by | Feb 28, 2022 8:43 am | Comments (0)
Daniel Shoemaker Photo
Bridge & Tunnel Crowd booth: Sometimes wi-fi doesn't reach the loo.
The buzz and joy around the Bradley Street Bicycle Co-op in East Rock was palpable, from the crowds of jacketed chatters outside to the low hum of many people inside the communal space. The community turned out for the NHV Zine Fair — the first such event in years.
by | Feb 23, 2022 8:54 am | Comments (2)
Everyone who’s raised a child has faced that moment, said professor Laura Briggs, when “you’re trying to get to work and you can’t because your kid won’t put on his shoes.”
It’s a problem because “there’s nobody else who’s going to be home. The kid has to go to day care, and we have to go to work.”
The struggle of maintaining work and family, for many, got even worse during the pandemic. In a talk on Tuesday night, Briggs laid out the ways in which that acute problem is the result of larger fights about reproductive politics that have been raging for over 40 years.
Continue reading ‘The Reproductive Is Political: Author Issues Call For Change From Below’
by | Feb 21, 2022 9:52 am | Comments (9)
Brian Slattery Photo
The crowd Sunday at Bloom Black History event.
Book lovers descended Sunday on Bloom to sample not only the assortment of flowers and soaps, but the works of James Baldwin, Octavia Butler, Colson Whitehead, and Jesmyn Ward — brought into the Edgewood Avenue lifestyle store and gathering place courtesy of Bamn Books, a New Haven-based mobile bookstore that focuses on the literature of the African diaspora.
by | Feb 11, 2022 2:01 pm | Comments (2)
Paul Bass Photo
Whistleblower author Greg Dillon at WNHH FM.
Greg Dillon proudly wore a cop-solidarity “thin blue line” face mask when Covid-19 hit.
At the same time he was working a book about how he watched the cop-solidarity “thin blue line” lead to corruption and cover-ups in law enforcement.
Continue reading ‘FBI Whistleblower Straddles Thin Blue Li(n)e’
by | Feb 10, 2022 8:47 am | Comments (1)
Courtesy Octavia E. Butler Estate
Butler.
A new art exhibit, and a panel on migration facilitated by Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS). The screening and discussion of the “first-ever ethnographic acid Western.” A Sun Ra tribute concert.
All these events and more, happening between now and the middle of May, are organized around a single novel by a science-fiction visionary that is the focus of this year’s One City: One Read, a campaign organized by the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, in partnership with Yale’s Schwarzman Center, the New Haven Free Public Library, Artspace, and Best Video.
by | Feb 8, 2022 1:54 pm | Comments (3)
Abby Cadet with the new book she wrote with her mom.
A mom who started seeking to fill her daughter’s home library with more books featuring Black characters has begun publishing some of those books herself — with her daughter.
by | Feb 1, 2022 8:43 am | Comments (2)
Fernanda Franco Photo
Fernanda Franco
Fernanda Franco brings every aspect of her artistic self to her new job as outreach director of New Haven Reads. “I walk into the office at Bristol Street, and I feel like Belle from Beauty and the Beast because you walk in and the walls are lined with books and it’s beautiful,” she said. She sang that last line, not unlike the character did in the movie.
Continue reading ‘Fernanda Franco Books New Gig At New Haven Reads’
by | Jan 25, 2022 12:04 pm | Comments (0)
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.
But she didn’t give up.
Continue reading ‘Her Book Aims To Nurture "Lost" Imagination’
by | Oct 14, 2021 3:54 pm | Comments (5)
Samuel Hadelman Photo
Fans at Cardi B’s five-minutes-before-superstardom Toad’s show.
Paul Bass Photo
Randall Beach, co-author of new history of Toad’s Place, at WNHH FM.
Toad’s Place outlasted decades’ worth of music-club competitors in New Haven.
It also outmaneuvered Yale — and pivoted and mastered digital marketing while competitors were still addicted to print advertising.
A new book offers a look at how that happened.
Continue reading ‘The Rise Of Toad’s Place: How Hip Capitalism Redefined The Mainstream’
by | Oct 1, 2021 1:56 pm | Comments (4)
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.
by | Sep 30, 2021 12:22 pm | Comments (0)
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.
by | Sep 13, 2021 1:08 pm | Comments (1)
Maya McFadden Photos
In a Dixwell parking lot, literature came to life and spoken words about loss, faith, injustice, family, and self-love filled the air.
by | Aug 5, 2021 9:13 am | Comments (1)
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.
So Narcisse began telling them a story.
by | Jun 4, 2021 8:34 am | Comments (1)
“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.
Continue reading ‘Indigenous Writers Form The Backbone At A&I “Big Read”’
by | May 31, 2021 9:12 am | Comments (1)
Maya McFadden Photo
Chazareé and Darius Good.
When New Haven native Darius Good looks up at the stars, he sees his 1‑year-old daughter’s shining future.
Continue reading ‘Baby Inspires Dad’s First Children’s Book’
by | May 10, 2021 9:01 am | Comments (0)
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.
by | May 4, 2021 4:31 pm | Comments (10)
Lizabeth Cohen spent years studying New Haven’s fraught experiment in trying to wipe out poverty — and emerged with a lesson.
by | Apr 23, 2021 10:19 am | Comments (3)
That late Richard Wright’s novel The Man Who Lived Underground, rejected by publishers in the 1940s, was finally released in full this week. Pivoting from realism to surrealism and back, it tells the story of a man who escapes into a sewer after police torture him into signing a confession to a double murder he didn’t commit.
by | Apr 15, 2021 1:47 pm | Comments (4)
Zshekinah Collier Photo
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.
by | Apr 15, 2021 8:47 am | Comments (1)
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.
by | Apr 14, 2021 2:02 pm | Comments (2)
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.
by | Apr 14, 2021 11:00 am | Comments (3)
Callie Smith/Fescue
Fescue & pal Dandy Lion dare to be different.
Yale
Joseph LaPalombara.
A single blade of grass bucked the crowd to pursue its own path in the world — and now, 50 years later, will inspire young humans to do the same.
Continue reading ‘Political Scientist Turns Kids’ Book Author’
by | Apr 12, 2021 9:43 am | Comments (0)
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.”
Continue reading ‘Chris “Big Dog” Davis Plays One For The Books’
by | Mar 16, 2021 9:33 am | Comments (2)
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.
Continue reading ‘Collective Keeps Never Ending Books Alive’
by | Mar 11, 2021 2:18 pm | Comments (2)
Poverty’s a choice: not on the part of the impoverished person, but on the part of society.
Continue reading ‘Local Authors Seek To Steer Poverty Debate Away From Personal Blame’