night’s concert, uniting two institutions of New Haven’s music scene, kicked off the annual ArtWalk fest in Westville. It set the mood for Saturday’s events, a celebration of the ability of people to gather again, as the weather warmed, vaccinations continue, and masks were ubiquitous.
Main branch’s Sharon Lovett-Graff and Alana Delgado: Please come back! We missed you.
The doors were wide open again at the public library’s main branch — and two patrons were found browsing through the wide variety of nonfiction books in the stacks.
Staffers are trying to get the word out so more New Haveners come back inside.
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 15, 2021 8:47 am
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Brian Slattery Photos
The Nympho and Other Maniacs. The Sun Is My Undoing. I Who Should Command All.
All three are book titles from the far-flung collection of the Institute Library on Chapel Street, and all three catch the eye through the sheer absurdity of their language.
In another part of the collection, the books Oil for the Lamps of China and The Ghost Book draw the gaze by virtue of their dazzling cover art. And then there are books like Never Fire First and Raising Demons that manage to do both.
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lawrence dressler |
Apr 14, 2021 2:02 pm
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Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Federal judge Jed S. Rakoff has seen too many corporate executives walk out of court unscathed, while impoverished young men plead guilty to crimes they did not commit.
Voters can prevent this from happening, Rakoff says in his new book, Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free.
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Brian Slattery
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Apr 12, 2021 9:43 am
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Brian Slattery Photos
Chris “Big Dog” Davis.
Delores Willams and Lauren Anderson of the Whalley Avenue community bookstore People Get Ready beamed in front of the small, rapt audience seated in front of them Sunday evening.
“Give yourselves a hand,” Williams said. “We’re so grateful that you’re here.”
The bookstore, she said, was getting ready to reopen after a “long, necessary hiatus” — but before that, it hosted a concert by beloved musician Chris “Big Dog” Davis, back in New Haven on the heels of his latest release, the single “Heal The World.”
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 16, 2021 9:33 am
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Brian Slattery Photo
On Friday evening, Elena Augusewicz, Peter Cunningham, Jared Emerling, Jessica Larkin-Wells, Conor Perreault, and Charli Taylor — a.k.a. six of the Never Ending Books Collective — met in the storefront at 810 State St. They talked about how the beloved bookstore, music spot, and community space, which announced it was ending its decades-long run in December, may turn out not to be ending after all.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 18, 2021 11:11 am
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On Tuesday evening, Michael J. Morand, president of the New Haven Free Public Library Foundation, stood in the almost empty main room of the Ives branch of the library. In years past, that space had been transformed into a raucous Mardi Gras party that functioned as the library’s annual blowout fundraiser. Not this year.
“Welcome to the first and hopefully last virtual celebration,” he said to his online audience — with firm hopes of reuniting again in 2022, and with plenty of festivities and good news regarding how the city library system adapted and continued to develop during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 11, 2021 11:21 am
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Courtesy Jill Marie Snyder
The Snyder family in 1969.
When New Haven-based author Jill Marie Snyder found the letters detailing the romance between her parents when they were young, it was the beginning of a journey that led her to learn more about not only her own family, but the history of the Black community in New Haven, and how both contended with the racism they faced in their lives.
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Allison Hadley |
Jan 18, 2021 10:17 am
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Martorana and Mills .
Socialism or barbarism? Reform or revolution? These phrases both describe modern political debates and essays written by leftist political theorist Rosa Luxemburg over 100 years ago. The New Haven Free Public Library made this connection explicit Friday night in its event “Rosa Luxemburg and a Century of World-Changing Women,” featuring a talk with Luxemburg biographer Dana Mills and adult services librarian Rory Martorana during lunch hours, on Zoom and Facebook Live.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 1, 2020 2:24 pm
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Chris Randall Photo
Dest and Green.
There’s a moment in Stephen Dest‘s film I Am Shakespeare that sums up the inspiration for a book about film that Dest is — as of last week — under contract to write. It’s partly about social justice and partly about digital filmmaking, and all about moving into the future.
In the scene, Henry Green, the subject of the film, is “talking to a doctor about how he once looked,” before he was wounded by a gunshot in 2009. “He does this physical gesture, and I remember when I was editing, I wasn’t picking up on it.” Dest said. When he screened the film, “audiences under 30 would react to it and no one else did.”
The gesture was a quick, repetitive flick of the thumb. Green, Dest said, was “scrolling through his mental phone,” bringing back images from the past, “even though he doesn’t have his phone with him.”
“I’m so glad I was stupid enough not to cut it out,” Dest added. “It really was telling, in how people reacted to it.”
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Brian Slattery |
Nov 2, 2020 10:30 am
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Arts maven Bitsie Clark welcomed her virtual audience to her 89th birthday party on Friday evening with a cheeky rendition of Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It.” But there was a serious intent behind the festivities: to check in with the 2019 recipients of the Bitsie Clark Fund’s annual $5,000 grants, and to award another $5,000 grant to a new artist for 2020.
